Excerpt from The Fifty-Third Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers: Comprising Also a History of the Siege of Port Hudson The work of writing the history of a regiment in the United States service a quarter of a century after the events in which it participated, would seem not easy; but it sometimes happens that distance of time, as well as distance of space, will give us a clearer perception of objects we would examine, or events we would describe. The writer has been led into this work to endeavor to gratify the wishes often expressed by many. Members of the regiment, that its experiences might be gathered and put' in tangible form for reference, and also in accordance with a vote passed at the reunion of 1887 requesting him to undertake it. His position as adjutant of the regiment naturally brought upon him the duty of keeping some account of its daily movements from beginning to end, and as it happens that for a large portion of the time he kept a private journal of all events of note, he had considerable data to build upon; and the official records of the regiment at the State House, the private diaries Of some members of the regi ment, and the newspapers of the time have been at his service. It cannot be expected that a record Of the operations Of so small a portion of the great body of loyal men which subdued the gigantic rebellion of 1861 - 1865 will have great interest for the general reader, although its daily life, its marches, battles. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.