To Arms! To Arms! Our country calls for aid, Of faithful sons an offering must be made. From every hamlet in the loyal North, Her sturdy yeomen in their strength go forth; Mechanics, merchants, all professions too, Give up the arts of peace, another to pursue. _Edwin Emery._ I have often been asked to narrate my experience in the War of the Rebellion, and have as often refused, but now after the lapse of thirty three years since the close of that fearful struggle between brother men, I feel that perhaps it would be well, for the satisfaction of those who so earnestly desire it, to “Fight my battles over again.” Mine was not an exceptional experience, only that of many a boy of ’61, but it may partly answer the question so often asked: “What did the privates do?” I have often wondered how it happened that I, born of quaker stock on my mother’s side (she was descended from the Kemptons, who were among the first settlers of our quaker city of New Bedford,) should have had such a natural leaning towards scenes of adventure and conflict. It may well have been that I inherited it from the paternal side of the house, for my father’s father, John James, was taken prisoner on board his ship during the War of 1812, and thrown into an English prison, and I have often, during my childhood, listened to his tales of warfare and bloodshed, and longed to be a man that I might fight and avenge the wrongs inflicted on my devoted country in its earlier days; and how I wished, as I read of the War of the Revolution, that I might have lived in those stirring days, and done my part in creating the American Nation. Certainly it did not seem possible that occasion would ever arise when I should be one of the defenders of that great nation. The attack on Fort Sumter, the shot that so stirred the loyal hearts of the men of the North, awakened in me an ardent desire to enlist and help avenge the insult to our country’s flag, but my father was so opposed to the idea that I reluctantly yielded to his authority until a few months later, during a visit to my brother in Woburn, Mass., I enlisted November 2nd 1861, just past my twentieth birthday, in Co. B, 1st Battalion, afterwards the 32nd Mass. Infantry. The company was raised by George L. Prescott, of Concord, Mass. We were mustered into the United States service on November 27th, and on December 3rd were sent to Fort Warren, Boston harbor, to guard prisoners of war, among them being the confederate generals Buckner and Tilghman, Commodore Barron, Colonel Pegram, the confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell, the mayor and chief of police of Baltimore, and many others.