July 30 to Oct. 7, the regiment was one of four on provost duty in New York City, guarding against further draft-riots, and preventing conscripts from deserting. Here they resumed heavy artillery drill; and incidentally became rested after the Gettysburg campaign.
A new commander directed the army in the Wilderness, Lieutenant General U. S. Grant. The difference of men showed itself in the different result. Altho the 1st, now under Gen. W. S. Hancock, and the other Union regiments were handled as roughly in 1864 as they had been in 1863, when they left the field of battle, it was to march southward past Lee’s flank rather than northward toward security. Scrub oak and pine have obliterated practically all traces of the great fight. But men can never forget that the Wilderness proved that the tide had turned, and marked a long step toward the downfall of the Confederacy.
Spotsylvania was a continuation of the Wilderness with the fighting increased, if possible, in ferocity. On May 12, the culminating day at the “bloody angle,” the 1st Regiment was heavily engaged for the last time in its career. During the morning it acted as provost guard immediately behind the firing line, with orders to permit no one to pass to the rear excepting wounded men. In the afternoon it was advanced into the very thickest of the conflict and assigned the task of covering part of the Confederate line with a curtain of fire. Here both armies intrenched, and charged each other’s earthworks. The fighting was amid tangled underbrush wherein one could see only a few feet ahead; at such short range the bullet gave way to the bayonet and even to the clubbed rifle. When the combat continued after darkness had fallen, the fighting increased in intensity. Someone had to yield—Lee retreated. The apples which today grow at the bloody angle should be redder and the corn should bear more red ears, for they grow on sacred soil once crimson with the life-blood of heroes.
As they approached the completion of their enlistment the 1st Regiment were stationed with the reserves. Here, on May 19, they took part in their last engagement, at Anderson’s Plantation, on the road to Fredericksburg—and home. R. S. Ewell’s corps of Confederates came around Grant’s right flank and attempted to cut communications with the north and to capture the wagon-trains. A brigade of heavy artillery regiments fresh from the defenses of Washington were acting as convoy—one of them being the 1st Mass. Heavy Artillery from Salem. Here the Salem men have erected their regimental monument. The heavy artillery had seen but little fighting; but they now stood up like veterans and drove back an entire corps. Unfortunately the Confederates were taking some of the wagons with them as they drew back; and it remained for the 1st Inf. and their companions in the brigade, some 1,200 in all, to rush to the rescue and recover the lost train. While both 1st Mass. regiments—the Art. and the Inf.—were equally brave, the 1st Inf. had learned by long experience to make use of “cover,” to shelter themselves behind trees, stones and earthworks. It was largely this skill that enabled them to stop the panic and save the Union army at Chancellorsville. Now, on this less important field, it saved Grant’s wagons from capture.
Then came the welcome order to return to Boston and be mustered out.
A great reception awaited the regiment in Boston. Gen. Cowdin was grand marshal of the parade, and all Boston came to extend the hand of welcome. Gen. Cowdin had been honored that year by election as Captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and of course was loyally supported by this command in all the exercises connected with the reception. Another ex-Colonel of the regiment, Gen. Walter E. Lombard in 1916, was similarly to be honored by America’s oldest military organization. A grim pathos obtruded itself upon the spirit of the festivities; for of the 1,651 men who had gone to war, only 494 were present on May 25, 1864, to be mustered out. The command had been in twenty general actions; and nine of its seventy-one officers had been killed. It marched 1,263 miles, travelled by rail 1,325 miles, and on transports 724. The regiment gave three general officers to the army, and ninety-one other officers to sister regiments.
A number of noted clergymen have at times held the office of chaplain of the command. Applying the standards which control the selection of names for the volume, “Who’s Who,” amongst the distinguished chaplains would certainly have to be mentioned Otis A. Skinner, the noted journalist and preacher, 1850-’55; Thomas B. Thayer, the writer, 1858-’61; Jacob M. Manning, the lecturer, 1862-’63; Lewis B. Bates, father of ex-Gov. Bates, 1868-’72; Alonzo H. Quint, the ecclesiastical statesman, 1872-’76; William H. H. (“Adirondack”) Murray, devotee of horses and woodcraft, 1873-’76; Minot J. Savage, author and poet, 1883-’96; and Edward A. Horton, the orator, Chaplain of the Mass. State Senate, 1896-1900. Preeminent among them stands the name of the war chaplain, Warren H. Cudworth, 1861-’72, ’76-’82. Chaplain Cudworth possesses the added distinction that he was the historian of the “Fighting First.”
Warren H. Cudworth had graduated from Harvard in 1850; and represented the finest type of American culture. If size of hat indicates mental caliber, his chapeau, sacredly preserved at the Soldiers’ Home, Chelsea, proves him to have been an intellectual giant. For it is number seven and one-half. Since 1852 he had been pastor of the Unitarian “Church of Our Father” in East Boston. A bachelor, and of independent means financially, he was able to prove his patriotism before receiving appointment as chaplain by announcing to his church that, if he should not secure the appointment, he would give his salary as minister to maintain work among the soldiers. The church had raised a fund for the erection of a new house of worship; this the pastor urged them not to spend as intended, but to devote the money to the welfare of the Union soldiers. When appointed, he gave himself unreservedly to the duties of the office; and absented himself from his regiment only once, for a single week of Aug., ’61, during the entire three years.
While not a “fighting chaplain” as some were, he was in every sense a brave soldier and true gentleman. Believing that the better American one is, the better American soldier he is, Cudworth both preached and exemplified this part of his creed.
His Massachusetts pride revealed itself in his comments upon the inferior standards of living and comfort as one progressed southward.