Since 1898, two Civil War cannons have sat silently in Diamond Park, where the casual passer-by is unaware of Alfred G. Reed, a Civil War solider whose name is inscribed on their carriages.

Born in 1839 to George W. Reed, a saddle maker and major in Butler’s local militia regiment, Alfred was studying law with local attorney John Purviance when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

Several days later, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put an end to the South’s rebellion. Reed responded by enlisting for 90 days with the 13th Pa. Volunteers Infantry.

Just days before traveling by steamboat that October with his new regiment, the 78th Pa. Volunteers, for the western theater, now Sgt. Reed was married to Mary Miller in her parents’ home in Millvale.

His new wife remained with her parents and welcomed her husband’s return the following September for the birth of their son, Alfred H. Reed, who would never know his father. Only a few weeks later, Reed would transfer as a first lieutenant into the 134th Pa. Volunteer Infantry.

On Dec. 13, 1862, Reed’s new regiment would be part of the last six disastrous charges against a 600-foot section of a chest-high stone wall occupied by the Confederates at the base of Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Va.

Nearly 8,000 men from these assaults would be killed or wounded by the time the sun finished its descent over the frigid horizon.

Their colonel, Matthew Stanley Quay, suffered from the aftermath of typhoid fever, allowing him to return home, when word came that the 134th would go into battle.

He convinced his commander, Brig, Gen. Erastus B. Tyler, to allow him to lead his regiment by saying, “I would rather die in battle and be called a fool than to go home and be called a coward.” This decision would change the future for both Col. Quay and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

As Quay, Reed and the entire 134th made their fateful march with bayonets fixed and rifle barrels empty toward the stone wall, they came upon a decimated regiment from the previous assault.

This regiment was lying shielded from the incoming firestorm in a little depression of land that ran across the battlefield. Grabbing the pants legs of Quay’s men to keep them from marching foward, they begged the men of the 134th to go back. Quay ordered his troops, “March over them; tramp them down.”

Quay, who would receive the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1888 for his actions that day, led them on horseback to within 30 yards of that stone wall. Many of the brave soldiers of the 134th were mowed down like blades of grass. More than half the men were killed or wounded in this suicidal, final assault.

Reed was shot through the hip and lay mortally wounded on the frozen Fredericksburg soil. He along with most of the other dead and wounded was left on the battlefield behind Confederate lines after the Army of the Potomac Commander Gen. Ambrose Burnsides ordered Union troops to retreat to the north side of the Rappahannock River.

When Quay heard of Reed’s fate, he secured a detail of men and recrossed the river under the cover of darkness and rescued Reed, transported him and other wounded to a hospital in Washington, D.C., where his life might be saved. After receiving word of his brother’s wounding, Nelson P. Reed traveled to Washington.

Their time together would be short. Most likely a fatal infection from the gunshot would or pneumonia was soon to be another battle older brother Alfred could not win. As he lay dying, Alfred called Nelson to his bedside, and with just a few moments left in his young life, he made his brother promise “to be a friend to Col. Quay for the rest of his life.”

Alfred G. Reed died far from the Western Pennsylvania hills in his Washington Hospital bed on Dec. 27, 1862. Nelson brought his body back to Butler, and the Reed family buried him in Butler’s North Cemetery at the top of North Main Street.

Nelson Reed went back to Pittsburgh, where be eventually became chief owner of the Pittsburgh Commercial-Gazette, a forerunner of what we now know as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Keeping his pledge of friendship to Col. Matthew Stanley Quay, he used the power of his newspaper to help Quay become a two-term governor of Pennsylvania. When Nelson Reed died in 1891, he was worth more than $1 million and was mourned by his friend.

Mary Reed never remarried. She raised their son in her parents’ home in Millvale on the $17 per month widow’s pension, plus an extra $2 per month for young Alfred.

Alfred H. Reed grew up very close to his uncle, and after Nelson’s death succeeded him as editor and publisher of the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette. he died in 1932.

Butler’s Civil War veterans’ organization, a local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), was named for Alfred G. Reed.

The iron sentinels, two model 1845 seacoast fortification cannons, were requisitioned after the Civil War by the GAR and placed across from the county courthouse in the hope that those who pass might listen to the echoes from our nation’s greatest conflict — one that continues to shape our nation today.

Bill May will present Alfred G. Reed’s story and others in a free 45-minute slide show and talk, “Faces and Places of Butler in the Civil War,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Butler YWCA, 120 W. Cunningham St. May is an area high school teacher and founder of the Butler County Civil War Roundtable. May also has received national recognition for “A Visit from a Civil War Solider,” a portrayal of his great-grandfather, Christian Hinchberger, who served in Company H, 78th Regiment. He was the last commander of the Alfred G. Reed Post of the Grand Army of the Republic.