Among the gentlemen who have honored us with their presence here to-night as one of our guests I notice my friend the Honorable Felix Campbell, Member of Congress from Brooklyn, and who is now the Dean of the delegation to the Congress of the United States from the great State of New York, and who has been honored with many many re-elections to that body; his presence here to-night is particularly welcome to us old soldiers of the Mexican War, for we all remember the active part he took in helping to secure the passage of our pension bill a few years ago.
I must also not forget to mention the name of my old friend and fellow forty-niner of California, James Phelan, Esq., of San Francisco to whose generosity we are mainly indebted for this splendid entertainment to-night, whose patriotic spirit and warm-hearted nature always come to the front on such occasions. May his shadow never grow less, and that he may never die till I kill him.
As allusion has been made to the war of the rebellion, in which comrade McKay took a most prominent part on the side of the South, and Colonel Hungerford and myself serving in the Union Army. Although South Carolina and New York troops fought side by side in the same brigade under the gallant General Shields in Mexico, we found ourselves, unfortunately, arrayed against each other in later years in our own country, and no man who is a man will from political or personal motives keep alive the passions of the war, or by fanning the embers of sectional hatred for political or partisan effect, subject our people to the charge of vindictive malignity. I trust we have long since forgotten the bitter memories of our Civil War, and that we only remember the gallant acts and deeds of both armies.
I have hoped for years back that the time would come, and it is happily now at hand, when the brave soldiers of the society of the army of Northern Virginia, who fought under the gallant Lee, will meet side by side at the annual reunions with the soldiers of our society of the army of the Potomac, who fought under McClellan, Grant, Meade, and Sheridan, and at other festive meetings of our various army gatherings and organizations of old soldiers, where I have never heard a word said against, but the highest praise accorded to our gallant but misguided southern brothers for their bravery and daring on the battlefield.
Colonel Murphy was called upon to respond to the last sentiment,—in memory of our dead comrades,—which he did, as follows:
I am called on to say a word to the memory of our dear departed comrades. Would that I had command of language to do justice to our dead heroes. Father Time has fearfully thinned our ranks, and few of us can point to the comrade who was his file leader and marched shoulder to shoulder with us nearly 50 years ago, and the death roll since the Mexican War has been frightful among the distinguished men of that army who have been called to their final account. I mention a few, Scott, Taylor, Pillow, Quitman, Twiggs, Duncan, Pierce, Kearney, Hancock, Shields. The last named general, and the last surviving general of that war, was a welcome guest at my house a few years ago when stricken with a fatal sickness when far away from his Western home and kindred. I well remember the gallant Lieutenant Ralph Bell of the South Carolina Regiment, mentioned by comrade McKay, and who, while wounded, led the forlorn hope at Chapultepec. He accompanied me to California in 1849, and his eyes I closed in death at Sacramento City the following year, and whose placid countenance looks down upon me here to-night. These are sad memories, and the tongue can but feebly express the feelings of the heart at this time; our own bent forms and fast becoming hoary locks admonish us that it will not be long before we too are called to tread the same path, and no matter what our former condition in life, there is no distinction then. The dead, how beautiful is the memory of the dead, what a holy thing it is in the human heart, what a chastening influence it has upon human life, how it subdues all the harshness that grows up within us in the daily intercourse with the world, how it melts our hardness and softens our pride, kindles our deepest love, and waking our brightest aspirations in the camp and by the wayside, in solitude or among our comrades, think sadly and speak lovingly of the dead.
It occurred to the compiler of this pamphlet that it would not be out of place to mention the name of Colonel Murphy’s son, Ignatius, a well-known journalist and editorial writer, who wrote the life of Colonel Hungerford (a book of nearly 400 pages). This gallant soldier recently died in Rome, Italy, at the home of his daughter, the Countess Telfener, at the Villa Ada, attaining the ripe age of seventy-five years. He passed peacefully away, surrounded by his affectionate wife, his daughter, the Countess, and his numerous grandchildren.
Ignatius Ingoldsby Murphy deserves more than a mere honourable mention in connection with the corn propaganda. When his father commenced his missionary labors, in 1887, he was flooded with correspondence from all parts of Europe. This son, who was a third year naval cadet at Annapolis, resigned, and came over to Europe to assist his father, for which his knowledge of European languages eminently qualified him.
IGNATIUS INGOLDSBY MURPHY