I have spoken in the last chapter of being intimate with Commodore
John Marston and family during a winter I spent in Philadelphia.
There was another Commodore whom I knew there. I lived four months
next door to Commodore James Barron, who in 1820 killed Commodore
Stephen Decatur in a duel. Before the war of 1812 Barron was in
command of the Ship Chesapeake, from which, under a claimed right of
search, a British frigate had taken several sailors, alleged to be
British. For his conduct in that affair he was tried and sentenced
to five years’ suspension without pay. After the war he returned
from Europe where he had lived some time, and his application for
employment in the navy was opposed by Decatur on the ground that
he had been disloyal to his country in not returning to fight her
battles. A challenge followed, and a duel was fought on the historic
field of Bladensburg. Both fired together, Decatur receiving a mortal
wound in the breast, and Barron a wound in the thigh which he thought
was also mortal. As they lay on the ground bleeding, the scene was a
pathetic one. Barron said, “I hope, Decatur, when we meet in heaven
that we shall be better friends than we have been here.” Decatur
answered, “I have not been your enemy, but tell me, Barron, why
you did not come home and fight for your country.” Barron replied,
“I had been living many years in Europe, and had contracted debts
which I could not run away and leave unpaid.” “Ah,” said Decatur,
“If I had known that, we should not be lying here awaiting death.”
Barron recovered, and was again employed in the service. His life
was saddened by the event, but he never alluded to the melancholy
scenes attending it. “If I had known that,” said Decatur! Alas, how
many duels might have been averted if the parties had come together
and heard in a personal interview reasons and explanations. Yes, and
in the broader field of national honor if nations had sent their
representatives to discuss dispassionately their complaints and
differences, how many thousands of lives might have been saved and
how many millions of treasure.
After returning from a visit to the Massachusetts troops at the front
I was kept busy during the summer of 1861, enlisting men in Plymouth,
and Kingston and other neighboring towns. I was several times in
Washington on business in the war and navy departments. Simon Cameron
was secretary of war from the 4th of March, 1861, until January,
1862, when he was succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton. I have nothing of
interest to say concerning the former, but later I shall tell a story
of my interview with the latter in October, 1862. The secretary of
the Navy was Gideon Welles of Connecticut, but Gustavus Vasa Fox, the
assistant secretary, was really the right hand of the department.
Mr. Fox I had known for many years, my acquaintance beginning when
a midshipman he came, I think in 1838, to Plymouth in the practice
brig Apprentice, commanded by Lieut. Moore, and anchoring in beach
channel, remained over a Sunday and attended church. He was a
remarkable man, thought by some to be the strongest man connected
with the administration during the war. He was born in Saugus,
Massachusetts, June 13, 1821, and was appointed midshipman January
12, 1838. In 1856 he resigned with the rank of first lieutenant, and
was appointed agent of the Bay State Mills in Lawrence. In March,
1861, he was sent by President Lincoln to Charleston to confer with
Major Anderson about sending him aid at Fort Sumter, and was soon
appointed assistant secretary of the Navy. To him was due the plan
for the capture of New Orleans, and the selection of Farragut for
the command in which he distinguished himself. His sound judgment
and earnest advice led to the construction of the Monitor, and he
established and perfected the blockade. After the war he was assigned
to the duty of carrying the ram Miantonomah to the Baltic, which had
been sold to the Russian government, and he was at the same time
made a bearer of despatches conveying the congratulations of our
government to Emperor Alexander 2nd, on his escape from assassination
on the 16th of April, 1866. The Miantonomah was the first iron-clad
to cross the ocean, and Capt. Fox reported her a comfortable craft,
which instead of pitching and rolling in heavy weather, took the
seas across her deck, and remained comparatively on an even keel. On
his return home he was appointed manager of the Middlesex Mills in
Lowell, and died in New York, October 29, 1883. In my communications
with him, concerning appointments in the service, I never failed to
receive a favorable response. I was the more careful therefore in
making requests. In one instance I recommended a man for ensign, and
hearing something soon after leading me to doubt his competency. I
immediately wrote to Mr. Fox withdrawing my recommendation, and the
applicant now dead, failed to receive an appointment. Sometimes at
a later period of the war I was often asked to intercede in behalf
of some soldier for a furlough. I remember the case of an officer,
now dead, who was quite successful in obtaining furloughs on his own
account, and who was in the habit while at home of criticising the
conduct of the war. On one of his visits an old lady said, “lah, that
—— is home again—this is the curiousest war that ever I see, if they
don’t like the percedings they come home.” In quoting the quaint
remark of the old lady I do not intend to suggest any doubt of the
fidelity of a brave and efficient officer who probably had good and
sufficient reasons for his furloughs.
