Excerpt from History of the Ninth and Tenth Regiments Rhode Island Volunteers, and the Tenth Rhode Island Battery, in the Union Army in 1862 The following letter from Chaplain Clapp, of the Tenth, has been received since the completion of the history. On account of its general interest to the comrades, it is printed in this separate form to accompany the book. My Dear Spicer: I greatly rejoice in the new proof of their good sense which our comrades of "the Ninth and Tenth Rhode Island" have shown in selecting you as their historian, to make lasting record of our varied experiences in the days of the Rebellion. A glance, which you have kindly allowed me, at the proof sheets of your volume, more than satisfies, - it delights me, with the taste, discrimination, and truthfulness with which you have executed your delicate task. That you deserve well of us all, I know from personal observation, so far as your story of the campaign of the Tenth and our companion battery is concerned, and I cannot doubt your equal faithfulness in what you have said of our sister regiment. The record is an honorable one. True, we whose service was limited to that campaign cannot claim to be survivors of bloody battlefields. We have no scars to show in token of the sharpness of rebel sabres or the true aim of rebel rifles. We may not in old age shoulder our crutches and show how fields were won, but "the boys" whose loyalty you so well commemorate, did faithfully the one work to which they were so suddenly called in that serious emergency. They defended the capital from threatened invasion at a most critical time. They prevented the execution of a rebel plan, the carrying out of which by the enemy would have been disastrous in the extreme; and when unexpectededly ordered to the front for closer and more deadly contact with the foe, not a man of our inexperienced and comparatively untrained force held back. 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.