From this time Wilder Dwight seemed to have but one interest in life. To see the Massachusetts Second become, in organization and in discipline, a perfect regiment, and to do, in connection with it, all that such a power could do, towards suppressing the Rebellion,—this was the aim which bounded his horizon. He was appointed, by Colonel Gordon's recommendation, Major of the regiment, which position he held until June 13, 1862, when he was promoted by Governor Andrew as its Lieutenant-Colonel. During what remained to him of life, the history of the regiment is his history. ‘All I want,’ he once wrote, ‘is the success of the regiment itself,—nothing more or less; and there is room enough for distinction for any one who does his share in any regiment to make it a good one.’ To no service assigned him by his superior officers was he ever found unequal. And as at the very entrance upon the practice of the law he had the confidence of one who had spent his life in courts, so now, a beginner in military duty, he was relied upon by his superiors in command. The spirit which he carried into his new profession is best illustrated by extracts from his own letters. On the 15th of July, 1861, just one week from the day the regiment left Boston, while ‘in bivouac at Bunker Hill,’ he writes:—--
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Sever and Francis, 1866.
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