Battery D First Rhode Island Light Artillery in the Civil War

RESOLVED, That George C. Sumner is hereby appointed Historian of the Association, and earnestly requested to write and publish a History of Battery D, First Rhode Island Light Artillery.

Comrade Sumner accepted the position, and at once commenced to look up material for the work. He soon found that he had quite a task to perform. At the battle of Cedar Creek, late in the war, all the books and papers of the battery were captured by the enemy, it thus became rather a tedious undertaking to hunt up facts and dates. Artificer Clark Walker and Corporal Knight had diaries of some parts of their service, which was about all the material on hand to start with.

The Adjutant General's Office furnished considerable information. The Roster of the Battery was taken entirely from that office. The "War Records" was another source from which facts and dates were collected.

Comrade Sumner took a great deal of interest in this history and had a large part of it written when he was "called away to join his comrades who had gone before." The death of our comrade made it necessary for some one to take up the work. It was impossible to fill his place, and when the writer agreed to take up the history and complete it, it was with a great deal of hesitation, knowing his inability to carry on the work, and not having time to devote to the proper carrying out of Comrade Sumner's ideas.

Comrade Sumner had a great many marginal notes attached to his manuscript which he was familiar with, but to another person they were not very plain. Without doubt he intended to add considerable to his manuscript, but on taking up the work I found it almost impossible to follow out what he had evidently intended to do, and came to the conclusion that it was best to publish it as he left it. I hope the comrades of the Battery and whoever else that reads this work, will remember that the author was called away before he had time to even revise his original manuscript.

Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, A Comrade of the Battery.

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