Massachusetts’s
clergyman Stephen Barker was so stirred by Lincoln’s first call for volunteers
that he gave up his parish and became chaplain of the Thirteenth Massachusetts
Regiment.
This regiment was organized in July
1861 as the Fourteenth Massachusetts Infantry (but afterwards changed as above)
under the command of Colonel William B. Green, of Boston, and was immediately
ordered to Fort Albany, which was then an outpost of defense guarding the Long
Bridge over the Potomac, near Washington.
Refusing to be left behind, his wife became a nurse. Though she had no formal
training, she served in field hospitals for more than three years before
becoming a superintendent for a U. S. Sanitary Commission.
