The Old First Massachusetts Coast Artillery in War and Peace. Frederick Morse Cutler

artillery affords the most magnificent team-sport in the world. Three officers and sixty-seven men work together in firing the twelve-inch rifle, and each contributes something essential to the success of the shot. Twelve inches is the bore of the rifled gun; forty-two or more feet the length; $45,000 is the cost, and the carriage represents an investment of $40,000 more. It is loaded with three hundred twenty-five pounds of powder, and a projectile weighing more than half a ton, costing upwards of $150, and sufficient in itself to destroy a hostile warship. The target, the moving target, at which the shot is fired, floats on the water at a distance of eight to sixteen miles; and without the use of powerful glasses is all but invisible. Range and direction (azimuth) are determined by a combination of most delicate scientific observing instruments. Now the great gun swings majestically into place. “Fire!” A concussion follows as if many railroad trains were coupling—mighty, stunning. Then ensue seconds of eager watching from the battery, but not many such; for the projectile travels twice as fast as sound itself. Up spouts a column of sea water beside the target. A hit. And this will be repeated once per minute until the enemy is put out of action.

      Camping, shooting, gymnastics, hiking, fencing, horseback-riding, and even boating and aviation all enter into the training of the Coast Artilleryman. Opportunity is given to learn much of mechanical, electrical and engineering science.

      On its lighter side military life includes balls, parades, dinners, theater-parties, smokers, and the annual January athletic games. Once in four years there is a trip to the inauguration at Washington; lesser excursions occupy some of the intervening time. Most valuable of all are the life-long friendships formed by men who stand side by side in the service of the country. These endure and keep warm after all else is forgotten.

      The better soldier a man learns to be, the better citizen he makes himself. Such training in team-work is of priceless value; this service has become a passport to business success, and today there is no better recommendation for employment. Civil Service commissioners recognize the enhanced usefulness of the trained soldier by according him preference in government appointments.

      Six of the companies come from stations outside of Boston—Brockton, Cambridge, Chelsea, Fall River, New Bedford and Taunton being represented. Even more truly than the Boston companies these organizations offer advantages of the greatest value; each is the pride of its own home city; each ranks amongst the leading social bodies in its community; and the armories, all fine structures, are popular club houses.

      Altho it may be hard to “live up” to the responsibilities of a noble ancestry and one is ever open to the unkind suggestion that his best is like the potatoes, “under ground,” still it is not the fault of a man, nor of an organization, if the record of the past contains worthy, and even heroic, passages. Not only is the Coast Artillery the surviving heir to most of Boston’s finest militia traditions and honors, but by the consolidation of 1878 it also inherits the proud record of the Third Regiment, the militia force of Pilgrim-land and the Cape. Even a more modest organization than this would be excused for feeling thrills when it remembers “auld lang syne”; and the gentle reader will peruse these pages in vain if he fails to see why.

      Some day the command will establish a military museum of its own, in which to display its trophies and relics. Its battle-flags have mostly passed out of its reach and are irrevocably in the possession of the Commonwealth. When one visits the Hall of Flags and gazes reverently upon the tattered silk banners of the 1st Infantry, five in number, the 3d Infantry, two of them, the 24th Infantry, two, the 42d Infantry and the 43d and the 44th, two each, and in the Spanish War case the two colors of the 1st Heavy Artillery, seventeen flags in all, one may possibly remember that a Massachusetts Coast Artilleryman would be whispering to himself, “Those are our battle-flags.” And there are many other colors in the cases, under which members of the command fought during the Civil War—those of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 13th, 29th Infantry Regiments, and the 4th Heavy Artillery.

      Indeed the sole battle-flag remaining from the Mexican War, that of the 1st Mass. Volunteer Infantry, may be claimed as a Coast Artillery trophy, since it was given by those who had borne it into the custody of the veterans who made up the National Guards, the 9th Co. of Coast Artillery. The National Guards eventually surrendered this color to the Commonwealth. No less a personage than Gen. Winfield Scott had been the original donor of the flag.

