In its preliminary campaign the 57th Massachusetts suffered terribly in battle, which had disastrous repercussions when combined with the usual heavy losses due to disease and desertion that were endemic to Civil War regiments. WILKINSON has selected a regiment that, because of its late organization date, entered combat for the first time against seasoned Confederate veterans. By the war's end, its thinned ranks were a true testament to its hard service. During the siege of Petersburg, which extended from mid-June to the following April, the 57th Massachusetts performed its share of tedious and debilitating trench duties, and it also participated in some of the most vicious battles, such as the "Crater," Weldon Railroad and Fort Stedman. Only at Cold Harbor, where it had the good fortune to serve in a reserve capacity, did its men escape war's horrors. From the confusion and disaster at the Wilderness, to the disappointing failure at Spotsylvania, to the lost opportunity at Petersburg, the 57th Massachusetts was at the center of the maelstrom. Over the next 12 months the regiment was at the heart of Grant's campaign against Lee. The 57th Massachusetts arrived just in time for the bloody spring offensive of the Army of the Potomac. The regiment received its indoctrination into army drill and discipline there in Massachusetts, and by April authorities rushed it off to the Virginia theater, where the regiment received its real training on the field of battle. They joined for a variety of reasons, but bounty money was almost always a serious consideration. Its enlistees were a hodgepodge of Irishmen, Canadians, Southerners and local boys, mostly raw recruits with a sprinkling of veterans. The 57th Massachusetts was raised in early 1864, as part of a major Union recruitment drive to fortify Ulysses S. The end product, Mother, May You Never See the Sights I Have Seen, is an interesting and handsomely written study that immediately ranks as one of the best regimental histories. Wilkinson, who had been reading about the Civil War for nearly four decades, knew that there was much more to the experiences of the 57th Massachusetts than the regimental historian had addressed, and he embarked upon an effort to gather everything available on the unit. The only published volume was a sanitized history, written around the turn of the century by a captain in the regiment. His initial searches proved unsatisfactory. WHAT LED Warren Wilkinson to write a history of the 57th Massachusetts Infantry was a quest for information on his great-great-grandfather, one of its Civil War corporals. The Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Army Of the Potomac, 1864-1865 MOTHER, MAY YOU NEVER SEE THE SIGHTS I HAVE SEEN
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