WHEN the 32d Regiment left Massachusetts in May, the war fever was raging, and it was supposed that it would be the work but of a few days to recruit the four companies required to complete the Regiment, and it was clearly understood that the first recruits were to be assigned to us. But being out of sight we were indeed out of mind, and the pressure of officers interested in constructing new regiments constantly delayed our claims to consideration.

In two months over three thousand volunteers had been accepted, of whom only one hundred (our Company G) had been assigned to us. The rendezvous for the Eastern part of the State was the camp at Lynnfield, which was placed under the command of Colonel Maggi, of the 33d. His own regiment occupied the chief part of the camp, and the only entrance to it was through his regimental guard. Both he and his Lieutenant Colonel, a young and handsome officer named Underwood, had a quick eye for a promising recruit, and as the constantly arriving volunteers passed within the lines, the best were drafted into the 33d, and the remainder were passed into the command of Major Wilde, whose camp was just beyond.

Dr. Edward A. Wilde, afterward Colonel of the 35th Massachusetts, and yet later Brigadier General of Volunteers, was commissioned, July 24th, 1862, to fill the then vacant majority in the 32d, and had been temporarily placed in charge of the unattached volunteers at Lynnfield, three hundred of whom had been roughly fashioned into companies, and were to be assigned to us.

Upon Colonel Parker’s return to Massachusetts, Governor Andrew gave to our matters his willing attention. Upon inspection of the three companies, the Colonel thought that he could do better than to take Colonel Maggi’s rejected recruits, and they were accordingly transferred to the 35th.

At the urgent request of the authorities of Newton, supported by the Honorable J. Wiley Edmands, a company raised entirely in that town was regimented in the 32d. A company from Charlestown was made the basis of Company I, and taking a lesson from Colonel Maggi, whose regiment happily was now filled, a third company was organized at the camp by selecting from the town quotas the choicest material, and passing over the remainder to the 35th. We were able to accomplish this by the active aid of our Major Wilde. If the Major had known that he was to be the first Colonel of the 35th, that regiment might perhaps have been benefited, but the 32d undoubtedly owed to his want of prophetic vision the fact that its 3d Battalion was composed of men in every respect equal to those of its First.

On the 2d of August the companies were detached from Major Wilde’s recruits and ordered to report to Colonel Parker, who at once moved them some eight hundred yards away, where they encamped in a charming spot, between the pond and the highway, until they should be provided with clothing, arms, and equipments.

The beauty and convenience of that camp has impressed its memory upon every soldier of the Battalion; but the proprietor of the land did not seem to be equally pleased with an arrangement to which very possibly his previous consent was not obtained; but if he expected to drive us away by removing the rope and bucket from the well near by, he was sadly disappointed. He presented to the Colonel a huge bill for the use of the premises, and for damages caused by the cutting down of a sapling elm, and the removal of a rod or two of stone wall. If he never collected it he should have been comforted by the fact that we never charged him for the construction of two good wells on the ground, and the stones of his fence may yet be found in the walls of those wells.

On the 6th Colonel Parker left to rejoin the regiment, leaving the Battalion to follow under Major Wilde, but the Major was promoted to the 35th, and it was not until the 20th that the three companies, commanded by the senior Captain (Moulton), left Lynnfield by railroad to Somerville, thence marching to Charlestown, where a generous entertainment had been provided for them by the citizens. That evening they left by the Providence Railroad—the entire route through the cities of Charlestown and Boston being one ovation. At Stonington they took the steamer, landing the next morning at Jersey City, and taking a train for Philadelphia. Through that good city they marched to the Cooper Refreshment Rooms, and being well fed and otherwise refreshed, moved thence to the Baltimore Station. It was well into the next day before they arrived in that town of doubtful loyalty, and it was morning on the 22d when they landed in Washington, and took up quarters at the railroad barracks.

While the commanding officer was endeavoring to find somebody to give him orders, several hours of liberty were allowed to the men, few of whom had ever seen Washington. It was not the quiet place that it had been when the right wing arrived there months before, but was again astir with signs of active war. The movement to effect a junction between the armies of Generals McClellan and Pope was in progress, and long trains of wagons were moving between Alexandria and the various depots of supplies, and ambulances loaded with sick and wounded streamed to and from the hospitals, while on the walks, men in uniforms, some brand new and some ragged and dirty, jostled each other; new recruits from the North—garrison men from the forts—stragglers and convalescents from the armies in the field.

If at the word hospital there is presented to the mind’s eye of the reader a spacious structure in stone or brick, covered with a dome and expanding into wings, all embosomed in a park-like enclosure, with verdant lawns shaded by trees and mottled with shrubbery, that reader did not go to muster in Virginia in ‘62. Provision thought to be ample had been made in Washington, by the construction in several unoccupied squares, of rows of detached wooden sheds, each of which was the ward of a hospital. Rough and unattractive as these appeared set down among the dusty streets, upon a plot of land from which every green thing was trodden out, their interiors were in fact models of neatness, and in some sort, of comfort. But the battles of the Peninsula had soon filled these, and when there were added to them the sick from McClellan’s army and the invalids from Pope’s, every available building was taken, and finally when within ten days, eight thousand patients were added from the James River, vacant house-lots were occupied, and for want of tents, awnings of sails or boards were laid over rough frames, and the passer-by could see the patients stretched upon the straw. The happy result of this, and other enforced experiments, was to prove that even these wretched makeshifts were better than close-walled houses, for hospital purposes.

