in May, 1863, and the Third Brigade of the Second Division of the Twelfth Corps in the battle of Gettysburg, July, 1863. When the First Division and two brigades of the Second Division of the Twelfth Corps were moved from the right of the Union line at Gettysburg, to assist in repelling an attack on the left, General Greene was directed to occupy with his brigade the late line of the corps, and to resist any attempt of the enemy to break through. Greene's brigade, consisting of the Sixtieth, the Seventy-eighth, the One Hundred and Second, the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh, and the One Hundred and Forty-ninth New York regiments, numbering 1350 officers and men, was deployed in one rank at double distances, and held every foot of the line, although several times assaulted by a superior force of the enemy. With exhausted ammunition, he ordered bayonets to be fixed, holding the last charge until the enemy should reach his hastily constructed breastworks. They came so near, that a brave Confederate color-bearer fell close to the line, and his standard dropped into the hands of the unflinching men of Greene's brigade. General Slocum, the Corps commander, in his report, says;

"Greene's brigade, of the Second Division, remained in the intrenchments, and the failure of the enemy to gain entire possession of our works was due entirely to the skill of General Greene and the heroic valor of his troops."

It has been stated by those most competent to judge, that, had the Confederates broken Greene's line, there would have been no necessity for General Lee to have ordered Pickett's charge, and the progress of the Southern arms would not have reached "High-tide at Gettysburg." General Greene's appreciation of the stubborn valor of his troops and his great interest in their welfare and comfort were illustrated by his reply to Commissary-Sergeant Edwin

R. Follett of the Sixtieth, who, in searching the field for the regiment about midnight, two hours after the enemy had abandoned his efforts to break through the line, stumbled on and awakened a sleeping man who sharply ordered him "to his regiment and not go prowling through the camps." Sergeant Follett knew the voice to be that of General Greene, and stated that he was hunting for the Sixtieth, to issue rations. The general pointed to the part of the line where the vigilant sentinels were stationed, slightly in advance of the men, fitfully sleeping on their arms, and said, "there they are, give them the best you have, every man deserves a warm biscuit and a plate of ice-cream." The State of New York in May, 1903, ordered a bronze statue of Brevet Major-General George Sears Greene to be erected on the battle-field of Gettysburg, and it will soon be dedicated on Culp's Hill, made for ever memorable by his skill and by the unsurpassed bravery of the five New York regiments composing his brigade.

With the exception of forty days following a severe wound received at Wauhatchie, General Greene continued with the Twelfth Corps until the end of the war, and remained in the service, on special duty in the War Department, until April 30, 1866, when he was mustered out. The next day, he was appointed Engineer of the Croton Aqueduct Department of New York City, and the following year, ChiefEngineer, and the Commissioner of the Department. While on this duty, he prepared the plans and superintended the construction of the dam on the West Branch of the Croton River, the height and length of which were greater than those of any other on the continent. He closed his active professional career in his eighty-seventh year, and, as one of his last professional acts, he walked through the entire length of the tunnels of the Croton Water-works, a feat that his associates, twenty-five years his junior, were unable to perform.

In his ninety-fourth year, by a bill which I introduced and managed, in the House of Representatives, he was restored to the same rank in the United States Army from which he had resigned fifty-eight years before. He continued in possession of his mental faculties without impairment, and with slight physical weakness, until his death on the 28th of January, 1899; having been born in the first year of the nineteenth century and living to within less than two years of its close. He attained a greater age than any other graduate of the United States Military Academy, or any officer whose name had been borne on the rolls of the United States Army, and was probably the oldest officer of his rank in the world. It has been said, and may be taken as a physiological truth, that the beginning of a sound and vigorous man's life should start three hundred years before his birth; it is of record that General Greene came of an ancestry which, for unnumbered years, had both physical and mental vigor. General Nathaniel Greene was conspicuous for physical and mental vigor throughout the war which brought our country into the family of nations, and he was followed in a later generation by this kinsman who rendered no less conspicuous service in the war that preserved and made us a united nation.

In the list of wounded and recovered in the Sixtieth New York, is the name of Corporal Leffert L. Buck of Company A. A brief notice of the career of this man may properly be given in this connection. In the summer of 1861, he left his class in St. Lawrence University and enlisted in the company organized in Canton by William B. Goodrich. Buck carried a musket as private and non-commissioned officer until June, 1864, when he was promoted first lieutenant, and in the following February, captain. He was mustered out of service at the close of the war, and entered The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from which he was

graduated as a civil engineer. He has planned and constructed some of the most important bridges in the world, and stands at the head of his profession in that branch of engineering. The Verrugas Viaduct and other bridges over streams and chasms in the Andes, South America, over the Columbia and other rivers in the States of the Pacific slope, the arch bridges at Niagara Falls, and the Williamsburg suspension Bridge over the East River, are some of the monuments of his professional skill. It is safe to say that no man of Northern New York has accomplished more in applying science to human needs, or won greater distinction in promoting the welfare of the people among whom he has modestly labored, than Captain Leffert L. Buck. His name will be placed among the favored few, who, possessing genius for invention and mechanical skill, are given first rank among the leaders of human progress.

T

CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE BATTLE FIELD AT NIGHT

HE Sixteenth New York, after the cannonading at

Antietam had ceased, was moved from its position and placed on picket. We were on ground over which both armies had advanced and retreated more than once during the day, as shown by a large number of the blue and the gray lying where they had fallen. In the evening twilight the resting soldiers were indistinguishable, for passing comrades had spread blankets over them, under the common impulse which causes us to cover the faces of the dead from the sight of the living. As we advanced to our position, the enemy offered a slight opposition, but ceased firing as soon as he discovered we were a line of pickets and not a line of battle, unless we approached too near in our efforts to bring off the wounded. As the night advanced, the Confederate pickets permitted us to go nearer their lines to carry off those whose call would have softened the most obdurate heart. At midnight my company was relieved, retired a few paces, and slept on their arms. I went to the front, after the company had bivouacked, to bring to the surgeons such men as I could reach. Lieutenant William L. Best and others of the regiment were similarly employed. I first brought to the surgeons a soldier of the Third Delaware, badly wounded in the knee. Twenty years later, while riding on a train on the Pennsylvania Railroad, between Baltimore and Philadelphia, I heard an old soldier tell to a traveling companion the incident of a comrade of