A Father Remembers His Son

I just came across this sad account in the Cincinnati Enquirer of November 19, 1862 and thought that Father’s Day was a good a time to post it, but I got distracted and here it is one day late. 

Mr. Daly obviously had read or heard reports about the Battle Richmond, one of the most decisive Confederate victories of the war.

Obituary

Departed this life, on the 13th of September, 1862, at the house of Mr. Moore, in Garrard County, Kentucky, occasioned  by wounds received in the battle between Federal and rebel forces, near Richmond in that State, on the 30th of August last, my son, Robert Emmett Daly, First Sergeant Company E, Sixty-ninth Regiment Indiana volunteers

The deceased was born on the 2d day of November, 1835, a short distance from Eaton, Preble. County, Ohio, whence he was removed by his parents to Randolph County, Indiana on the 30th of September 1843. Here he volunteered on the 26th of July last. His career was short but brilliant. He lost his own life in trying to save that if his comrades, and in defense of that flag and that Constitution which I taught him from his infancy to revere. Like the hero I named him after, “For his country he lived, for his country he died.”  (See this link) Unlike the Irish patriot, however, who fell a victim to British treachery and tyranny, through the instrumentality of the blood-stained Norbury, my son fell a victim to the worse than imbecility of his superiors, who led an undisciplined army to contend with veterans vastly their superior in point of numbers.

Farewell, Robert! farewell, my much-loved child! I taught you how to live, I taught you how to die. You have faithfully fulfilled my last injunction to you; you have not swerved from the path of duty; you did not desert your flag in the time of danger. Farewell! a long, a sad farewell, my noble boy! till we meet again in the regions of eternal beatitude, which shortly, very shortly,  perhaps, will be the case. In the mean time, Requiescat in pace. Amen

GEORGE W. DALY

From battlefields.org