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Page 13 text:
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MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE Major John Anderson UNITED STATES ARMY l ' EW years ago I was asked by one of our great newspapers to give it my definition of true patriotism. I wrote to the paper as follows: I put the question to a Grand Army comrade of mine, and his answer was: ' To be willing to give all you have, all that you are, and all that you expect to be, for the sake of your country. ' This man served with distinguished gallantry as a volunteer officer in the War of the Rebellion, devoted the next thirty years of his life to active dut} ' in the regular army, and upon his retirement settled down in a Massachusetts town, not to rust, like an old fieldpiece, but to become the useful and influential citizen which his service, experi- ence and intelligence fit him to be, I regard him as a true patriot, and am glad to adopt his definition of true patriotism. The man to whom I referred was Major (then Captain) John Anderson, and it is with genuine pleasure that I respond to the request of the editor of the Index for a brief sketch of his life. He was bom in Monson, Massachusetts, sixty-five years ago. If, how- ever, it be true that we live in deeds, not years, he is as old as Methuselah. His boyhood and youth were like that of any other hearty, healthy country boy, full of pranks which need not be recounted here. I think he has always, even as a member of a college faculty, sympathized openly or secretly with good-natured mischief makers. His military record shows that at the age of twenty-two he enlisted as a p)rivate in the First Michigan Sharpshooters, January 5, 1863, and served until February 9, 1864. On February i, 1864, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 5 7th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the most famous of the fighting regiments of the Civil War. In the battle of Petersburg crater, July 30, 1865, he received a severe shell wound, and was discharged for disability, January
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Page 14 text:
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U) THE 1907 INDEX Volume XXXVII I, 1865. (Jn the 2 5tli of March of the same year he became second Heuten- ant, 20th Veteran Reserve Corps ; was breveted first Heutenant and captain, U. S. v., for gallant and meritorious services in the battles before Peters- burg, Virginia, and was mustered out of the volunteer service June 30, 1866. On the loth of August, 1867, he entered the regular army as a second lieutenant in the 25th Infantry; was transferred to the i8th Infan- try, April 26, 1869; promoted first lieutenant, October 17, 1878; regimental quartermaster, November 16, 1889; captain, June 21, 1890, and retired with that rank, June 6, 1894. Two years ago he was promoted to the grade of major, under an act of Congress. Some ten years ago, with an officer of the 57th Massachusetts, I was looking through a collection of photographs of his brother officers of that regiment. On the back of each photograph he had written a word or two epitomizing the character of the original ; and on the back of Anderson ' s picture was the single word sandy. As patriotism and public spirit characterized him as a citizen, so did what we call sand characterize him as a soldier. During the battle of the Wilderness, when his own regiment bravely but unwisely standing up before the fire of the enemy, was almost swept away, he seized a gun and joined the regiment nearest at hand, which happened to be my own, the 36th Massachusetts, where he gallantly fought in the ranks. For a short period during the campaign he served as an aide on the staff of the brigade commander, of whose soldierly qual- ities the major never seemed to be wholly enamoured. In the terrible struggle at the crater at Petersburg on the 30th of July, 1864, he was severely wounded in the arm by a shell, which created the disability for which he was discharged from active service five months later. In the regular army he saw much service on the plains among the Indians, and was specially honored with the command of a company of mounted Indian scouts. This service was not only dangerous but full of hardship — conditions under which his sandy quality was always con- spicuous. A brother officer of his in the i8th Infantry once told me how, starting off suddenly in the midst of a blizzard to check an Indian foray, the first sergeant of the company was half sick and very blue, and the men themselves seemed to share his feelings. Anderson, who was really ill and unfit for duty, insisted on starting, and during the march chaffed the first
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