31st Pennsylvania Infantry - Captured 3 times & Escaped twice. Carried regiments flag at Gettysburg

Item CDV-9476

Description

John Taylor
31st Pennsylvania Infantry
Sergeant, 1st Sergeant, Lieutenant & Captain
Captured at the Wilderness, VA
Captured at Pickensville, SC (Escaped and recaptured)
Transported to Charlotte, NC - where he escaped again, only to be recaptured.
Backmark: Bergstresser, Army of the Potomac
Signed in period ink.
General Meade commanded, in a voice clearly heard and fully understood: " Bring up the Pennsylvania Reserves, double-quick." Where upon General Crawford ordered Colonel McCandless to move the First' Brigade, which was near at hand, in line, ready for an emergency. Colonel McCandless accordingly executed the order as quickly as it was given. The regiments went into position under almost a full run, halted suddenly, fronted, aligned at one glance, aimed accurately and delivered two death-dealing volleys into the advancing foe, who were struggling to reach the crest, and then, with a shout and a yell that rang along the hillsides and through the "Valley of Death," with fixed bayonets, charged down the rugged declivity, crossed the open marshy space in front, cleared the rocky face of the slope beyond and halted not until they reached the stone wall bordering the skirt of the woods, where the enemy made a last desperate rally. In that charge there was a young officer by the name of John Taylor, in command of the color company of the 2d Regiment, who distinguished himself by charging over the stone wall and planting the colors of his regiment some 30 feet beyond it, but the fire from the enemy was too deadly, and he was compelled to fall back behind it. After the battle he served on the staff of Colonel McCandless. Since the war he has been Quartermaster General of the Grand Army of the Republic. (From A History of the Army of the Potomac by James H. Stein, Page 508)