Raynors HCA 2017-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/23/2017
Broadside, 8” x 10-1/2”, 3 columns with minor see through at folds, “EXCELSIOR BATTLE-SONG. Dedicated to the Founder of the brave Brigade, (Suggested by events at the Battle of Williamsburg, the first battle of the Army of the Potomac on its march from Yorktown to Richmond.)”. Seves as a memento of Captain Henry Brooks O'Reilly of the First Excelsior Regiment who fell in the battle of Williamsburg. In part, “Captain O'Rielly fell on the field of Williamsburg ... after he had been for about two hours under the heaviest fire, where the battle raged most fiercely, and when the most desperate efforts were required to withstand the almost overwhelming rebel force which was it the time directing its tremendous fire against that regiment ... aptain O'Rielly himself promptly headed his own detachment on this "forlorn hope"—drew his revolver for close quarters with the rebels—and was about springing across the abatis against the foe, who were insolently shouting "Ball's Bluff" and "Bull Run," in confident anticipation of another similar catastrophe, when he was struck by a Minie ball, just as he had uttered the command, "Boys, follow me!—Forward, march!"—and fell, to rise no more.....” The Excelsior Brigade was a military unit in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Mainly composed of infantry regiments raised in the state of New York primarily by former U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles, the brigade served in several of the Army of the Potomac's most important battles in the Eastern Theater, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.
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