as not slow in following. There are men among us
to this day for whom no superlatives are adequate to give expression
to their feelings in regard to him. As the regimental history records
of their career "there is not a scene, a day, nor a memory from Camp
Dutton to Grapevine Point that can be wholly divested of Kellogg. Like
the ancient Eastern king who suddenly died on the eve of an
engagement, and whose remains were bolstered up in warlike attitude in
his chariot, and followed by his enthusiastic soldiers to battle and
to victory, so this mighty leader, although falling in the very first
onset, yet went on through every succeeding march and fight, and won
posthumous victories for the regiment which may be said to have been
born of his loins. Battalion and company, officer and private, arms
and quarters, camp and drill, command and obedience, honor and duty,
esprit and excellence, every moral and material belonging of the
regiment, bore the impress of his genius. In the eyes of civilians,
Colonel Kellogg was nothing but a horrid, strutting, shaggy monster.
But request any one of the survivors of the Nineteenth Infantry or the
Second Artillery to name the most perfect soldier he ever saw, and
this will surely be the man. Or ask him to conjure up the ideal
soldier of his imagination, still the same figure, complete in
feature, gesture, gauntlet, saber, boot, spur, observant eye and
commanding voice, will stalk with majestic port upon the mental
vision. He seemed the superior of all superiors, and major-generals
shrunk into pigmy corporals in comparison with him. In every faculty
of body, mind, heart, and soul he was built after a large pattern. His
virtues were large and his vices were not small. As Lincoln said of
Seward, he could swear magnificently. His nature was versatile, and
full of contradictions; sometimes exhibiting the tenderest
sensibilities and sometimes none at all. Now he would be in the
hospital tent bending with streaming eyes over the victims of fever,
and kissing the dying Corporal Webster, and an hour later would find
him down at the guard house, prying open the jaws of a refractory
soldier with a bayonet in order to insert a gag; or in anger drilling
a battalion, for the fault of a single man, to the last point of
endurance; or shamefully abusing the most honorable and faithful
officers in the regiment. 'In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.'
But notwithstanding his frequent ill treatment of offic