Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/124

 I02 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

in spite of his want of advantages, at the age of eighteen, he was well enough advanced to begin the occupation of teaching, with marked success. He had also found time to read much history and the lives of all the great mihtary chieftains of ancient and modern times. And so, by inheritance, and by his early training and reading, he had become unconsciously fitted for the special work that lay before him, and had cultivated that patriotic devotion and ability for military affairs which have won for him an honorable place among the eminent soldiers of our own State, and made him, as confessed on all sides, one of the best volunteer officers in the War of the Rebellion. Continuing his studies, while teaching winters and working on the farm summers, he mastered all the higher English branches usually taught in colleges, besides making some good attainment in Latin and French, and going through a large amount of miscellaneous reading.

In 1850, he married Ursula J., daughter of Jason Harris, Esq., of Nelson, but soon after the birth of a son both mother and child died. After this affliction he returned to his former occupation of teaching, and began the study of law. While thus engaged, he represented his native town two years in the legislature, serving the second term as chairman of the committee on Education.

Pursuing his study of law at Exeter, and afterwards at Concord, he was admitted to the bar in Merrimack County, in i860, and had just entered upon the practice of his profession at Concord when the war broke out. Throwing aside his law books, he took up the study of mihtary tactics, and joined a company of young men then forming in Concord under the first call of Presi- dent Lincoln for seventy-five thousand men. He volunteered as a private, as did each member ; but when it came to organization, he was chosen captain of the company; and finding that the quota of New Hampshire was full under the first call, immediately volunteered, with a large number of his men, for three years or during the war, under the second call.

The company was the celebrated " Goodwin Rifles," Co. B, 2d N. H. Vols., armed with Sharpe's rifles by the exertions of Captain Griffin and his friends, — the only company sent from the State armed with breech-loaders. He recruited his company to the maximum, joined the Second Regiment at Portsmouth, and was mustered into the United States service on the fourth of June, 1861. At the first battle of Bull Run he commanded his company, and handled it with remarkable coolness and bravery, although it was under a sharp fire and lost twelve men, killed and wounded.

After that battle, his regiment was brigaded with others at Bladensburg under General Joseph Hooker. Finding Company B, with their Sharpe's rifles, very effective, General Hooker obtained for Captain Griffin a leave of absence, and gave him letters of recommendation to the Governor of New Hampshire, with a view to having him raise a regiment or battalion, armed with similar weapons ; but the State authorities, hke those at Washington and many of the officers of the regular army, were not up to the advanced ideas of the times. They refused to sanction the step on the ground of the great expense, and Captain Griffin returned to his company.

On the twenty-sixth of October, 1861, he was promoted to be lieutenant- colonel of the 6th N. H. Vols., and soon joined his regiment at its rendezvous in Keene. That regiment proceeded to Washington, was assigned to General Burnside's expedition to North Carolina, and landed on Hatteras Island in January, 1862. On the second of March, it removed to Roanoke Island, and •on the eighth, Lieut-Colonel Griffin was sent, with six companies, to aid General J. G. Foster in an expedition to Columbia. On his return to camp, the colonel having resigned, he found himself in command of the regiment.

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