headquarters Department of the Gulf, New Orleans, Dec. 15, 1862.General Order No. 106. Soldiers of the Army of the Gulf:-- Relieved from further duties in this department by direction of the President, under the date of Nov. 9, 1862, I take leave of you by this final order, it being impossible to visit your scattered outposts, covering hundreds of miles of the frontier of a larger territory than some kingdoms of Europe. I greet you, my brave comrades, and say farewell! This word, endeared as you are by a community of privations, hardships, dangers, victories, successes, military and civil, is the only sorrowful thought I have. You have deserved well of your country. Without a murmur you sustained an encampment on a sand bar, so desolate that banishment to it, with every care and comfort possible, has been the most dreaded punishment inflicted upon your bitterest and most insulting enemies. You had so little transportation, that but a handful could advance to compel submission by the Queen City of the Rebellion, whilst others waded breast-deep in the marshes which surround St. Philip, and forced the surrender of a fort deemed impregnable to land attack by the most skilful engineers of your country and her enemy. At your occupation, order, law, quiet, and peace sprang to this city, filled with the bravos of all nations, where for a score of years, during the profoundest peace, human life was scarcely safe at noon-day. By your discipline you illustrated the best traits of the American soldier, and enchained the admiration of those that came to scoff. Landing with a military chest containing but seventy-five dollars, from the hoards of a rebel government you have given to your country's treasury nearly a half million of dollars, and so supplied yourselves with the needs of your service that your expedition has cost your government less by four fifths than any other. You have fed the starving poor, the wives and children of your enemies, so converting enemies into friends, that they have sent their representatives to your Congress, by a vote greater than your entire numbers, from districts in which, when you entered, you were tauntingly told that there was “no one to raise your flag.” By your practical philanthropy you have won the confidence of the “oppressed race” and the slave. Hailing you as deliverers, they are
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we met with no disaster; and the whole that was done, I cannot better sum up than I did in my farewell address to my comrades in arms:--
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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