PREFACE.

THE "Forty-ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers' sprang from Berkshire. This, their record, is written for Berkshire readers. If it shall, in after years, enable my comrades to recall the events and some of the emotions of our soldier-life; if it shall tend to unite us in sympathy; if it shall present to our friends a fuller view of our deeds and experiences, and bring out more vividly the merits of our "fallen brave," I shall be satisfied.

Writing it has been to me a "labor of love." I have written fully and earnestly of the principles underlying this struggle; otherwise, I have confined my pen to our regimental life as it came within my observation and experience. It would be sad to believe those principles were no part of that life.

My chief regret is, that fuller data did not enable me to do justice to all our dead.

The engraving of Colonel Bartlett, one of the best evidences of the skill of the leading engraver of New York, A. W. Ritchie, needs this remark: On applying for a photograph, from which to obtain an engraving, the Colonel sent me several, taken in different styles, by different artists, at different times. I selected the one that was used because I deemed it the best one, and because it

was.suggestive: of the wound received at Port Hudson, a memorable part of the most memorable day in our history.

The wood-cuts are the workmanship of S. J. Pinkney, New York. Even the uneducated eye will at once discern their artistic excellence. That the likenesses are not, in every case, equal to the engraving thereof, results from two causes: defectiveness of some of the pictures furnished, and the impossibility of securing perfect likenesses, on so small a scale, from wood-cuts.

I have written this "Life" in the form of "letters," thus making it less didactic and stiff than had I observed the historic style. Necessarily the "first person" is much used, perchance so much as to render liable the charge of egotism. In describing our battles, I have dwelt at length on my own actions and feelings, believing the personalness thereof would convey to my readers a better idea of such scenes than merely general descriptions. What is a battle, but the aggregate of individual deeds and emotions? If pride, in being allowed to share in 'our honorable career, occasionally crops out, I can only say in extenuation, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

Hoping this hurriedly-prepared volume will keep fresh the memories that gather round the "Forty-ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers," and do something, however little, to inculcate those principles of which our military life was but an outgrowth, I send it forth to fulfil its mission.

PITTSFIELD, MASS., May 1st, 1864.

HENRY T. JOHNS.

LETTERS.

MY DEAR L.:

LETTER I.

HINSDALE, MASS., August 10, 1862.

Like many others, I am almost decided to enlist. A large class, about the time of the bombardment of Sumter, forgetting their physical weakness, enlisted. In those grand days (and despite all our mismanagement and repulses, the days have been growing grander ever since), when God seemed to be saying to our internal foe, “Thy days are numbered, and thy kingdom is taken from thee," the weak felt strong, so that "one" almost imagined he "could chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight." Alas! they fill our hospitals,, or lie in lonely graves on the Peninsula. When victories, "like angel visits, few and far between," illumined the horizon, I have had no special promptings to join the army; but there has never been a signal defeat, that I have not felt the old half yearning, half conviction, that so nearly led me to enlist in the spring of 1861.

As we recede from the seven days' fight before Richmond, we get a clearer view thereof, and are compelled to call it a fearful reverse. True, there were splendid exhibitions of Northern valor, and that is all we have gained. Had we so entirely forgotten our past, did we think we had so degenerated, that such battles, with their slain, were necessary to convince us and the world that valor was an heirloom of freemen? Wisely has the President

called for three hundred thousand more men, and now his call for three hundred thousand more, looks so much like being in earnest, that it calls out the hopeful earnestness of the nation. The country needs the men, and I, for one, feel that no longer can I say "Go !" but " Come!”

But a serious thought arises: "Have I a right to take human life?" To be slain seems not half so fearful as to slay. Grant that war can be right and the matter is settled, for never was war holy if this war be not holy. Fully have I considered the matter, and I am grounded in the conviction that, under certain circumstances, war is not only not wrong, but an imperative duty we owe to God and man.

God commanded the Jews to go up to battle against the heathen nations that inhabited Canaan. That forever settles the fact that war is not inherently wrong, for though a holy God may allow sin, he never commands it to be done. To say that that was under the old dispensation, does not affect me; for, no matter what the circumstances, God would never command or encourage that which is essentially wrong, that which is in opposition to His own nature. True, a thing not wrong in itself, may become wrong to us, if divinely prohibited. Though the genius of Religion is opposed to all violence, and will ultimately subdue the spirit of war, yet neither is there in the Old nor New Testament any direct or clearly implied prohibition of War. When John the Baptist was asked by some Roman soldiers what they should do to inherit the kingdom of heaven, he did not say, "leave the army," but among other directions, "be content with your wages," wages received as soldiers. He knew full well that some of them were at times sent on unhallowed enterprises, but he doubtless considered the army, as the armed police of the empire, often unjustly employed, but a necessary part of that machinery which protects the good and weak from the assaults of the evil and strong. The Saviour and His disciples fellowshiped with soldiers,