The brightness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept.”
ADDISON C. TAYLOR,
Captain of Company C.
This gallant officer fell severely wounded in the engagement at Fredericksburg, December thirteenth, 1862, and died at his home in New-Haven, March thirteenth, 1863. He was born October twenty-eighth, 1841, in Wellington, Lorraine county, Ohio. His parents were natives of Connecticut, which State became his home when he was about twelve years of age. For several years he was a pupil in the Collegiate and Commercial Institute of New-Haven, and subsequently a teacher, and also the military instructor in that school. The outbreak of the rebellion in 1861 found him performing the duties of this position. Though feeling that his relations and duties to others did not permit him at that time to enter the active military service of the country, yet he took an earnest and enthusiastic part in the stirring scenes of that period. Troops were to be raised and prepared for the field with the utmost dispatch. How vividly memory recalls the experiences of those days, then so strange in our national history, when men were gathering from all quarters for the nation’s defence, and our streets resounded with the drum and fife, and the public square was alive with squads and companies moving to and fro in the mazes of military evolutions! Captain Taylor’s zeal and military knowledge found an ample sphere for exercise at this important crisis, and truly most efficient service did he render. It should be particularly mentioned, that he drilled the company of Captain, now Brevet Major-General, Joseph R. Hawley, then of the First Connecticut Regiment of three months’ volunteers. Brevet Brigadier-General Edward W. Whittaker, the adventurous cavalry leader, was also at that time a member of this company. So successfully did Captain Taylor fulfil these duties that Captain Hawley offered him the most flattering inducements if he would consent to accompany the regiment; but the time had not arrived when he was to give even life itself for his country. It came when the battle summer of 1862 convinced the nation that this was no ordinary struggle, and brought each man face to face with the question of his own individual duty. At this juncture the call was issued for volunteers for nine months’ service; and Captain Taylor, with his accustomed ardor, immediately entered upon the work of recruiting the “Monitors” for the Twenty-seventh Regiment, and soon assembled about him a very superior body of men, to whom his military knowledge and experience were of very great advantage. His was the color company, and at its head he moved on that day of fearful carnage, the memorable thirteenth of December, 1862, when he received the wound which resulted in death, after three months of patient suffering.
Did space allow, we might appropriately introduce at this point the singularly unanimous testimony of those who knew him best, to the self-reliance which he manifested from his earliest years; to the thorough, unostentatious sincerity, purity, and conscientiousness of his life; to the high sense of duty which impelled him to the field, and animated him in every act; and, more than all this, to the Christian principles which formed the basis of his symmetrical character.
“The light of his young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill
The glory of a setting star—
Clear, suddenly, and still.