THE GRANITE MONTHLY. VOL. XXII. JANUARY, 1897. No. I. HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH REGIMENT, NEW HAMP SHIRE VOLUNTEERS. By Adjutant Luther Tracy Townsend. PREFACE. EVERAL years have passed since the adjutant of the Sixteenth New Hampshire regiment was appointed by his comrades to write their regimental history. Other duties have prevented his entering upon the composition of the work until the present year. The nearly completed manuscript was submitted to the surviving members of the regiment who were present at the reunion held in August, 1896, at The Weirs, and its immediate publication was requested. The committee having the publication of the history in charge, after a careful consideration of the matter, reached the conclusion that it first should be brought out in some one of the New Hampshire publications, and the GRANITE MONTHLY was selected. The author was led to undertake the writing of this history from his personal interest in the remarkable record of the regiment and from the frequently expressed desire of many of his army comrades. There is no question, we presume, that, other things being equal, the officers best qualified to prepare a regimental history are the colonel and his adjutant, the adjutant, perhaps, having some advantages over the colonel. Nothing relating to the regiment takes place at headquarters with which the adjutant is not made acquainted. All regimental orders pass through his hands and receive his signature. He is in touch with the officers on the one hand, and with the men on the other. It is almost a duty imposed upon him to keep a journal of all important orders and movements,-at least every efficient adjutant will do this. But in all this, there is one drawback: namely, the writer is forced to introduce himself in evidence as to some parts of the record, and must therefore be personal in his statements, or else employ a kind of cumbersome circumlocution which is always more or less a literary offense. We therefore apologize in advance for any apparent breach of delicacy or modesty that may appear in this narrative. The sincere thanks of the author are here tendered especially to Comrade Henry L. Johnson and also to several other members of our regimental association for many suggestions offered by them, for several incidents they have furnished which had escaped either the author's attention or memory, and especially for the patience with which both officers and men have borne the delay of the publication of the eventful story of what their regiment did and suffered. WASHINGTON, D. C., November, 1896. HE CHAPTER I. NORTHERN TROOPS AT DISADVANTAGE. civil and political condition of our country, just prior to the War of the Rebellion, and the causes that led to that conflict of arms, already have become such an important part of our national history and so often have been dwelt upon by different regimental historians, that with the exception of brief and incidental allusions, we shall pass in silence all such general and familiar matters, confining attention in this volume chiefly to the organization and actual service of our regiment. As our object is not to make a cumbersome volume, but one that, without taking overmuch of the reader's time, easily can be read, we shall exclude certain other matters which are found in many histories of this kind. That is, instead of filling the body of our history with the full text of the orders that were received from division and brigade headquarters, or even with the full text of the orders issued from our own regimental headquarters, which of themselves almost would fill a good-sized vol ume, we simply shall note in brief that such and such orders were received and obeyed. Copies of all such orders are in the state and national archives, and can be consulted, if one so desires. There is, however, one somewhat general topic that relates to the poorly prepared condition of the Northern troops to cope at the outset with those of the South, which is so involved in any historical treatment of our army life as to justify emphatic and even frequent repetition. We, therefore, make an exception to the special purpose we have in mind, while preparing these pages, and, by way of an introduction, shall call attention to the reasons why our troops, especially during the earlier months of their life in the service, not infrequently appeared to considerable disadvantage. tion all the more readily because we do not remember to have seen this matter over-emphasized in any regimental history we have examined, and often it has not been touched upon at all. We make this excep It requires only the most hasty glance at the half century preceding the conflict between the North and South, to enable any one at all familiar with our national history to recognize the correctness of the statement that the period from 1815 to 1861, excepting the war with Mexico, was in our republic a time of peace. The people of the Northern states, with few exceptions, felt the utmost security, not dreaming that a civil war was possible. He who at the North then talked war was regarded as an alarmist. During that time, therefore, the military spirit of the free states was allowed to slumber. On the other hand, especially from 1830 to 1861, the people of the slave states were preparing for what seemed to them a possible, if not a probable, conflict with the North on the questions of slavery and state rights. During the twelve years immediately preceding the rebellion, Jefferson Davis had completely in hand the military affairs of our entire country. He was chairman of the senate committee on military matters from 1849 to 1851. He was secretary of war from 1853 to 1857. He was again chairman of the senate committee on military matters from 1857 to 1861. During those twelve years, Jefferson Davis was busy but not in the interest of the entire republic. Through his scheming, the regular army had been ordered to distant and not easily accessible parts of our country. Indeed, the army was so far depleted that at the breaking out of the rebellion there were scarcely ten thousand names on the United States army rolls. The war-ships, too, of the republic had been dispatched to distant parts of the world. Northern fortifications had been neglected and dismantled, while those in the South had been thoroughly equipped, in some instances with supplies taken from Northern forts and arsenals. By order of the war department, of which Mr. Davis was chief, the muskets of the disbanded militia companies of the Northern states were shipped to Washington, and thence were distributed through the Southern states. The author will be pardoned for introducing an illustration of these proceedings which came to his personal knowledge. In the year 1857, a military company, of which he was a member, was organized by the students of Dartmouth College chiefly for the purpose of exercise. In the college at that time there were several Southern students. Whether or not they were informers, we do not know, but not long after the organization of our company, there came a United States government order to the town authorities of Hanover, who had loaned the muskets of its disbanded military company to the students, to ship all military equipments in town without delay to Washington, To us the order was a cause of much regret. A communication from the students was sent to Washington, giving the facts and requesting that the muskets might be retained. The reply came that those arms must be forwarded to Washington, but that the government immediately would send to the students an equal number of improved Springfield muskets. We were satisfied, not to say delighted. We looked. We waited. But we had been deceived. The improved Springfield muskets never reached us, and the old ones with which we |