The Standish Guards returned home after their three months’ service,
on the 23d of July, and were received at the railroad station by
the Home Guard, and in the evening at a festival in Davis hall.
The officers of the company chosen after their arrival at Fortress
Monroe, were Charles C. Doten, captain, and Otis Rogers and Wm. B.
Alexander first and 2nd lieutenants, respectively. Lemuel Bradford,
2nd, who went out with the company as 4th lieutenant, was not
permitted to be mustered, as only two lieutenants were allowed to
each company. I have always understood that four lieutenants were
mustered in the companies of the 5th, 6th, and 8th Massachusetts
Regiments in and about Washington, where for some unknown reason a
different rule prevailed.
In August, 1861, a second three years’ company was recruited by
Capt. Joseph W. Collingwood to be attached as Co. H. to the 18th
Massachusetts Regiment. All the men of this company were enlisted in
the recruiting office established by the Plymouth Selectmen. Thirteen
Plymouth men were enlisted in Co. H, and eight in other companies of
the 18th Regiment. The Regiment was mustered into service August 24,
and on the 26th left Readville, where they had been in camp, for
Washington, joining the army of the Potomac at Hall’s Hill near that
city.
In September, 1861, Capt. Wm. B. Alexander was authorized to raise a
company to be attached as Co. E to the 23d Regiment, and ninety-seven
men were enlisted at the Plymouth office, of whom sixty were Plymouth
men. This company, with Wm. B. Alexander, Capt., and Otis Rogers,
and Thomas B. Atwood, respectively, first and second lieutenants,
went into camp at Lynfield, and November 11 left for Annapolis. Three
other Plymouth men later joined Co. E as recruits, and three Plymouth
men joined other companies in the 23d regiment.
In December, 1861, Lieutenant Josiah C. Fuller aided in recruiting
Company E for the first Battalion of Massachusetts, which was finally
recognized as the 32d Regiment, and twenty men were enlisted in
Plymouth. Twenty more were enlisted for Company F, and four more for
other companies in the same regiment, and three recruits were added
later to Company E. This regiment was organized for garrison duty at
Fort Warren in Boston harbor with Josiah C. Fuller, Capt. of Company
E, and Edward F. Phinney second lieutenant of Company F, and May 20,
1862, left for Washington.
On the 7th of July, 1862, an order was issued at headquarters,
stating that Massachusetts had been called on for fifteen thousand
men, of which number Plymouth was required to furnish sixty. The
Governor asked me to raise two companies to be designated as
Companies D and G in the 38th Regiment, and to select officers for
them. I first enlisted men for Company D, and soon filled its ranks
with thirty men from Plymouth, and the remainder from neighboring
towns. I first recommended Chas. H. Drew for captain, Cephas Washburn
and Albert Mason, first and second lieutenants, respectively. Charles
H. Drew was then first lieutenant in Company H, 18th Regiment,
and the war department refused to muster him out to enable him to
receive his commission. I then filled, the ranks of Company G with
thirty-one from Plymouth, and the remainder from neighboring towns,
and recommended Charles C. Doten for captain and George B. Russell,
second lieutenant. The town’s quota was completed by one enlistment
for the 13th Regiment, one for the 20th and one for the 35th. The
38th Regiment went into camp at Lynfield, and September 24, 1862,
left for Baltimore, where it went into camp near the city and left
November 9th in the steamer Baltic for Ship island. I went with the
Plymouth companies to Lynfield and spent a week with them under
canvas to aid in making requisitions for equipments, and looking
generally after the comfort of the men. My classmate, Wm. Logan
Rodman of New Bedford, was commissioned Major of the Regiment,
and later before it left, lieutenant colonel. When the commission
as lieutenant colonel was offered to him he asked my advice about
accepting it, as he knew nothing about military matters, but he was
finally commissioned, and in the absence of Col. Ingraham, went to
Baltimore in command of the regiment. Poor fellow, he was killed at
the siege of Port Hudson in May, 1863. He was lying down with his
command behind logs, and lifting his head was instantly killed by a
rebel sharpshooter. During my stay at the Lynfield Camp, I for the
first time was christened with a high military title. Patrick Maguire
of Company D was found one night outside the camp somewhat under the
influence of liquor, and carried to the guard house. When asked what
regiment he belonged to he said, “by gorrah, I don’t belong to no
regiment at all, I belong to Davis’s brigade.”
