DEDICATION OF MONUMENT M 11TH REGIMENT INFANTRY SEPTEMBER 3, 1890 ADDRESS OF CAPTAIN H. B. PIPER Y Comrades-To have taken part on the side of the Union in the late civil war is of much importance, and to have participated as a member of that grand old regiment, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, may be counted an honorable distinction. The part it played in the most sanguinary national tragedy of the century, was both important and conspicuous. Entering the service at the beginning, and continuing to the end, participating in the first and last battles of the war, its very name became the synonym of patriotism and bravery. Early in April, 1861, the old Eleventh was organized as a three months' regiment under the first call for troops by the President, and saw some practical campaigning during that period, participating in the battle of Falling Waters, Va., which was the first infantry fight of the war. It was the first Pennsylvania regiment to reorganize for three years' service. On July 25th, 1861, by official order of the Secretary of War, its services as a regimental organization were formally accepted, and it again entered on a career as one of the most faithful of all faithful military organizations placed in the field by our native State in those dark and bloody days. Passing over all its subsequent campaigns preceding the summer of 1863, the old Eleventh, then a part of Baxter's Brigade, Second Division, First Army Corps, left Falmouth, Va., on the 12th of June, reached the state line, by way of Warrentown Junction, Herndon and Guilford Stations, Barnesville and Emmitsburg, camping at Wolford's farm on the evening of June 30th, reaching the vicinity of Gettysburg at 11 o'clock in the forenoon of the next day, and were saluted by the sound of cannonading in the direction of Chambersburg. For the first time a northern army seeking a hostile foe stood inside the boundaries of our grand old Commonwealth, and the harvest-gilded valleys of the Keystone state were reverberating the deep-throated echoes of a foeman's cannon. The sons of hardy New England, of the Empire state and the west, were thrilled with intense and consuming interest of the hour, as much so as if the contest about to be waged was on the threshold of their own homes. But the old Eleventh, the heroes of a score of bloody conflicts, breathed their native air, trod their native vales, stretched their line of living valor along the crests of their native hills and battled for the homes of their childhood. Never did men more eagerly seek the field of carnage. The summer sun poured down its tropic heat. The distant ridges were filled with a brave and desperate foe, and whether Virginia or Pennsylvania was to be the seat of war was an open question to be decided by the bloody arbitrament of arms. Never had two great armies been so matched. It was a field which, like Marathon and Hastings and Waterloo, bound up in its issues the destinies of a |