The History of the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry / in the Late War of the Rebellion

by William H. Osborne

EIGHTH REUNION.

The eighth reunion was held at East Bridgewater, June 18, 1877, two hundred, including members and their families, being present.

The day was one of the most lovely in June, and was keenly enjoyed by the visiting comrades, their wives and children, who strolled about the quiet, shady streets of the town, visited the soldiers’ monument upon the common, which bears the names of a number of the dead of the regiment, and walked through the adjacent groves. The citizens of the town met them everywhere with smiles and words of welcome, and at one o’clock provided them with a bountiful dinner in the lower hall of the Town-house, where a large committee of the ladies of East Bridgewater were in attendance to wait on the tables and testify by their presence and numerous attentions their respect for these veterans of the war.

At the close of the enjoyments at the table the company assembled in the main hall to listen to some fine singing by members of the East Bridgewater Musical Society. After this came speaking, in which several of the townspeople and comrades took part.

The whole meeting was conducted in a pleasantly informal manner, and was, for that reason, all the more productive of enjoyment and profit. Nineteen new members were added to the roll of the Association, and in view of the deep interest taken by the wives of the members in the meeting, they were, by vote, made honorary members of the Association.

While the business meeting was in session in the morning, Captain Leach, whose absence all had been regretting, suddenly came into the hall. The members all rose in their seats and gave him three hearty cheers, to which warm welcome the brave old Captain, now slightly bowed by the weight of seventy-seven years, responded by choking words of gratitude and thanks.

One of the saddest and bravest chapters in the history of the old regiment was brought freshly to remembrance by a fine photograph, suspended in front of the speaker’s desk, of Major Charles Chipman, Lieutenant Burgess, and the three standard-bearers, Grosvenor, Tighe, and Willis, who lost their young lives on the 17th of June, 1864.

The officers elected for the year 1877-78 were:—

President.—General J. H. Barnes.

Vice-Presidents.—Major C. T. Richardson; W. H. Osborne, Company C; Sergeant George Townsend, Company I; Colonel H. R. Sibley; Captain Lebbeus Leach.

Treasurer.—Colonel T. W. Clarke.

Recording Secretary.—Sergeant S. C. Wright, Company E.

Corresponding Secretary.—H. E. Stewart, Company K.

Executive Committee.—Colonel H. R. Sibley; Lieutenant J. O’Neil; General J. H. Barnes; Captain D. W. Lee; Sergeant S. C. Wright, Company E; Colonel T. W. Clarke; William H. Osborne; Corporal George W. Allen, Company C.

The author sincerely hopes that the Secretary of the Association will have the pleasure to record the proceedings of many future meetings of his comrades, and that none will prove to be seasons of less joy and gladness than this, the eighth annual reunion.

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PARADE OF THE REGIMENT,
September 17, 1877.

The beautiful and costly monument erected by the city of Boston in memory of its heroic dead of the late war was dedicated with imposing ceremonies on the 17th of September, 1877, which was the fifteenth anniversary of the battle of Antietam. The monument, one of the finest in the country, is erected on a little hill on the Boston Common, at the foot of which stood the famous Old Elm, destroyed by wind, February 15, 1876. There was once a powder magazine on the hill occupied by the monument, which, during the siege of Boston, was the site of a British fortification bombarded by Washington. In the war of 1812, a body of troops designed to protect the town was encamped about this very spot.

On the side of the monument, facing the south, cut in bold, square letters, is the following inscription:—

TO THE MEN OF BOSTON
WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY
ON LAND AND SEA IN THE WAR
WHICH KEPT THE UNION WHOLE
DESTROYED SLAVERY
AND MAINTAINED THE CONSTITUTION
THE GRATEFUL CITY
HAS BUILT THIS MONUMENT
THAT THEIR EXAMPLE
MAY SPEAK
TO COMING GENERATIONS.

Honorable Charles Devens, Attorney-General of the United States, delivered the oration; and General Augustus P. Martin of Boston acted as Chief Marshal. Colonel Henry R. Sibley of the Twenty-ninth Regiment was honored with the command of the Suffolk County Division of the Grand Army of the Republic.

At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Twenty-ninth Regiment Association, held September 1, 1877, it was voted to parade as a regiment on the occasion of the dedication of the monument, and General Joseph H. Barnes was chosen to act as Colonel and Commander, Colonel Thomas William Clarke as Lieutenant-Colonel, Major Charles T. Richardson as Major, Lieutenant Henry S. Braden as Adjutant, and Captain D. W. Lee as Quartermaster. On the 7th of September, General Barnes issued a circular letter addressed to the comrades of the regiment, inviting them to parade on the 17th, and requesting them to assemble at 29 Pemberton Square, Boston, at 9 o’clock in the morning of that day.