In August, 1862, a call was made for 300,000 nine months’ men, of
which the quota of Plymouth was thirty-seven. Every organized militia
company in the 3d Regiment was authorized to recruit up to the
standard, but as it would be impossible to fill the Standish Guards
and the Carver and Plympton companies, it was agreed that the three
companies should recruit together as Company B, the letter of the
Standish Guards, under a Carver Captain, and with a first lieutenant
from the Guards, and a second lieutenant from the Plympton company.
Under this arrangement Thos. B. Griffith was made captain; Charles
A. S. Perkins of Plymouth, first lieutenant, and Wm. S. Briggs of
Middleboro, second lieutenant. Thirty men enlisted in Plymouth,
including John Morissey, who was appointed Major. The regiment went
into camp at Lakeville, and October 22, 1862, sailed from Boston in
the steamships Merrimac and Mississippi for Newbern, North Carolina.
Twelve other nine months’ men were enlisted in Plymouth for the 4th,
6th, 44th, 45th and 50th Regiments. Thirty-five of the nine months’
men received a bounty of one hundred dollars in accordance with a
vote of the town.
After the defeat of General Pope by General Lee at the second Bull
Run, the rebel army crossed the Potomac at Noland’s ford, and
reached Frederick in Maryland on the 6th of September, 1862. In the
meantime General McClellan had been restored to the command of the
army of the Potomac, and crossing the Potomac in pursuit of Lee,
entered Frederick on the 12th, two days after its evacuation by the
rebel army. On the 13th the union army passed through Frederick
and overtook the rebel army at South mountain, where they fought
a victorious battle on the 14th. The pursuit was kept up through
Boonesboro and Keedysville, until Antietam river was reached, where
the rebel army was strongly entrenched. Without intending to write a
history of the battle, I think I can say as a result of my frequent
studies of the conflict, that the Massachusetts troops acquitted
themselves with special bravery. The battle was won, but while
Burnside on the left was fighting desperately to hold a position,
the loss of which would have involved the defeat of the army, and
was calling on McClellan for aid, the 18th corps, under Fitz John
Porter, to which the 18th and 32d Massachusetts belonged, was held
fifteen thousand strong in reserve, and had no share in the battle.
With the light we now have it is easy to see that if the reserves
had been put in at the critical moment, as they were put in by
Wellington at Waterloo, when he shut his field glass with a snap and
gave the order, “Up guards, and at them,” the rebel army would have
been destroyed before it recrossed the Potomac. The only excuse for
McClellan was his belief that the battle was only suspended, not
terminated, when night set in, and that on the morrow the army with
fresh troops would win.
In the two battles, of South Mountain on the 14th of September, and
Antietam on the 17th, the Massachusetts regiments suffered severely.
