Immediately following this announcement came the order for the Supply Trains to report at Westminster.
The Supply Trains were an important factor in army organization. They did good service in the camp, along the march, and on the field. Without them even Gettysburg would not have been a Field of Monuments. At least twenty regiments of the Army of the Potomac did guard duty with the trains on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of July, 1863. That duty was quite as necessary of performance, fully as important, carrying with it as much of possible danger, as was actually encountered by regiments engaged on the field, and as much of actual danger as did not fall to the lot of several of the regiments who were no more on the field than were the troops with the trains, and which regiments wrote Gettysburg on their battle flags without a question as to its being rightly there.
When the State of Pennsylvania placed upon her Statute Books the Act that gave to every Pennsylvania Command having a part in the Battle of Gettysburg a Memorial Stone, I had no doubt as to the 84th coming within the terms of the Act, and no doubt as to the duty of its Soldiers to see that its Monument was placed.
The Regiment had been, from the time of its entry into the service, a part of the Army of the Potomac, even before all the troops in Virginia were so designated, and continued to be till the end of the War. Failure of recognition under this Law of the Commonwealth, as a part of the Army of the Potomac, would have left the Regiment unrecorded to the world as of any army up to and including the time of Gettysburg.
But comment of our own is unnecessary. The statement of General Carr, the Brigade Commander, covers all points, and coming from an individual thoroughly competent to pass judgment, and yet free from the slightest degree of interest that might possibly induce bias, ought to, and does, answer all question and resolve all doubt.
(The following letter was written by General Carr in response to a communication asking simply for a statement by him of the duty on which the Regiment was ordered in connection with the Battle of Gettysburg.
The tribute thus tendered to the Regiment not only evidences the high regard had by General Carr for the officers and men of the 84th, but is indicative of the feeling entertained and expressed by Shields, Carroll, Ricketts, Whipple, Pierce, Mott, and other General Officers, in whose immediate command the Regiment was placed between October, '61, and July, '65.)
Office of American Chain Cable Works,