Sullivan Amory Meredith

Sullivan Amory Meredith (July 4, 1816 – December 26, 1874) was an American businessman and volunteer army officer during the American Civil War, rising to the rank of colonel in the Union Army.

Sullivan A. Meredith

Quotes by Sullivan

Robert Ould

In 1868 a series of letters by General Meredith were published in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, opposing the statements of the Confederate Commissioner, Robert Ould, in charging upon General Grant a responsibility for the poor treatment of captured Union soldiers by the Rebel authorities. General Meredith defended against that charge, and his treatment of Ould was scathing. The following is an extract from one of these letters published in the Commercial of October 13, 1868:

• Now, Messrs Editors, I should deem it an insult to you and to the public to attempt to weigh the oath of General U. S. Grant with a counterpoise so lignt as the assertion of Robert Ould. The testimony I have placed before you is undoubted and cannot be refuted.
  Read it, Soldiers of the North, before, in friendship, you strike the hands of these infamous fiends whose garments are even yet dripping with the blood of thirty thousand of your worse-than-murdered comrades, and who are already whetting their knives and preparing their weapons in anticipation of the election of Seymour, in which event an appalling cry of murder will come up from the South, rendering utterly insignificant the feeble moans we already have from Camilla and Opelouses. Do not insult the memories of those who have freely poured out their life-blood in defence of civil liberty by forgetting at the end of three short years the story of their terrible sufferings. Let the tortures, the starvings, the cold-blooded murders, inflicted upon your heroic comrades be remembered at least so long an the present generation of traitors shall exist. Let It be the proud work of the Democratic party to warm into political life, traitors whose only regret is that their power to destroy the Government is not commensurate with their will to do it. Let it be the peculiar province of this Democratic party to strive for the honor of placing your beloved country once more in the minds of the wilful murderers of your poor comrades.
  • Quoted in "Obituary. Death of Gen. S. A. Meredith". Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. December 28, 1874. p. 3, col. 1.

Quotes about Sullivan

On the death of General Sullivan, the Buffalo Courier of December 28, 1874 quoted "a correspondent of a western paper" making the following appraisal:

• A younger brother, Sullivan A. Meredith, fell in and took arms at the outbreak of the rebellion and joined the Army to the Shenandoah, whose equal in personnel had scarcely been rallied under any flag since the crusades. Col. Meredith, who subsequently earned the yellow sash, was one of that large body of gallant men who volunteered to remain after their term of service bad expired, to hold for the federal government that old battle ground of nature where the river of swans, reinforced by the Shenandoah, bursts through the Blue Ridge.
  • "Obituary. Sudden Death of Gen. S. A. Meredith". Buffalo Courier. December 28, 1874. p. 2, col. 2.