A slight change in organization took place under Hardee’s tactics;
instead of four lieutenants to a company, there were only two.
Consequently few new men were elected to fill vacancies until the
regiment had adjusted itself to the new régime. The officers of the
regiment at the great Concord encampment, besides Col. Cowdin, were:
Lieutenant Colonel, Isaac S. Burrell (postmaster of Roxbury, and later
City Marshal); Major, Isaac F. Shephard. The captains commanding
companies were: 1st, Thomas L. D. Perkins (proprietor of a smoke-house);
3d, Henry A. Snow (treasurer of a bleachery); 6th, Edward Pearl; 7th,
Walter S. Sampson (a mason and builder); 8th, Clark B. Baldwin (a
merchant); 9th, Arthur Dexter; and 10th, Joshua Jenkins. With the Civil
War less than two years off, it is well to look ahead and see how many
of these militiamen rendered service in the hour of their country’s
need. Of the Colonel we have already spoken. The Lieutenant Colonel
commanded the 42d Regiment in 1862, and again in 1864, as we shall see.
The Major presently removed to Missouri for business reasons, where he
served with Nathaniel Lyon, and ultimately commanded the 51st U. S.
Colored Infantry, and was promoted to be Brigadier General. Four of the
seven captains went to war. Capts. Snow and Pearl served three months
each at the beginning of the regiment’s three years of service, and then
received their discharges. Capt. Sampson took his company into the 6th
Regiment, and led them thru Baltimore on April 19, 1862, under deadly
fire from the rioters. Later he served as Captain in the 22d Infantry
during the Peninsular campaign, commanding that regiment at Gaines Mill.
Capt. Baldwin remained in Col. Cowdin’s regiment when his company
transferred themselves to the new 4th Battalion of Rifles and ultimately
to the 13th Regiment; and became commander of a new 4th Company, and
from 1862 to 1864 was Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment. Baldwin was a
most profane man, and during the ensuing campaign stragglers could
identify their regiment from a distance by the sound of his swearing.
When Baldwin was made prisoner at the Wilderness, his captors marvelled
at his vocabulary; and came up to his tent in successive reliefs to
listen. Once a youthful fifer who had been caught by the then Lieutenant
Colonel straggling, was punished by having a log loaded on his shoulder
as he marched. This lad has put on record, that regulations provided for
“a field officer at the head of a regiment and a mule at the rear”; and
that Col. Baldwin was deemed well-qualified for either end of the
column. But the testimony is confessedly biassed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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