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.