By Andrew Amelinckx
Appeared in The Register-Star, January 6, 2008
The band played a somber funeral march as Cornelius Bortle, the grand Marshall, led the funeral cortege as it wended its way through the streets of Hudson, from the docks to the Presbyterian Church on Warren Street. The streets were crowded that day, June 16, 1863, for the largest and most imposing funeral service the city had seen. Schreiber’s Band played for the Masonic fraternity that preceded the bearers and the hearse, which carried the body of Col. David Smith Cowles, who had died in battle fighting the Confederates. An honor guard made up of soldiers from the 14th Regiment who had returned from battle marched beside the body. Cowles’ horse followed the hearse, Cowles’ boots reversed in the stirrups according to A. S. Callan writing in the May 28, 1959 edition of the Chatham Courier. It had taken almost 20 days for Cowles’ body to make its way home, arriving in Hudson the day before the funeral on the steamship Oregon, having traveled from a place with a similar name as his home–Port Hudson, in Louisiana.
Port Hudson was a small bay on the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge and a Confederate stronghold. The battle to take it from the Union forces was a “severe and desperate fight,” according to the June 11, 1863 edition of the Hudson Weekly Star, but was important in helping take control of the river, thus splitting the Confederacy in two. Cowles commanded the 128th New York State Volunteer Infantry Columbia- Dutchess Regiment, which he had raised in Hudson 10 months before. The 11 battalions that made up the regiment included men from all over Columbia and Dutchess counties, from as far north as New Lebanon and as far south as Fishkill. General William Tecumseh Sherman, the divisional commander of the Mississippi, had declared them to be one of the finest in his Military Department during a regimental review in 1863, according to Callan. The 128th’s colonel was born in Canaan, Conn. on Feb. 26, 1817. A graduate of Yale University he moved to Hudson after his law studies and was elected Columbia County district attorney, keeping the position for three years.
In the summer of 1861 he began recruiting soldiers for the 91st Regiment, but wasn’t given command of that regiment. Instead, he was commissioned to direct and train the 128th the next year.
On Sept. 5, 1862, the regiment marched down Warren Street. Cowles rode a black charger past the church that in less than a year would hold his funeral service.
After months of training in Baltimore, Md., the regiment was sent to New Orleans. At 10 a.m. May 27, 1863, orders were received by Cowles and relayed to his battalion commanders. “The 128th has been given the post of honor and the post of danger. Under no conditions must we withdraw, we must take the earthworks, and hold until support arrives,” he said, according to Callan. The fighting was fierce and bloody. “Sgt. Charles Van Slyek had both legs shot away at the knee, but he continued to fire at the enemy until he received a fatal wound in the heart,” said one description of the battle as reported in the Hudson Star June 11, 1863. The Union forces had gained the summit of the earthworks when Cowles suddenly fell, struck by a mine ball in the neck. He refused to leave the battle site. According to the Hudson Star, Cowles’ dying words were, “Tell my mother I died with my face to the enemy. I have done my duty to my regiment as a man and a soldier.” The Union fell back that day, but on July 9th, 1863, after Confederate Gen. Franklin Gardner heard of Vicksburg’s fall to Union forces Port Hudson was surrendered. It was the last Confederate outpost on the Mississippi. After the funeral service for Cowles the procession reformed and moved on to the grave site. John H. Reynolds of Albany, formerly of Kinderhook, delivered the eulogy for his lifelong friend. “He was a model of a Christian gentleman, and as we commit to kindred dust all that remains of one we love, we know that through all eternity he will continue to lead his beloved 128th Regiment to the greater glory of God on high,” he said, according to Callan. On the corner of Fairview Avenue and Oakwood Boulevard, a slightly leaning, blue cast iron sign marks the place where Cowles organized the 128th. ***