(Major 2d Artillery.)
Mustering-in Officer for the Regiment.
]
Contrary to the prevailing rule, Monday, the 9th of May, proved to be a
sunny and pleasant day. Early in the morning, the regiment was formed in
its battery streets, in readiness for its entry into the volunteer army.
Promptly at eight o'clock, Major Carle A. Woodruff, Second United States
Artillery, commanding the post, and with it the other defenses of Boston
Harbor, took his station before regimental headquarters, in readiness
for the ceremony. The regiment felt itself honored by his detail as its
mustering-officer: a typical American soldier, he had received the
brevets of captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel for gallant and
meritorious services at Gettysburg, at Trevillian Station, and during
the Civil War as a whole, while he also had been decorated with the
medal of honor for distinguished gallantry in action at Newby's Cross
Roads. He had been closely identified with the regiment since its change
from the infantry to the artillery arm, and its officers held him in the
warmest esteem.
It had been arranged that the batteries should be mustered in the order
of the seniority of their captains, and thus the first command to march
across the parade was "M" under veteran Captain Braley, who was
responding for the second time to the call of his country in time of
war. His appearance before the mustering officer was the signal for a
round of applause from the group of staff officers gathered at
headquarters. In a very few minutes both he and his command had ceased
to be militiamen, and had become United States Volunteers—to be followed
rapidly by the other eleven batteries of the regiment. As a matter of
record, it was exactly 9.34 A.M. when Colonel Woodruff finished
administering the oath to the field, staff, and non-commissioned staff
officers, thus completing the muster of the regiment. Everything had
moved with the regularity of clock-work, and in but little over an hour
and a half more than seven hundred and fifty officers and men had
answered to their names as called from the muster-rolls, and had sworn
to serve the United States faithfully and well for the two years to
come.
In this connection the statement made in the newspaper history of the
Second Massachusetts Infantry must be corrected. It is but a minor
point, of course, yet soldiers are wont to be jealously tenacious on
minor points affecting their own records. "This regiment," writes the
historian of the Second, "was the first to be mustered into the service
of the United States, the first to leave Massachusetts, the first to
invade Cuba—the first of our regiments to enter the actualities of war."
As a strict matter of record, the Second Infantry was mobilized at
Framingham on May 3rd, where it completed its muster-in (though "K"
Company had been mustered on May 8th) on May 10th. The First Artillery
entered the United States service as militia on April 26th, dating its
pay-rolls from that day, and had been mustered complete before 10
o'clock in the forenoon of May 9th. It was the first militia regiment in
the service; it became the first volunteer regiment in the service. In
contending for this recognition it certainly does not seek to rob the
Second of its hard-won laurels, for the First and Second, brigaded
together for long years, always have been firm friends, though strong
rivals. Chained in its posts along shore, the First yet watched with
interest and admiration the career of the men from western
Massachusetts, and in their trials and triumphs in far-away Cuba their
hearts would have warmed could they have heard the verdict of their
brethren of the First—"Well done, Second Massachusetts!"