William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 1

The Governor warmly disclaims any such intention. He proposed the name of Colonel Wilde in obedience to the suggestion made to him from the War Department, to name a suitable person for such a position. He knew of no one to whom the trust could be more properly committed. He was of the right age; a graduate of Harvard College; a physician by profession. His first military experience was as a surgeon in the Crimea, on the staff of Omar Pacha. He raised a company in the beginning of the war, and went with it as captain, in the First Regiment of three years men from Massachusetts. He was in the first Bull-Run fight, and in all the battles before Richmond, in one of which he was severely wounded. As colonel of the Thirty-fifth Regiment, he fought at South Mountain and Antietam, where he lost his left arm.

The letter of the Governor appears to have been satisfactory to Mr. Stanton, as Colonel Wilde was commissioned brigadier-general April 24, eight days after it was written.

The defenceless condition of Boston Harbor had from the first attracted the serious attention of the Governor and of the community generally. The seizure of our merchant vessels upon the high seas by rebel cruisers, and the frequent reports of the approach of the ‘Alabama’ upon our coast, contributed immensely to the question of defence. Hardly a month had elapsed since the war begun that the Governor had not pressed the subject upon the attention of the Government. The Legislature had appropriated a million and a half of dollars for coast defences, which were never undertaken, because of protests of the War and Navy Departments against it, claiming that it would interfere with their arrangements, and promising to supply the needed demand from the available resources of the Government. Nothing, however, commensurate to the necessities of the case was done.

On the 27th of April, the Governor brought the matter to the personal attention of the President, in a letter of several pages, and written in his best manner. He requested the President to ‘consider the importance of detailing immediately an iron-clad vessel of war for the exclusive duty of protecting the harbors on the Massachusetts coast, and particularly the harbor ’