Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/99

 and has never recovered. He was made a colonel, brigadier-general and brevet major-general in the regular army—likewise the youngest man who ever held those ranks. For a time he commanded the Department of the South. He was in command at New Orleans at the time that a commission was sent to investigate the conditions which led to the Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute. Grant refers to him in his Memoirs and no history of the war is written which does not tell of his heroic services. He is one of three of his family and name who have been suggested for the governorship. He represented the American army at Berlin at the review of the German army at the close of the war with France and received much attention from the Emperor and Count Bismarck. Tall, big-boned, with much courtesy of manner, with native intelligence and great power of will, he is a remarkable character.

A company of Irishmen from Tunnel Hill enlisted in the Seventy-first Pennsylvania Volunteers and were with Webb at the bloody angle at Gettysburg. A company from the south side of the town became Company G of the First Pennsylvania Reserves. Among the first to enlist was Josiah White, a bright, lively and muscular young fellow, engaged to be married to Kate Vanderslice, and he became first lieutenant of Company G. When his body was brought to Phœnixville, from the Wilderness battlefield, where he was killed, in accordance with a custom which still lingered, Lloyd, Ashenfelter and I watched over it all night, and we carried him to his grave in the Dunker graveyard, at the Green Tree. Kate Vanderslice, his fiancée, soon died, and in a gloomy and sombre poem which I wrote in early life, I endeavored to tell the tale of their misfortunes.

The pretty young woman who later became my wife, along with the other girls of her age, made in the hall of the Young Men's Literary Union the uniforms which Company

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