tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">136

THE STORY OF THE
Thirty-Second Regiment
MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY.

I.
IN GARRISON.

THE story of the 32d Massachusetts Infantry was, of course, in most respects like that of others, but not in all. The immortal Topsy thought she was not made, but “‘spect she growed.” So our regiment was not made a regiment at the start, but it grew to be one. Other battalions from New England gathered into camps and acquired their preliminary education among neighbors, and cheered by the presence of visitors, who looked on and admired their guard-mountings at morning, and their dress-parades at evening; and these hardened into soldiers by a rough experience in mud or dust on the line of the Potomac, while our beginning was in a walled fort, on a bleak island, isolated even from the visits of friends, and under the most exact discipline of ante-bellum regular-army rule.

Fort Warren, which was our cradle, is the outpost of Boston, and it was very nearly, but not entirely, completed when the war broke out. Until 1861 it had never been occupied as a military post. The 12th and 14th Massachusetts had been in occupation of the island while the organization of those battalions was in progress, during the summer of that year, and when they left, the post was somewhat hurriedly prepared for the reception of prisoners, a large number having been captured in North Carolina by the column under General Burnside.

Early in the autumn of the year 1861 Colonel Justin E. Dimmock was assigned to the command at Fort Warren. At the first outbreak of the rebellion this patriotic officer, fortunately for the cause of the Union, was in command at Fort Munroe, and resisting every attempt made upon his loyalty, he held that important post for the government under whose flag he had fought, and in whose service he had passed his active life.

As the war progressed Fort Munroe became a great centre for the operations of the army, and the duties required of its commandant were too severe for a man of Colonel Dimmock’s age and infirmities, and he was transferred to the more quiet scenes in Boston Harbor. A temporary garrison was detailed from the 24th Massachusetts Infantry, then in process of formation, but upon the application of Colonel Dimmock, a new battalion of four companies of infantry was raised to be used as a garrison until the exigencies of the service required their presence elsewhere, and this body of men, called the First Battalion Massachusetts Infantry, relieved the same number of companies of the 24th.

Company A,