      In some unexplained manner, three colors carried by the 1st Infantry during the Civil War escaped the State collector, and are preserved with religious care at the South Armory. They are the American flag presented by former Boston men who had “gone west” and there organized the National Guard of San Francisco, a blue infantry color presented in 1863 by the City of Boston, and a white State flag retained to replace a lost Commonwealth color presented by the people of Chelsea. As often as May 25 rolls around, veterans of the regiment bear these flags, together with the present National colors of the command, to the hall where the anniversary dinner is held; and under the sacred silken folds the white-haired warriors renew the memories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, of Gettysburg and Spotsylvania, while they smack their lips over something more savory than the hard-tack and muddy coffee of bygone days. Last winter these same veterans reviewed the Corps in the South Armory. As they came marching on the floor under their tattered battle-flags amid deafening cheers from hundreds of onlookers, strong men could hardly choke back their tears.

      Post 23, G. A. R., of Boston, and Post 35 of Chelsea possess some 1st Regiment relics.

      Headquarters will contribute to the regimental museum the sleeve of Drum Major James F. Clark’s coat, with its wonderful collection of service-stripes indicative of forty-one years’ service. Sergeant Clark died in office in 1910. There is also an old commission in a frame on the Headquarters’ wall, that of George S. Newell as Colonel of the 1st Reg., 1st Bri., 1st Div., dated May 11, 1839, signed by John P. Bigelow, Secretary of the Commonwealth; and the warrant of Daniel Horatio Belknap as Quartermaster Sergeant of the 1st Reg., 3d Bri., 1st Div., issued July 20, 1824, by Col. Louis Lerow. Between 1831 and 1834 the Roxbury Artillery had been temporarily attached to the 1st Reg., 1st Bri., but in Colonel Newell’s day we had no connection at all with that organization; the Fusiliers were a part of the 1st Reg., 3d Bri., in 1824, when Sergt. Belknap was in office.

      Partly because it is the oldest company, and partly because it has always been made up of men who “do things,” the 1st Company possesses by far the finest collection of historical valuables of all the regiment. Indeed fully one-half of the regimental museum is already collected, and belongs to Capt. Joseph H. Hurney’s organization. In their room one sees Capt. J. J. Spooner’s original commission signed in 1784 by Gov. John Hancock, the first flag carried by the company—a flag with fourteen stars, the complete parchment roll of members from the very beginning, a drum which helped to keep up the company’s courage at Blackburn’s Ford and Bull Run, specimen uniforms and arms showing the development of military skill and taste during each period of the company’s history, and a small cannon captured by Washington from the British at Yorktown in 1781, and at Williamsburg in 1862 taken from the Confederates by a company of ours.

      Shooting, military and athletic trophies almost without number adorn the walls of Headquarters and of each company room; but these can hardly be included in a regimental museum. The 6th and 7th Companies hold Knox trophies as proof of their preeminent excellence in artillery work, and will doubtless resent any suggestion of contributing them to anyone else; certainly other companies have been trying hard enough to get this, and have not succeeded even for a single year. But the museum will have the 2d Company’s original drum, dated 1798, and with it the first flag. Their most valuable possession is a Stuart oil portrait of their “patron saint,” George Washington. The same company also display a set of ancient by-laws inherited from their predecessor, the Independent Light Infantry, and perhaps also a set of their ancient breast-plates. If more is demanded, members of the company will fill their lungs and emit the old “tiger” yell or growl; and this is certain to prove sufficient so far as the 2d Company is concerned. The 3d Company room does not contain much of historical interest. Their proudest possession is an entry on the records of the Governor’s Council dated May 11, 1787, wherein it appears that a petition presented by Thomas Adams and fifty-three others was granted, and that a military company, the Independent Boston Fusiliers, was formally established in the eyes of the law.