History of the 5th Massachusetts Battery Rep. of 1902 ed., 978 pp., hc, Complete Roster, Index.

History of the Fifth Massachusetts Battery

By Nathan Appleton, Henry D. Scott, John F. Murray, Thomas E. Chase, and George L. Newton

In submitting these pages to the general public, made doubly and more profoundly critical by new opportunities for observation, furnished by the recent war with Spain, we are aware that our most appreciative readers will be found among the daily diminishing ranks of our comrades and their circle of friends whose memories reach back to the period of which it treats,ñforty years ago.

It is not without some feeling of complacence that we have reviewed these records of the endurance of hardships, which, in the inexperience of early youth, we accepted as the inevitable, and carelessly turned into jest as the easiest and quickest way of getting over the misfortunes of war, and we have closely followed the trials to which were submitted those innate impulses of courage inspired by patriotism, that found us all ready to mount at the call of ìBoots and Saddles,î and, harnessing our impatience to the wheels of the grumbling cannon and caissons, to seek the field wherever, whenever and howsoever we were directed.

To our aid in this work we have called the sister of a soldier of the 18th Massachusetts Regiment Infantry, who has brought to her task that which is considered indispensable in the historian of a distant period, ìthe familiarized knowledge of many years.î Her impressions do not all come at second hand. They are the product of memories transplanted from a living past, to assist in the selection of scenes in camp, on the march, and in the field, and to present them in a form of ready reference for the use of its members and their descendants for all time, to bear witness to the labors, sacrifices and achievements of the 5th Massachusetts Battery, Light Artillery.

Nathan Appleton

Henry D. Scott

John F. Murray

Thomas E. Chase

George L. Newton

Committee