THE HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-NINTH REGIMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, IN THE LATE WAR OF THE REBELLION. BY WILLIAM H. OSBORNE, A MEMBER OF THE REGIMENT. BOSTON: ALBERT J. WRIGHT, PRINTER, 79 MILK STREET. (CORNER OF FEDERAL.) 1877. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by WILLIAM H. OSBORNE, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. At the outset, I desire to thank all who have rendered me any assistance in connection with this work. To His Excellency, Governor Rice, I am indebted for a very liberal subscription and many words of encouragement; to my friend and townsman, Honorable Benjamin W. Harris, for copies of orders from the War Department; to General James A. Cunningham, Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, for facilitating my investigations of his records, and granting me unusual privileges in his office; to Major S. B. Phinney of Barnstable and Honorable William T. Davis of Plymouth, for loan of papers, and reports of their towns; to Mr. Charles H. Edson and Millard E. Brown, Esq., of East Bridgewater, for assistance in copying numerous papers; to my comrades, General Joseph H. Barnes, Colonels Thomas William Clarke, Henry R. Sibley, and Willard D. Tripp, Majors Charles T. Richardson and Samuel H. Doten, Captains William D. Chamberlain, Jonas K. Tyler, and James H. Osgood, Lieutenants Thomas Conant, J. O’Neil, and John Lucas, Sergeants Samuel C. Wright, John H. Hancock, and Walter A. Kezar, and Samuel Wells Hunt and Preston Hooper, for indispensable aid in preparing rolls and imparting valuable information. In the course of my researches, I have freely consulted the diaries and letters of several of my brother soldiers, the records of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, the excellent reports of the Committee of Congress “On the Conduct of the War,” several works of Southern authors, the “History of the Civil War in America,” by the Count of Paris, a large number of pamphlets, newspapers (Northern and Southern), beside many other publications, collecting, in the course of the seven years in which I have been engaged in this self-imposed task, a very large and varied assortment of the literature of the war. Where radically different versions of the same event have been given me, I have generally adopted that of the officer who had the responsible command at the time, or of the soldier whose relations to the event were such as to afford him the best means of accurate knowledge. In other cases, I have used my own judgment in the premises, adopting or discarding the version that seemed to me most in harmony or at variance with the truth.