Mass or Ass? A Civil War Puzzle at the General Artemas Ward House Museum

The Ward House Museum in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts was given to Harvard University in 1925 as a “Public and Patriotic Museum” in memory of the first commander of the Patriot forces in New England during the early months of the Revolutionary War, Major General Artemas Ward. Ward was superseded by George Washington following his arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts in July, 1775. Ward continued to serve as one of Washington’s generals, and subsequently in the U.S. House of Representatives. The general died in 1800, and his house remained in his family for a further 125 years accumulating yet more material things with each generation. Among those many things is a deteriorated but carefully preserved U.S. flag. This is clearly a military color, the guidon of a particular unit. This paper addresses how the guidon of the 6^th Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery came to be in the Ward House. Thomas Ward Carruth, a great-grandson of General Artemas Ward, served with the battery in the Civil War. More particularly, this paper investigates why the initial letter of the abbreviation of the name of the commonwealth has been carefully cut out to leave “ASS.” The explanation offered involves the battery’s perilous exposure, shame, and triumph during the Battle of Baton Rouge in August 1862. This act of excision would seem to be no mere prank. Rather, it exemplifies sectional tensions within the Union, and among the regiments raised by its various states. The deliberate removal of a single letter from a battle standard preserved as a family relic in a small New England house museum exposes the fragility of the Union armed forces on a national level during America’s greatest hour of peril.