Extract—“The camps of the Eighth Kansas and Twenty-fifth Illinois are the best in the Division. These regiments vie with each other in excellence in every respect, and are models worthy of imitation for any troops with which it has been my fortune to associate.”
Very respectfully, Horace N. Fisher, Lieut.-Col. and A. I. G.
Headquarters 20th Army Corps, }
July 31, 1863. }
Respectfully referred to the commanding officer, Third Brigade, First Division. The General commanding the corps is pleased to hear so favorable a report of the regiments of this Brigade.
By command of Major-General Sheridan.
G. P. Thurston, A. A. G. and Chief of Staff.
With these extracts I may fitly close this brief story of a regiment whose career was alike creditable to the State it represented and to the men who served in its ranks. I do not claim for the Eighth higher soldierly qualities than belonged to many other regiments. I simply assert that, having great opportunities to serve its country, it was always equal to them, and that wherever it was placed it did its whole duty. It was the only Kansas regiment that served in the great “Army of the Cumberland.” Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and many other States had scores of splendid regiments in that grand army, but the Eighth alone represented the martial spirit of Kansas in its ranks. It would not be fair to say that the regiment was ever treated unjustly because of this fact; but it is true that when it first joined the army the Eighth was regarded with some suspicion and a great deal of curiosity. Whatsoever respect it won, whatsoever reputation it made, whatsoever fame it afterward enjoyed in that great army as a well-disciplined, brave and patriotic body of soldiers, was squarely and fairly earned by honest deserving, for it had neither original good repute nor the kindly aid of other regiments bearing the name of the same State, to promote its fortunes and its reputation. Alone in a great army of two hundred thousand, this little body of seven hundred men kept stainless the honor and added luster to the fame of Kansas. In less than six months after it joined the Army of the Cumberland, no regiment was better or more favorably known; and until its final muster-out it steadily held the respect and confidence of its commanding generals and of the troops with which it was most intimately associated.
In the noisy and distracting political feuds which were so numerous in Kansas at that day, the Eighth had no part nor lot. It was so far away as to be beyond even their echo. No man who belonged to it ever made money out of the war. One and all, officers and men, they came out of the army as poor in purse as when they entered it; but they brought back and deposited in the State House at Topeka three torn and tattered flags that all the wealth of this year’s harvest could not buy. Kansas will preserve among her priceless treasures, as long as her government shall endure, these ragged and faded flags—all that remain of the Eighth Kansas Volunteer Infantry except its few hundred scattered survivors and the history with which it glorified the name of the State.