Despite the glaring mistake in the headline, an interesting story.
BOSTON —
Alone in his hotel room after a solemn dinner with his brother, the newly enlisted Army surgeon took up pen and paper to make the first installment on his promise.
"I have a few moments," he wrote to his wife, just 10 miles up the coast in Lynn. "I am in such a whirl that I can hardly think much less write."
Just four days earlier, on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery had fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, igniting the Civil War. On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln issued an urgent appeal "to all loyal citizens," seeking 75,000 volunteers to quell the rebellion.
The very next day, Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed - my great-grandfather - was on a train south, bound for Boston, and for war....
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