Petition

PETITION FROM TWO GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC POSTS ASKING THE HEMPSTEAD TOWN BOARD TO PUT A PROPOSITION ON THE BALLOT TO AUTHORIZE $2,500 TO ERECT A CIVIL WAR MONUMENT IN GREENFIELD CEMETERY.

Hempstead, March 8, 1887

To the Honorable Town Board of Hempstead:

Gentlemen – The undersigned committee appointed by the D. B. P. Mott Post No. 527 and Moses A. Baldwin Post No. 544, Department of New York, G. A. R.,

Respectfully petition your honorable body to submit the appended resolution to a vote of the people of the town of Hempstead at the election to be held in and for said town on the 5th day of April, prox.

The committee feel that they are but voicing the sentiment of the people of this town when they express the grounds on which this petition is based.

Twenty-six years have now elapsed since the outbreak of the great civil war, for a time it threatened, through the malevolence of foreign governments, to sweep us, as a nation, from the face of the earth, served in the end to establish more firmly than ever before, the strength and durability of our of our individual country, and to fix in the minds not only of our own people but in those of the monarchies of Europe, the now incontestable fact that republican form of government really possesses, in addition to its many beneficent justice-giving properties, all the elements of strength , which but recently were supposed to be centered in the most absolute despotisms, and the soul of the American patriot is stirred with pride as he realizes that this strength lies not in the power of the ruler but in the hearts of the American people, who in the hour of danger stepped forth, not by tens, nor by hundreds, but in millions, and with a firm hand enrolled their names in the lists of the grandest army of volunteers that were ever marshalled either to repel a foreign foe or to beat down treason at home, the Citizen Soldiery of the United States of America.

During four long years, this great army of men, taken from the comforts of the homes of the nineteenth century, many of them abounding with the luxuries of our advanced civilization, endured the fatigues and hardships of campaign life – the march and the counter march, the advance and the retreat, the hasty bivouac broken by the midnight alarm, and the sudden call to meet the surprise of the ever menacing foe. During four long years the men held their lives a ready sacrifice on the altar of their country. How freely their blood was spilled, you all know, until over three hundred thousand men fell before the enemy and at least an equal number died from wounds or disability received during those four years of devotion to the sacred cause of our Country – the benefit of which we are receiving today.

The Town of Hempstead was not unrepresented in the great struggle nor did it fail to contribute its full share of sacrifice. There is perhaps no family within its limits that cannot point with a saddened pride to at least one of its members who lost life or limb or health that we might enjoy all that he for us laid down. The bones of many of our fellow townsmen lie scattered over the blood sodden fields of the south unrecognizable and unreclaimable, while the miniature flags that adorn so many of the else neglected mounds in our churchyards and cemeteries on Decoration Day, attest to the fact that many, wearied and broken and diseased by the labor, exposure and wounds of those years battling with treason, came home to die, in what should have been the prime - no, with many, the springtime of life.

Though, in little more than one month, twenty six years will have elapsed since the first missile was hurled at against the walls of Sumter and six days later – the 19th day of April will mark the twenty sixth anniversary of the first spilling of blood in the tumultuous streets of Baltimore, the people of Hempstead have until this late date postponed to perpetuate the memory of the most heroic achievements and the most noble sacrifices recorded in the pages of sons, comrades of the fallen husbands, whose widows still continue to mourn their loss asking that at this late date the Town, in recognition of these facts, the sum of twenty-five hundred dollars – which will add to the present burdens of the taxpayers, no heavier sum than five cents on one hundred dollars of assessed valuation.

To the ladies of our country, the mothers sisters, wives of the soldiers, who so ardently labored for the comfort of the absent ones, and through whose efforts the sanitary department of our army was entirely maintained, the thanks of the survivors are hereby tendered on behalf of thousands whose pain was lightened and who in appreciation of that kindness passed into eternity with a smile.

And now, gentlemen, the Committee ask not only that you will, by your official act, submit this resolution to the ballots of the Electors of this Town, and thereby give them an opportunity long desired, of giving expression to their patriotic gratitude to the revered dead, but that you, as gentlemen of influence, whose opinions are respected by your fellow townsmen, will do all in your power, individually, to help history. It must be borne in mind that this monument is asked not for the living - but for the dead; that those who now address you, are but the comrades of your lost fathers, brothers, those who have become so accustomed to the blessings of our representative form of government as to lose sight of the life sacrificed by which it was purchased, to awaken to such an appreciation thereof as will give to our resolution the handsome majority warranted by the hallowed cause which it represents.

Joseph Wright D. B. P. Mott Post #527

Elbert R. Smith “

F. C. Hageman “

A. B. Parsons Moses Baldwin Post #544

H. H. deMott “

John Cornelius “

The Committee