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[138]

‘There they stood in the failing light these men of battle, with grave dark looks’: burial party, old Vermont brigade, Camp Griffin, near Washington, 1861. The spirit of Shepherd's somber poem, Roll call, lives in this group—from the spadesmen whose last services to their comrades have been performed, to the solemn bearers of the muffled drums. Many more such occasions were to arise; for these soldiers belonged to the brigade that suffered the greatest loss of life of any one brigade during the war; 1,172 of its men were either killed in battle or died of wounds. The same five regiments that lay in Camp Griffin when this picture was taken in 1861 marched together in the Grand Review on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, in 1865. When their term of enlistment expired in 1864, they had all reenlisted and preserved the existence of the brigade. It was famous also for being composed entirely of troops from one State. It contained the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Vermont Infantry, and later the First Vermont Heavy Artillery. It was in this respect conspicuous in the Union army, which did not adopt the Confederate policy of grouping regiments from the same

 

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