In the first the 12th, 13th, 21st and 28th regiments, and the 1st
and 8th batteries were engaged, and in the last the 2nd, 12th, 13th,
15th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 28th, 29th and 35th regiments, and two
batteries. The 12th had seventy-four killed and 165 wounded, the 15th
had 108 killed, and the 29th, 9 killed and 31 wounded, while the
others suffered in various degrees between the highest and lowest as
above. The most severely wounded were carried to hospitals on the
field, and to temporary hospitals in Sharpsburgh and Frederick, while
those less severely wounded were carried to Washington, Baltimore and
Philadelphia, and some sent to their homes. Governor Andrew asked
me to go out and visit the Massachusetts men, wherever they might
be found in the hospitals. They needed no supplies, for they were
abundantly furnished by the commissariat and the sanitary commission
with everything from bedding and underclothing to wines and canned
fruits and preserves. But there was something which neither of these
agencies could supply, something to remove the depression of spirits
which a sick man feels away from home, and which is the greatest
obstacle to recovery. I have often seen the pallid cheeks of a
soldier furrowed with pain, light up with a smile as he opened his
eyes and found standing by his bedside a messenger from home.
Reaching Baltimore at night, I met at the hotel Dr. LeBarron Russell,
and the next morning we went together by rail to Frederick, where
we passed the night. Every available public building, including
churches, had been converted into a hospital, and in one of these
I remember finding Barnabas Dunham of Plymouth, a member of the
29th Regiment. In one of the church hospitals, I found Dr. Theodore
Cornish in charge, brother of the late Aaron H. Cornish of Plymouth,
who I think was either surgeon or assistant surgeon in a Rhode
Island regiment. He gave us much information about the condition
of the wounded in Frederick, and their dispersion to other places.
About five years ago I met him on the steamboat coming to Plymouth,
never having seen him since our interview in Frederick, and called
him by name. He failed to recognize me until I reminded him of my
encountering him in the hospital dressing the wound of a soldier
who had been operated on by an excision of a section of the humerus
to avoid amputation. The next morning we hired a conveyance to
Boonesboro, a small village, through whose streets both armies
had passed from South Mountain gap, where the battle of September
14th had been fought. The shattered trees and levelled fences and
trodden down fields told their story of the conflict. We passed the
night at Boonesboro, finding no Massachusetts wounded there. I was
amused at a custom prevailing in that neighborhood disclosed to me
by the landlady, when to a mild complaint of sleeping on a blanket,
she answered that nobody thought of putting more than one sheet on
the bed. The next morning we rode on to Keedysville, a straggling
village of five hundred inhabitants, where nearly all the houses
contained wounded men. There was a provost marshal stationed there,
and going to his office we were surprised to find him to be Capt.
Joseph W. Collingwood. His company was attached to Fitz John Porter’s
Corps, held in reserve, and consequently had not been in the battle.
Taking Capt. Collingwood into our carriage we drove to the Locust
Spring hospital, containing under canvas about two hundred and fifty
severely wounded men. Here Charles Henry Robbins, son of Hernan C.
Robbins of Plymouth, died from a wound received in the battle. I
saw his nurse, a fine woman from Chicago, named Mary Everingham,
who expressed great interest in him, and I visited his grave in a
pleasant field marked with a head and foot stone by a soldier named
Keith of North Bridgewater, from which I took a stone to carry to
his mother. Mr. Robbins belonged to Company H, 35th regiment, and
enlisted in Weymouth. The next field tent hospital which we visited
was at Smoketown, less than a mile from the extreme right of the
Union line of battle, where hard fighting was done under Hooker in
the early part of the day. This hospital contained about four hundred
and fifty patients, under the charge of Dr. Vanderkeefe, a Hollander,
who had served in the Crimea. His hospital was a model in care,
cleanliness, distribution of comforts, and surgical skill. The work
done by the sanitary commission was wonderful. At the first sign of
a battle it despatched many wagons loads of sheets, coverlids, beds,
towels, handkerchiefs, preserved meats, stockings, drawers, shirts,
bandages, wines, etc., which reached the vicinity of the battle field
before a gun was fired, and was ready for work when the wounded were
carried to the rear. From this point we rode over the whole battle
field, four miles in length, from Hooker’s cornfield to Burnside’s
bridge, by the sunken road and the Dunker church, still littered with
the debris of battle, and reached Sharpsburg late in the afternoon,
on our way visiting Porter’s camp, and calling on Captains Charles
H. Drew and Wm. H. Winsor of the 18th Massachusetts regiment. Late
in the evening we reached Harper’s Ferry, where after a supper of
ham and eggs we found sleeping quarters in an attic room, lighted
and ventilated by a broken glass scuttle, and equipped with a bed
with broken slats, leaving us to sleep on the floor, with our heads
and feet on the rails of the bedstead. The next morning we went out
to Boliver Heights, and visited the camps of the 15th, 19th, 20th
and 29th Massachusetts regiments, the last having returned the night
before from an expedition to Charlestown, and in the evening went by
rail to Washington.