On the 23d the Battalion marched over Long Bridge to the town of Alexandria—preferring at night the outside of the building designated to shelter them. The next day tents and wagons were obtained, and on the 25th their first camp was made on the hillside, near the Seminary.

Everything in that neighborhood was in confusion. During the week that the command remained encamped, Franklin’s and Sumner’s corps arrived at Alexandria, and not only was the town crowded with soldiers, but the woods were full of them, and all the energies of the authorities were devoted to endeavors to supply them, and push them out to the rescue of General Pope’s army.

Considering that nobody, not even the General-in-chief, knew where Pope’s army was, it is not surprising that all the efforts made by officers to find our Regiment were fruitless; indeed it mattered little that they were, for the wagons were taken away for the pressing service of more experienced troops, who were unable to move for want of transportation.

At last, on the 3d of September, the locality of Porter’s Corps was ascertained, and the Battalion joined the rest of the Regiment. There was a striking contrast in the appearance of the old and new companies. The three new companies outnumbered all the other seven. The veterans looked with wonder upon the fresh northern faces and the bright new uniforms, while the recruits scanned with at least equal surprise the mud-stained, worn, and weary men who were to be their comrades. So long were the new platoons, that the detachment was christened “Moulton’s Brigade,” but the superiority of numbers was not long with them, and two weeks of campaigning amalgamated the command.

The three companies comprising our “3d Battalion” were—

Company H, recruited at the Lynnfield Camp, commanded by Captain Henry W. Moulton; its Lieutenants were John H. Whidden and Joseph W. Wheelwright.

Company I, recruited in Charlestown, Captain Hannibal D. Norton; Lieutenants, Chas. H. Hurd and Lucius H. Warren, since Brevet Brigadier-General.

Company K, recruited in Newton, Captain J. Cushing Edmands, afterwards Colonel and Brevet Brigadier-General; Lieutenants, Ambrose Bancroft and John F. Boyd.

At Upton’s Hill the complete organization of the Regiment was published in the orders. The Lieutenant Colonel was promoted to be Colonel, Captain Prescott to be Lieutenant Colonel, and Captain Stephenson to be Major. The medical staff consisted of Z. Boylston Adams, Surgeon, with the rank of Major; William Lyman Faxon and W. H. Bigelow, Assistant Surgeons, ranking as First Lieutenants; W. T. M. Odiorne, Hospital Steward. The non-commissioned staff consisted of James P. Wade, Sergeant Major; James A. White, Quartermaster Sergeant; Charles E. Madden, Commissary Sergeant; and Freeman Field, Principal Musician.

Dr. Bigelow, Steward Odiorne, and Sergeant Madden, were new appointments. All the rest had been with the Regiment through all its experience in the field.

No chaplain was ever commissioned in the 32d, no application having ever been made on the part of the line officers, to whom belonged the initiative, and none being desired, so far as was known by any officer or man.

In an army composed of men of many different religious beliefs, as was the case in ours, the chaplains should constitute a staff corps, its members proportioned as to faith, in some degree to the requirements of the army, so that from the headquarters of an army or corps details might be made of the proper men for any required duty. Attached to regimental headquarters, they were very generally utterly inefficient for good professionally. It was the rule with us that, when any of the sick were near death, the fact should be reported to the commanding officer, who was often the first to communicate the tidings, and who invariably enquired of the dying man if he desired the service of a chaplain. When this was desired, an orderly was sent with the compliments of the Colonel, to some chaplain near by, to ask his attendance. With only rare exceptions such services were cheerfully and promptly rendered.

The burial service was usually read by the commanding officer over the bodies of our dead; but in one case, where the man had been a Roman Catholic, it was thought better to ask the attendance of a chaplain of that faith. It happened that the orderly could not readily find one, and could find only one, and returned with the unusual reply that the chaplain could not come.

Upon further inquiry it appeared that the orderly had presented the message, with the compliments of the Colonel, to the chaplain, who was reposing after dinner. “Was he a good Catholic?” enquired the priest. The orderly assured him that he was. “My compliments to the Colonel, then, and tell him he can bury him. It is all right.” With which reply the messenger was compelled to return. Failing the orderly’s assurance of the man’s good and regular standing, of course the chaplain would have escaped the duty too.

In November, 1862, our camp hospital offered merely a canvas tent for shelter, and some straw spread upon the frosty ground for bedding. One of the patients, in view of approaching death, expressed to the Adjutant his wish to be baptized, and of course a messenger was sent forth to seek a chaplain, with the customary compliments, and to ask his attendance on a dying man.

A chaplain promptly appeared at our headquarters, was escorted to the hospital tent and left at the side of the sick man. Very soon after, the Colonel, meeting the reverend officer pacing thoughtfully in the open air, stopped and enquired as to the patient’s condition. Evidently considerably embarrassed, the chaplain said “you did not tell me that the man wanted baptism.” “Very true,” was the reply, “but why is that any difficulty?” “Because,” rejoined the clergyman, hesitatingly, “I am of the Baptist persuasion, and this is no case for immersion.”

It was very awkward, but the Colonel, who had thought only of a chaplain as the proper officer for a present duty, apologized for his want of thought, thanked the gentleman, and said that he would try again, or if it became necessary, would himself administer the holy rite. The chaplain, however, requested a few minutes for reflection, at the end of which he decided to officiate himself and did so, first taking the precaution to enquire of the soldier whether he preferred immersion or sprinkling, the latter of which very naturally was elected.