"To arms! To arms! : Men of Massachusetts! Your country is in danger! ... Fill up the regiments then, and let not Massachusetts be behindhand in sending her quota of troops ... "
"To arms! To arms! : Men of Massachusetts! Your country is in danger! ... Fill up the regiments then, and let not Massachusetts be behindhand in sending her quota of troops ... "
Description:
After his older brother, Henry Pickering Bowditch, enlisted, Charles, then finishing his sophomore year at Harvard College, sought his father's permission to do the same. When his request was refused, Bowditch wrote, "The country must be aroused to the sense of its dangers. The regiments are not filling up fast and if this goes on the barbarous system of drafting must be resorted to. The country wants soldiers and I think that every gentleman and gentleman's son ought to go into the field. Such a proceeding would exercise a good influence on everybody. Nobody here seems to be awake." He then printed and distributed this broadside to encourage enlistment and appeal to the reader's sense of patriotism and history. Charles P. Bowditch joined the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers in May, 1863, as lieutenant and then captain and was discharged due to chronic illness in August, 1864 Broadside printed and distributed by Charles Pickering Bowditch to encourage enlistment