During my stay in Washington I visited all the hospitals, beginning
with Lincoln Hospital. While passing through one of the wards I
heard my name called by an occupant of one of the beds. Responding
to the call I found a young man whom I had enlisted in Plymouth a
few months before as a recruit for Col. Lee’s 20th Regiment. His
name was Erik Wolff, a Swede of good education, who came to America
to learn to become a soldier, and thought that promotion would be
sure and speedy. His father, a merchant in Gottenburg, had had some
years before business relations with Capt. John Russell, and having
letters of introduction to Capt. Russell’s family he came at once to
Plymouth on his arrival. He was now very sick with typhoid fever, and
in his anxiety to be discharged, was so depressed in spirits that
the surgeon said his recovery was hopeless, unless his discharge was
secured. Col. Lee’s efforts had been unavailing, as at that time
every application of the kind was rejected by the department. I told
him that I would see what I could do, and jumping into a horse car,
rode at once to the war department, reaching there before the office
of the secretary was open. A long line of men and women stretched
down the hall, all with anxious faces, evidently waiting to ask some
favor of the secretary. When the door was opened the line shortened
up so rapidly that I felt sure that short work was made of the
applications. When I reached the door Mr. Stanton was standing at a
small standing desk, and turning off the applicants right and left.
I had never seen him before, and had no reason to believe that he
had ever seen or heard of me. When my turn came I told him my story
in as few words as possible, that I enlisted Wolff, that he was a
foreigner, on whose service we had no claim, and was in the Lincoln
hospital. Not a word was spoken by the secretary, not a single
question asked, but as soon as I finished he touched a hand bell,
to which an officer responded, and the secretary said, “Mr. Davis,
if you will follow Major Hardee, he will make out the discharge.”
Within two hours from the time I left the hospital I returned with
the discharge to gladden the young fellow’s heart. He recovered
after a protracted confinement, and returned to Massachusetts,
receiving later from Governor Andrew a captain’s commission in the
5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment. On my way home I visited the
hospitals in Baltimore and West Philadelphia, carrying with me a
realizing sense of the terrible incidents of war. I have told the
story of my interview with Secretary Stanton to show the injustice of
the charge that he was destitute of sympathy for the soldiers whom he
used merely as a part of the machinery of war.
Proceeding in my narrative in chronological order, in the winter
of 1862 and 1863, strenuous, but unavailing efforts were made by
Governor Andrew to have the exposed harbors of the state properly
protected. Finally it was determined to construct earthworks on the
Gurnet and Saquish, and the work was entered upon at once under the
direction of the Selectmen at the expense of the Commonwealth. I
obtained from Mr. Fox, assistant secretary of the Navy, an order on
Commodore Hudson in command at the Charlestown Navy Yard for seven
guns for Fort Andrew, and five for Fort Standish, and had carriages
made in Plymouth. These forts were completed in the early summer
of 1863, and Governor Andrew was advised by the selectmen of their
intention to name that on the Gurnet, Fort Andrew, and that on the
Saquish, Fort Sandish. On the 16th of March I received from the
Governor the following letter:
Dear Sir.—No fort as yet bears the name which your board of selectmen
has so generously proposed for the larger fort now in progress in
Plymouth harbor, nor had any ambition of my own ever suggested to my
mind the possibility of becoming in that manner associated with such
a work. I am deeply sensible of the honor; and while I feel that
it does not properly belong to me, I can only leave to you and your
associates the final decision, with a single suggestion that it would
seem to be more fitting the occasion to connect the name of the first
Governor of the Plymouth Colony with one of the fortifications of
the harbor of Plymouth than the name you propose, even if I were a
hundred times more worthy than I know myself to be.”
