“Your country’s glory, ’tis your chief concern:
For this you struggle, and for this you burn;
For this you smile, for this alone you sigh;
For this you live, for this would freely die.”
Lieut.-Col. Corning responded to the address by thanking the speaker for his complimentary allusion to the men of the Thirty-third. They were worthy of it all. “If you could have seen them,” he continued, “on the battle-field, a spontaneous feeling of gratitude would have burst from your hearts. Yes, they are worthy of all the honor you can bestow upon them. We thought at one time that your loyalty was growing cold, and that the ‘God bless you,’ tendered to us at parting, had been forgotten. But, thank God, I am pleased to find it different, by the splendid manner in which you have welcomed us home to-day. These men are entitled to all the honor you can bestow on them; and the sick, those who had to come home on account of impaired health, are equally entitled to your honor and your regard, with those who have passed safely through the perils of a battle-field.”
After the singing of the “Red, White and Blue,” by a choir of young ladies and gentlemen, Colonel Taylor stepped forward and returned to the ladies of Canandaigua the beautiful flag which they had presented to the Regiment two years before. As he did so he remarked, that
“it had been given to them with the pledge that it should never be sullied by cowardice, or a dishonorable act, and it had never been; and it never trailed in the dust, except on one occasion, when the color-bearer sank from sheer exhaustion on the field. It was a beautiful flag when presented to the Regiment, but it is now torn and soiled, but to him and the Regiment it was all the dearer. He had no doubt it would be dearer to those who gave it, as a relic of the bravery and patriotism of the gallant men of the Thirty-third. It was very heavy to be carried on the field, but it had always been carried with them. On one occasion six out of eight of the color-bearers had been shot down, and another man was called for to support it, when Sergeant Vandecar immediately sprang forward with a gun and bravely and heroically bore the flag aloft.
The Regiment, when he assumed the command, numbered about eight hundred men, and now there were not four hundred of them left. If they had come home some two weeks ago, there would have been about six hundred of them; but two hundred fell killed and wounded in the battle of Fredericksburg. It now only remained for him to hand the flag back, remarking, in conclusion, that had it been necessary, for want of others, he would himself have stepped forward and defended the flag with his life.
On receiving back the now torn and tattered banner, the ladies presented the following address, read by A. H. Howell, Esq.: