The casualty numbers listed above, 294 fatalities out of 1,414 who served in one regiment, the First New York Dragoons, are a reminder of the war's horrifying cost. I'd barely heard of Todd's Tavern, a cavalry engagement in Grant's Overland Campaign between the much bloodier battles of Wilderness and Spotsylvania.
The wife took the photo of me in a red shirt taking the photo above, of one of the informative tablets at base of the impressive obelisk which memorializes the regiment in Letchworth State Park. I'd never been to the park before and hadn't known the monument was there, just stumbled across it on August 5 this year, when we happened to be in Western New York. (I was actually feeling a bit guilty about failing to attend the annual reunion on that date of the 154th New York Infantry, the "Hardtack Regiment", held this year in Delevan.)
This week it's off to Brunswick, Maine, where I have been before to visit the home museum of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. On Thursday evening I'll be speaking to the Joshua Chamberlain Civil War Round Table at 7 o'clock in the Brunswick Library, mostly about James Montgomery: Abolitionist Warrior. Be there or be square.