Notwithstanding Governor Andrew’s modest estimate of his public
services, the fort received his name.
In 1862 I became quite intimate with Capt. James Birdseye McPherson
of the United States Engineers. He was undoubtedly one of the ablest
officers in the army, and his early death closed a career of great
brilliancy. It was widely believed in the army up to the time of his
death, that if Grant had died or resigned, he would have been his
successor. During several years of the war I was obliged to spend
much time in Boston, and while there I made the Tremont House my
home. There were five or six regular bachelor boarders who occupied a
table by themselves, one of whom was Capt. McPherson. He was born in
Sandusky, Ohio, November 14, 1828, and graduated at West Point first
scholar in the class of 1853. He rose rapidly, and while serving as
an engineer in California, he became acquainted with General Halleck.
When the war came on, having been promoted to a captaincy he was sent
to Boston to mount guns on Fort Warren, and it was at that time that
he boarded at the Tremont House, and at the table where he sat I was
always when in town offered a chair. No one could meet and talk with
him without being struck with his clear eye, his thoughtful face and
thoroughly trustworthy deportment. One afternoon while I was at the
Hotel, Captain Paraclete Holmes of Kingston, boarding there took up
the _Transcript_ and read aloud a news paragraph stating that Capt.
McPherson had been ordered west to join the staff of General Halleck.
When the Captain came in he was shown the despatch, and said that he
knew nothing about it. When, however, he received his evening mail,
his orders reached him. As he was ordered to report at once, we
arranged a parting supper for the next evening, for which I remember,
by the way, I ordered a gallon of oysters, which had been bedded on
the Plymouth flats by S. D. Ballard, and which were pronounced by
the supper party as the best they had ever tasted. When I bade the
Captain good bye he said, “I shall have an opportunity now to see
whether I have mistaken my profession.” The sequel demonstrated that
he had not. He was soon promoted to be Major General of volunteers,
and transferred to the staff of General Grant as Chief Engineer,
serving with him at the battles of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh,
Corinth and Iuka. He later commanded the right wing of Grant’s army,
and at the siege of Vicksburg commanded the 17th Army Corps. After
Grant assumed command of the army of the Potomac, he joined Sherman,
under whom he was in command of 30,000 men. At the siege of Atlanta
he was killed, July 22, 1864, at the age of thirty-five.
I was again in Washington visiting the hospitals after the battle of
Fredericksburg, on the 13th of December, 1862, and after the death
of Capt. Collingwood on the 24th, I sent a despatch to Andrew L.
Russell, who informed his family and friends. I was on a visit to
the College hospital in Georgetown, when Capt. Charles H. Drew was
brought in severely wounded in the Fredericksburg battle. It fell
to me while in Washington, during the battles of the Wilderness, to
send a despatch to Mr. Russell, informing him of the death of Lemuel
B. Morton, killed at the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 12,
1864.
On the 17th of July, 1863, as the result of a draft, one Plymouth
man commuted, thirteen found substitutes, and three entered the
service. In the autumn of 1863, under a call for 500,000 men, the
quota of Plymouth was fixed at one hundred and seventeen. After the
selectmen reported that the quota had been filled they were notified
that in consequence of a delay in crediting enlistments for the army
and navy, there existed a deficiency of twenty-five men, which must
be filled by a draft. One man was held under the draft who found a
substitute, and before another draft was ordered the selectmen had
filled the quota by the purchase of recruits in Boston. A vote had
been passed by the town offering to recruits a bounty of $125, and a
committee of citizens were appointed to raise such funds to increase
the bounty to such an amount as the selectmen might think advisable.
The committee raised the sum of $3,776.25, and with this sum and the
bounty, voted by the town, the selectmen secured twenty-two recruits
for the army and four for the navy. Another call for 500,000 men
was made July, 1864, and with money raised by the above committee
to wit, $5,011.00, the selectmen obtained twenty-six recruits, who
with the credit for the men in the navy heretofore withheld, and one
representative recruit purchased by a citizen, filled the quota of
the town.
