OF THE FIFTH MASSACHUSETTS BATTERY. ORGANIZED OCTOBER 3, 1861, MUSTERED OUT JUNE 12, 1865. 5TH BOSTON : LUTHER E. COWLES, PUBLISHER, 60 FEDERAL STREET. PREFACE. In submitting these pages to the general public, made doubly and more profoundly critical by new opportunities for observation, furnished by the recent war with Spain, we are aware that our most appreciative readers will be found among the daily diminishing ranks of our comrades and their circle of friends whose memories reach back to the period of which it treats, — forty years ago. It is not without some feeling of complacence that we have reviewed these records of the endurance of hardships, which, in the inexperience of early youth, we accepted as the inevitable, and carelessly turned into jest as the easiest and quickest way of getting over the misfortunes of war, and we have closely followed the trials to which were submitted those innate impulses of courage inspired by patriotism, that found us all ready to mount at the call of" Boots and Saddles," and, harnessing our impatience to the wheels of the grumbling cannon and caissons, to seek the field wherever, whenever and howsoever we were directed. To our aid in this work we have called the sister of a soldier of the 18th Massachusetts Regiment Infantry, who has brought to her task that which is considered. indispensable in the historian of a distant period, "the familiarized knowledge of many years." Her impressions do not all come at second hand. product of memories transplanted from a living past, to assist in the selection of scenes in camp, on the march, They are the M181653 and in the field, and to present them in a form of ready reference for the use of its members and their descendants for all time, to bear witness to the labors, sacrifices and achievements of the 5th Massachusetts Battery, Light Artillery. NATHAN APPLETON, HENRY D. SCOTT, JOHN F. MURRAY, THOMAS E. CHASE, GEORGE L. NEWTON, Committee. The committee desire to acknowledge the receipt of historical data, loan of books, letters, diaries and other means of information necessary to the compilation, from the following persons: Massachusetts: Miss Katharine Phillips, Miss Jane Phillips, Mrs. Stephen H. Phillips, Brevet BrigadierGeneral Augustus P. Martin, Stephen F. Keyes, Judge Advocate, Department of Massachusetts, G. A. R., George H. Freeman, Quartermaster R. A. Peirce, Post G. A. R., Charles F. Shaw, R. C. Ingraham, Charles W. Coggeshall (Coggeshall, Maxfield & Co.), B. F. Brightman (Alaska Oil Co.), Isaac S. Mullen, Ward Room Steward U. S. ships Portsmouth and Chocura, Milo J. Proctor, 6th Massachusetts Infantry, Charles O. Eaton, Custodian of State Flags, Rev. George Batchelor, Wm. G. Kirschbaum, New Bedford Standard. Maine: Brevet Major-General Joshua L. Chamberlain, Brevet Major Henry S. Burrage, Major Holman S. Melcher, 20th Maine Regiment Association, Captain Harvey H. Webber. New York: Brevet Colonel Horatio C. King, Hugh Hastings, State Historian, Frank H. Norton, Edmund |