I left the army at Rappahannock Station, having been appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 56th Massachusetts Volunteers. This was one of four new regiments, the 56th, 57th, 58th, and 59th. The idea was to have them largely composed of veterans who had recovered from wounds or sickness. I came home and set about the work of recruiting my regiment. I was appointed superintendent of recruiting for several counties in Massachusetts. We finally started for the war, for Annapolis, in March, 1864, most of the winter being spent in Readville recruiting the regiment and getting it into shape for service. Camp life at Readville had many pleasant features. We had a splendid regiment and a very fine band, led by Martland, who for some time had led the band at Brockton, Massachusetts. The band was so well known in the army that it was selected to go to Gettysburg when Lincoln made his celebrated speech and dedicated the monument there.
My life while recruiting had many pleasant and many disagreeable incidents. I had a chance to go to parties and see the young ladies, dance, etc., but the difficulty of getting recruits and drilling them, and the constant disciplining the new men, was very wearing, and I was only too thankful when we finally got off and I started for the front. As I have said, we had a splendid band, and I used to enjoy them very much. We had for adjutant a fellow named Lipp, a very brave fellow, but excitable, and, being a foreigner, not understanding very well how to get along with our men. I had Horatio D. Jarves, my classmate, for major, and afterwards for lieutenant colonel. He always did well, but having lost his foot in the early part of the War, he was disabled a good deal of the time and could not always be present. I started out with my classmate, Charles J. Alills, as adjutant, but we lost him soon, as he was detailed on staff duty and was killed in the last battle of the War, before Petersburg, while on General Humphreys’s staff. He was a brave and charming fellow and a delightful companion. His mother gave me his ring, which I still have,— an antique representing a lion tearing a hare. Colonel Griswold, my colonel, had been in the 22d Massachusetts; he suffered from a chronic trouble, which compelled him to resign from there. He used to be with me in the cadets. He was a brave man and a good officer. Captain Hollis, Captain Cartwright, Lieutenant Mitchell, Lieutenant Cadwell, and a great many others were fine officers and good men. Captain Duncan Lamb was also a good officer of the regiment, a brother of William E. Lamb of ’59. Major Putnam was also a fine officer. He was mortally wounded at Cold Harbor. Some of the incidents of recruiting were quite amusing. A letter sent in by the mother of a recruit is reproduced on the opposite page.