On the 19th of November, 1864, seven Plymouth men were mustered into
the 20th unattached company, stationed at Marblehead for one year’s
service, and on the 11th of December, forty-two more were mustered
into the 26th unattached company raised to garrison Forts Andrew
and Standish, but which finally was stationed at Readville, where
it remained until it was mustered out. Until a late period in the
war, the recruiting office in Plymouth was kept up by the selectmen,
and at various times ninety-eight were enlisted in Plymouth and
other places for the 1st, 7th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 18th,
20th, 24th, 28th, 30th, 34th, 41st, 55th, 58th, Massachusetts
Regiments, 1st, 4th, 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, 2nd Massachusetts
Heavy Artillery, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 12th Massachusetts Batteries, 2nd
Massachusetts Sharpshooters, 3rd Rhode Island Cavalry, 5th, 8th
New Hampshire Regiments, 3rd, 10th, 99th, New York Regiments, 10th
Pennsylvania Regiment, 8th Illinois Regiment, the Signal Corps,
President’s Guard, Veteran Reserve Corps and California Cavalry.
In addition to the above, six were recruited by the commission
appointed to recruit in rebel states, and credited to Plymouth, and
the following re-enlistments were also credited to the town—six in
Co. E, 29th Massachusetts Regiment, one each in companies C, E and H,
18th Regiment, twelve in Co. E, 23rd Regiment, eight in Co. E, 32nd
Regiment, five in Co. F, 32nd Regiment, four in other companies in
the 32nd Regiment, two in the 1st Cavalry, one in the 58th Regiment,
one in the Rhode Island Cavalry, one in the 17th Regiment, one in
the 30th Regiment, one in the Regular Army, and one in the Corps
D’Afrique. On the first day of February, 1866, all the above soldiers
enlisted and re-enlisted to the credit of the town had been mustered
out except Brevet Major Geo. B. Russell, Provost Marshal of the
District of Columbia, and Philander Freeman and Stephen M. Maybury
in the regular army. Before closing this record of the Plymouth
soldiers in the war it should be stated that on the 26th day of
May, 1862, a telegram was received by Governor Andrew from the war
department urging him to send at once all the militia force of the
state, as General Banks had been driven from the Shenandoah Valley,
and Washington was in danger. On the 27th in obedience to an order
from the Governor, Capt. Charles C. Doten reported in Boston with
the Standish Guards of fifty-seven men. Fear for the safety of the
Capital, however, was soon dissipated, and the company returned home
without being mustered into the service.
In order to complete the roll of men furnished by Plymouth for the
war, it only remains to say that the enlistments in the navy were
three acting lieutenants, six ensigns, ten masters, two acting
masters, seventeen mates, one assistant paymaster, three assistant
engineers, one sailmaker, and sixty-five seamen.
One of the most troublesome features of the service which the
selectmen were called on to perform, was that regulating to filling
the towns quotas with purchased men. There were private recruiting
offices in Boston, where men were furnished, and to a great extent
the recruits offering themselves were bounty jumpers as we called
them. Unless a sharp eye was kept on these recruits, and the bounty
withheld until they were examined by an army surgeon in Faneuil hall,
and receipts given for them by the Provost Marshal, stating age, date
of enlistment and Regiments for which they were enlisted, they would
take up with a higher bid, or steal away with the bounty and receive
another elsewhere. I landed all my men, but I knew of a number of
cases where unwary selectmen lost their bounty and their men. Many
recruits who failed in their efforts to evade service after they had
received their bounty, deserted their regiments and enlisted where
they could safely do so with another bounty.
The whole number of men furnished by Plymouth for the war was 653
soldiers and 111 naval officers and seamen, which number filled all
the quotas and left a surplus of 28 to the credit of the town. The
cost to the town for all purposes connected with the war was a little
more than $28,000, to which should be added $8,787.25 subscribed by
the citizens for bounties.