The Chairman, on introducing the Colonel said it would not be out of place here to give a brief sketch of his career. He is the youngest man now living who served in the Mexican War. In the War of the Rebellion he was one of the only two commissioned officers who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in the first general battle of the war, Bull Run, where 50,000 men were engaged on each side. The other officer was Major-General Adalbert Ames, of the 5th U. S. Artillery, now living at Lowell, Mass. He was one of the only two regimental staff officers of the same rank who won this distinction during the war. The other officer was first Lieutenant John W. Clark, R.Q.M., 6th Regiment Vermont Infantry. Our medal of Honor ranks with that of the cross of the Legion of Honor of France, and the Victoria Cross of England, and only 1,400 were awarded a distinction greater than can be conferred by any potentate in Europe, because granted to so few of the two million seven hundred and fifty thousand men who were mustered into the armies of the United States between 1861-65. Colonel Murphy, after resigning from his regiment, and while awaiting his commission in the regular army, which appointment was tendered him by President Lincoln, was engaged in the battle of Fair Oaks, and all through the seven days’ battles on the peninsula, from Gaine’s Mill to that of Malvern Hill, as a volunteer aid, and this without rank or pay. He erected the first field hospital for the army of the Potomac at Harrison’s Landing. Colonel Murphy was one of the first three officers who escaped from Richmond after Bull Run. The history of this remarkable escape was very graphically described by John S. C. Abbot, the historian, in “Harper’s Magazine” of January, 1867. Colonel Murphy was one of the old forty-niners of California, having arrived in San Francisco on the ship South Carolina in June, 1849, the first sailing ship to arrive with passengers for the mines from New York, after a short passage--for those days--of 156 days. Of the 300 passengers on board, the only lady was Mrs. John White, the mother of the late U.S. Senator White now living in San Francisco, who wrote two years ago that she was not aware of any living survivors of those passengers except herself and Colonel Murphy, who were the two youngest people on the ship. He went from California to Shanghai, China, and established the first commercial house at the mouth of the Yang Kin Pang River, opposite the foreign quarter at Shanghai, and loaded the first vessel that carried Chinese agricultural products to San Francisco. Colonel Murphy has done more than any other man in the way of introducing the products of California in Europe, and secured the first gold medal for the grand wines of that State at the Antwerp Exposition.