True Valor at Gettysburg

True Valor at Gettysburg. Sculpted by Gary Casteel. 350 men of the 111th New York Infantry rose early on the morning of July 2, 1863 to a meager breakfast of crackers, bacon and coffee before continuing their march toward Gettysburg. They waited in the fields south of town, eager to join the battle and restore the honor lost the previous year at the controversial surrender at Harper’s Ferry. Finally, orders came to move south along Cemetery Ridge and plug a critical gap in the Union line. With fixed bayonets and shouts of Remember Harper’s Ferry, the 111th smashed into Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade and then fired into the flank of Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade, helping to drive both Confederate Brigades from the field. Historian Lewis H. Clark wrote: “They advanced with firmness, the remembrance of Harper’s Ferry tingling in their nerves, and when the enemy were met it was with a sublime courage which rose above danger and made the One Hundred and Eleventh irresistible.” The losses were great: that evening only 185 of the 350 men who had set out that morning presented ready for duty. , In 1886, Regimental Chaplain J.N. Brown wrote: “I recollect that in the first charge, on the 2nd of July, our first color-guard fell wounded. He called for the second to take the flag and bear it onward. As he did so he was instantly killed. The third grasped it, fell mortally wounded, and the fourth seized the falling standard, and raising it aloft bore it onward to victory. Such was the honor to the brave men, who could thus do and dare for their country and for the flag.” The color bearers who died that day were Sergeant Judson Hicks of Company A, Corporal Payson Derby of Company G, and Corporal Edward Riley of Company K, would be discharged after the amputation of his right leg. , This memorial is dedicated to all the brave and selfless men from Wayne and Cayuga counties who served in the War of the Rebellion.