. Bearing arms in the Twenty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, 1861-1865 [electronic resource] . ys longer My business was done there. If General Grant could not join me there, I hadnothing to do there. ... All details were left to my judg-ment. I was sorry to learn at the time of the loss of the Twenty-Seventh, which you recall to my mind. They were good men andtrue, so far as I know ; but it was the want of proper picket sys-tem in front of the brigade to which they were attached, and thenot putting up of some defences before the line of that brigade,
. Bearing arms in the Twenty-seventh Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, 1861-1865 [electronic resource] . ys longer My business was done there. If General Grant could not join me there, I hadnothing to do there. ... All details were left to my judg-ment. I was sorry to learn at the time of the loss of the Twenty-Seventh, which you recall to my mind. They were good men andtrue, so far as I know ; but it was the want of proper picket sys-tem in front of the brigade to which they were attached, and thenot putting up of some defences before the line of that brigade,that caused the severe loss. It is hardly the fault of the command-ing general that a brigade gets surprised (!) in a fog, especiallyif the precautions which he has directed have not been taken bythat brigade. At a personal interview with General Butler at the Execu-tive Chamber, the author asked an explanation of the closingpart of this letter, and received the following reply : — Boston, March 17, ask an explanation as to what I refer to as defective picketsystem in front of Heckmans Brigade, a part of which your regi-. Battle-field of Orewrys Bluff. May 16, 1864. MASS. HISTORY i> rerjhmcnls .1] ^VbM lroops Roads GEN. BUTLER STILL IN THE FOG. 287 ment was on the morning of the 16th of May. I do not mean tosay, for I do not know, that pickets were not thrown out, and per-haps they had covered themselves ; of that I do not know. But Ido know that in front of the line that was not surprised, and thepart of the line where the surprise was repulsed, there was tele-graph wire stretched about the height of a mans knee, far enoughin front to entirely disorder the enemy as in the fog they tumbledover it. And the same precaution was ordered in front of Heck-mans Brigade, but there no telegraph wire was stretched, and sofar as I know, no impediment thrown in its place. To that I thenattributed, and now upon further information I do attribute, t
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