One hundred and fifty comrades responded promptly to the invitation of their old commander, dressed in dark clothes and wearing their corps and regimental badges. Sergeant Samuel C. Wright, who was wounded in four different battles, was assigned to the proud position of National color-bearer. General Barnes, Colonel Clarke, Major Richardson, Lieutenant Braden, and Captain Lee, were handsomely mounted; elegant wreaths of choice cut-flowers adorning the necks of their fine horses.

The procession moved at a little past 12 o’clock, and the regiment took the position assigned it, in the Second Division, commanded by Colonel Edward O. Shepard; in which also marched the First, Second, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Twenty-first, Twenty-fourth, Twenty-eighth, Fortieth, Forty-third, Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth Massachusetts Veteran Infantry regiments; also, the Massachusetts Veteran Batteries under Colonel O. F. Nims, the hero of many a battle-field; several Army and Navy Associations; the Third Massachusetts Cavalry; Massachusetts members of General Hooker’s “Old Brigade,” under General Gilman Marston; also the Second New Hampshire Infantry; “Maine Veterans in Massachusetts”; Ninety-ninth New York Infantry, under Colonel David W. Wardrop, and the “Survivors of Rebel Prisons.”

The route of the procession was very extended, and the parade was not concluded till nearly dusk. The day was warm and fine, and it seemed as if every town and city in Massachusetts had emptied their entire population into the streets of Boston. Business in the city was wholly suspended, and the buildings along the route of the procession were tastefully decorated with flowers and bunting. The gay plumes and gaudy uniforms of the militia attracted their usual share of attention; but when the veterans went by, with war-like tramp, carrying the shreds of old war flags, many eyes were wet with tears, and many of the adult spectators gazed with half-quivering lips upon these remnants of the Nation’s Grand Army of Freedom. The presence in the column of Generals McClellan, Hooker, Burnside, and many other old heroes of the war, tended greatly to increase the enthusiasm of the vast throngs of people along the sidewalks, and when a pause was made, hundreds gathered about the carriages in which these soldiers were riding, and greeted them with cheers and gifts of bouquets of fragrant flowers.

The Twenty-ninth made a fine appearance; its mounted officers riding at the head of its column, and the orderly arrangement of its ranks, reminded one forcibly of the bygone days, when it marched in review before its commanding generals; while the earnest, bright faces of the boys showed plainly enough that they had caught again the old spirit that so often, from 1861 to 1865, led them to triumph over the dangers and toils of the war. Captains Leach and Chamberlain, and Surgeon Cogswell, all of whom are somewhat infirm, and were unable to march, and several of the disabled members of the regiment, rode in a carriage in the immediate rear of the regimental column.

The Boston “Home Journal” of September 22 published a very extended and complimentary article concerning the Twenty-ninth Regiment, entitled “Who Are They Now, and Where Are the Rest of Them?” The first part of this question was answered in a manner that must cause its living members and their many friends the keenest satisfaction, while the inquiry, “Where Are the Rest of Them?” which we only have space to quote, touches most tenderly the sweetest and the saddest chords of a soldier’s memory:—

“Where are the rest of them? Half of the living men of 1861 were in the line. The other half are scattered. All parts of the State sent up their contribution. Every New England State sent up its quota. From Maine to Oregon, from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, the residue of the living three hundred are scattered. About seven hundred are dead. The killed in action; the men who died of wounds; the men who died of disease while in the service; the men who died, after their discharge, of disease contracted in the service; the men starved to death in rebel prisons; the men incurably weakened by famine and malaria at Knoxville and Vicksburg and Jackson,—they have all gone. It was the strongest of them that we saw on Monday, the best constitutions, the hardest muscles, the toughest fibres, and all of them were prematurely aged, and the boys’ faces which most of them wore at the time of enlistment, have now no trace of youth in them. To an old comrade, this age, this worn look, was inexpressibly sad, but sadder yet it was to think of the long roll of dead comrades, and how they died.

“And yet, on every man’s face, at some time in the day, in the presence of some old and loved friend, there momentarily returned the transfiguration of youth, and the faces of 1861,—a flash and play of the “battle light” of an earnest, honest, human heart, full of enthusiasm, love, and duty. This was recognizable, and invariably was recognized, no matter how worn and gray the older face and hair might be.

“To have returned to the Commonwealth at least two hundred good citizens, with characters educated by hardships and trials, and by the friendships of the valley of the shadow of death, into a willing and intelligent acquiescence in the rule of law, and the importance of preferring the common weal to mere individual pleasure and profit, is not the least credit of that old regiment; and if the military service has merely succeeded in teaching the necessity of orderly and systematic organization, and the ability to govern one’s self, as it has in most instances everywhere, the work of the war can never be undone, and never should be.”