Governor John A. Andrew to Edwin M. Stanton, May 19, 1862

Boston, May 19,1862.

Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,

Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.:

Sir, — I have this moment received a telegram in these words, viz: —

The Secretary of War desires to know how soon you can raise and organize three or four more infantry regiments and have them ready to be forwarded here to be armed and equipped. Please answer immediately and state the number you can raise.

L. Thomas, Adjutant-General.

A call so sudden and unforewarned finds me without materials for an intelligent reply. Our young men are all preoccupied by other views. Still, if a real call for three regiments is made I believe we can raise them in forty days. The arms and equipments would need to be furnished here. Our people have never marched without them. They go into camp while forming into regiments and are drilled and practised with arms and march as soldiers. To attempt the other course would dampen enthusiasm and make the men feel that they were not soldiers, but a mob. Again, if our people feel that they are going into the South to help fight rebels, who will kill and destroy them by all the means known to savages, as well as civilized man; will deceive them by fraudulent flags of truce and lying pretences (as they did the Massachusetts boys at Williamsburg), will use their negro slaves against them, both as laborers and as fighting men, while they themselves must never “fire at an enemy's magazine” I think that they will feel that the draft is heavy on their patriotism.

But, if the President will sustain General Hunter,¹ recognize all men, even black men, as legally capable of that loyalty the blacks are waiting to manifest, and let them fight, with God and human nature on their side, the roads will swarm if need be with multitudes whom New England would pour out to obey your call.

Always ready to do my utmost, I remain most faithfully,

Your obedient servant,

John A. Andrew.

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¹ Lincoln's proclamation, cancelling Hunter's, bears the same date with this letter of Andrew's, May 19.

SOURCE: Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew: Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865, Volume 2, p. 11-13

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: January 24, 1861

I do not propose that the regiment which I am planning should be called anti-slavery in special, or have a platform or a policy; if others attribute these things, it is their own affair. I expect men to join me from personal sympathy with me; if they ask for pledges, of course none will be given them.

. . . The only way for anti-slavery men to share in the control is to share in the sacrifices. . . . All I ask, now, is an opportunity to fight, under orders, carrying with me such men as I can raise. I will risk the rest; having faith in the laws of gravitation.

Our two military companies were both ordered; one has gone to Boston, and not a person in town seemed to think of anything but seeing them off. Margaret¹ reports not a boy at the High School; then the male teachers vanished; then the girls.

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¹ A neice.

SOURCE: Mary Thatcher Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 154