This chapter being designed to trace the history of the company from its organization to its entrance into the service, it is only necessary to add, that it took the letter “L” in the Fourth Regiment, served in it till July 16, 1861, then became a part of the Massachusetts Battalion (still retaining the letter “L”), and on the 13th of December, 1861, of the Twenty-ninth Regiment, in which it was designated as “C” company.
CHAPTER V.
Captain Charles Chipman’s Company, “Sandwich Guards.” [“D” in the Third Regiment, “D” of the Massachusetts Battalion, and “D” of the Twenty-ninth Regiment.]
With a notice of only a few hours, a very large meeting of the inhabitants of Sandwich, Barnstable County, was held on the evening of Saturday, April 20, 1861. The news of the assault upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment, in Baltimore, had reached the town, and produced extreme excitement. The meeting was called “to devise ways and means for the raising a company of troops for the defence of the country,” and was called to order by Theodore Kern, Esq. Dr. Jonathan Leonard was chosen to preside, and E. S. Whittemore, Secretary. After appropriate remarks upon the objects of the meeting, Dr. Leonard introduced to the people, Major S. B. Phinney, editor of the “Barnstable Patriot,” who made a stirring address, “... declared his unwavering fidelity to the Union, and determination to sustain the National Administration in its efforts to crush out treason and rebellion.”
Addresses were also made by Dr. I. N. Swazey, E. S. Whittemore, Nathaniel F. Fessenden, and Otis Freeman.
“On motion of Theodore Kern, Esq., it was voted, that the sum of $20 be immediately raised by subscription, as a bounty to each man who should enlist in the campaign, and by a subscription-paper the sum of $626 was pledged in the course of the evening, in sums varying from $5 to $70; Major Phinney contributing $70, and promising a stand of colors to the company when formed.”[8]
An informal enlistment-roll was opened at this meeting, receiving the signatures of a large number of young men, among whom was Charles Chipman, who had served in the regular army as a sergeant. A committee of nine gentlemen was chosen “to thoroughly canvass the town and raise the balance of the bounty money,” while another committee of three was appointed to wait on the Governor and offer the services of the company to be raised; also to make arrangements for equipping it.
Nothing that we could say would so well serve to show the good spirit and patriotism of the people of Cape Cod, excited by the then recent acts of treason on the part of the South, as the language and tone of the local papers of that period. A copy of the “Barnstable Patriot” (the chief paper of the Cape) of May 23, 1861, is before us as we write, and by its loyal utterances, calls back freshly to our memory those days when the great free North was preparing itself to strike a blow for liberty and the Union.
The paper of which we have spoken, as indeed were most of its issues of that period, is principally devoted to war news, its principal editorial column being headed by these familiar lines,—