NIMS' SECOND MASSACHUSETTS BATTERY
Few batteries during the Civil War saw more actual service than that known officially as the 2d Massachusetts Light Artillery, but more generally called Nims' Battery. Its career is well worth recording and the part it played in the campaigns of the Department of the Mississippi and the Gulf was by no means inconsiderable in the history of the war.
Previous to 1861, there existed in Boston a military organization called the Boston Light Artillery or Cook's Battery. When the news came from Baltimore that the Sixth Regiment had been fired on and the city was in the hands of rioters, General Butler who was then in Philadelphia, asked that this organization be sent forward immediately to the scene.
It was midnight of April 19, 1861, when the telegraph brought the request: before the night of the 20th everything was in readiness and in the early morning of the 21st the first battery from Massachusetts was on its way to Baltimore for a period of three months' service.
It had not left Boston, however, before Governor Andrews gave orders for the formation of a second battery and designated Major Moses Cobb as its commander. Recruiting headquarters were opened on the 20th of April at the Boston Light Artillery Armory under Major O. F. Nims, and in less than two days two hundred men applied for enlistment. "Every member, officers and men, was the greenest of raw material, but they were an intelligent set of fellows and took to drilling as a duck to water." Colonel Nims.
Most of the men were from Boston and vicinity.
The first public appearance of the battery was on June 17, when a parade was held on Boston Common, and on July 4 a detachment fired a salute at morning, noon and night from the same historic spot.
On July 5 the battery was ordered to the camp of instruction at Wollaston Heights, Quincy, on what was known as the Adams estate, which consequently gave to the camp the name of Camp Adams. Here for a month, the men were drilled in all the movements from the position of a soldier to battery drill in the field and also as infantry and cavalry.
Target practise, too, was introduced and for that purpose targets were placed at several points with reference to distance and correctness in shooting. These afforded an excellent opportunity for the men to become familiar with their guns.
On the 31st of July, the command was mustered into the United States service under the name of the 2d Massachusetts Light Artillery, and from the same date the officers were commissioned. This was the first three years' battery from the state of Massachusetts.