PREFACE

The following history was undertaken near the close of the year 1865, at the request of a certain publishing house, while the author was still actively engaged in military duties in the State of Georgia. It was substantially completed and ready for publication on the return of the Veteran Bat¬talion to New York, May 1, 1866, and was soon afterwards placed in the hands of the intended publishers. Various circumstances caused long delays, and it finally became necessary to entrust it to the enterprising firm which now issues it to the public.

The book never would have been commenced, but for the earnest and repeated solicitations of the officers and friends of the regiment. It was composed at intervals in the midst of pressing duties and in spite of serious discouragements; and, although the author had collected many materials, the work was found to be so laborious that it would often have been at the point of abandonment, had he not been deeply impressed with a conviction that some permanent record ought to be made of the remarkable services of this regiment. Some public tribute, too, was due to the memory of those brave men, our departed compatriots, who gave up their lives so freely in battle, in hospital, or in prison, and whose heroic deeds ought to be inwoven with the legible history of the republic which they died to save.

The regimental narrative is based mainly on the author's private diary — The "Life and Sufferings of Captain Sprague." So far as the events came under his personal observation he is quite confident of the essential correctness of the statements; but even here, he dares not hope he has escaped all errors. Jotted down at odd moments, in the midst of weary marches, on picket duty, on horseback, in the rain; sometimes by the light of blazing buildings, often in presence of hissing bullets, as during our six weeks at Port Hudson; undoubtedly mistaken impressions may have been recorded. Having, been present, however, in every battle, skirmish, siege, and march, in which the regiment was engaged, until the nineteenth of September, 1864, when he had the misfortune to charge too far and hold his position too long, and so fell into the enemy's hands, the author fears more that his observations may lack breadth than that they may be wanting indistinctness.

For the history of the Thirteenth during the six months of the author's imprisonment, the statements of Messrs Blinn, Bradley, Perkins, Clary and Clark have been his main reliance; though others furnished important facts. It was contemplated at first to publish the story of that imprisonment, but it was found that it would swell the volume beyond the assigned limits.

This work has been its own reward. At every step it has brought vividly to remembrance the dark realities and the bright romance of war. As in a grand panorama the scenes and experiences of other days again passed successively through the mind, —the dreary barracks, the rolling ship, the luxurious city, the rapid, exhausting marches, the blistered and bleeding feet, the scorching sun, the rainy nights passed without shelter, the sickness that wasted or convulsed the stoutest frames; the rush, the frenzy, the fascinating pomp, the terrible energy of battle; the wheeling and plunging of cavalry, the thundering of batteries, the steady and resistless charge of infantry; the thrilling shout of victory; the unutterable magnificence of midnight bombardments; the patient endurance, the triumphant faith, and the beautiful patriotism of those suffering in hospital; the slow martyrdom in rebel prisons of those brave soldiers of the Thirteenth who would not turn traitor to save their lives, but deliberately chose rather to die by inches, of cold and hunger; and then the thousand interchanges of kindly sympathies; the warm friendships; the story, the wit, the songs of love and home and country around blazing camp-fires; and, to crown all, the satisfaction of having done what one could for God, for Freedom, and for the Great Republic!

To keep alive in the breasts of the survivors those feelings, to perpetuate those friendships, to rekindle those memories, to collect and preserve in permanent form the pictures of those scenes, and so to add one drop to the great current of liberty-loving and patriotic sentiment that is bearing our country on to her sublime destiny, this little book is respectfully dedicated to his former companions in arms, the surviving officers and soldiers of the glorious Thirteenth, by THE AUTHOR. New Britain, Conn., August 16, 1867.