Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories

By Amy L. Fraher and Buck Zaidel

Compelling first-hand accounts of the war, lavishly illustrated with rare period photos

Winner of the Bruce Fraser Award (2016)

Voices of Civil War soldiers rise from the pages of Heroes for All Time. This book presents the war straight from the minds and pens of its participants; rich passages from soldiers' letters and diaries complement hundreds of outstanding period photographs, most previously unpublished. The soldiers' moving experiences, thoughts, and images animate each chapter. Written accounts by nurses and doctors, soldiers' families, and volunteers on the home front add intriguing details to our picture of the struggle, which claimed roughly 6,000 Connecticut lives. Rare war artifacts—a bone ring carved on the battlefield or a wad of tobacco acquired from a rebel picket—connect the reader to the men and boys who once owned them. From camp life to battle, from Virginia to Louisiana, from the opening shot at Bull Run to the cheering at Appomattox, Heroes for All Time tells the story of the war through vivid, personal portrayals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9780819571175

Amy L. Fraher

Dione Longley is an independent historian and writer. For two decades, she served as director of the Middlesex County Historical Society. She annotated The Old Leather Man, by Dan DeLuca and co-author of Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories.

Book preview

Heroes for All Time

A DRIFTLESS CONNECTICUT SERIES BOOK

This book is a 2015 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series, for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or written by a Connecticut author.

Heroes for All Time

Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories

Dione Longley and Buck Zaidel

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

© 2015 Dione Longley and Peter A. Zaidel

All rights reserved

Manufactured in China

Designed by David Wolfram

Typeset in Palatino, ITC Stone Sans, and OPTI York

The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Longley, Dione.

Heroes for all time : Connecticut Civil War soldiers tell their stories/

Dione Longley and Buck Zaidel.

pages cm. — (A Driftless Connecticut series book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8195-7116-8 (cloth : alk. paper) —

ISBN 978-0-8195-7117-5 (ebook)

1. Connecticut—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 2. Connecticut—

History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives.

3. Soldiers—Connecticut—History—19th century. 4. United States—

History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 5. United States—History—

Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives. 6. United States—History—

Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. I. Zaidel, Buck. II. Title.

E499.L66 2014

973.7’446—dc23                            2014022334

5 4 3 2 1

Cover illustration: Eight comrades in the 26th Connecticut taking their ease in their home away from home in Louisiana (photographer unknown). Courtesy of the Middlesex County Historical Society.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

This is a book of stories.

Every Civil War soldier had a story. The stories were as varied as the men and boys who enlisted. And over 50,000 of them came from Connecticut.

In this book you will hear the voices of those Connecticut soldiers—not the interpretations of modern Civil War scholars, but the words of the men who actually fought the war.

Many were eager to share their war experiences in letters home, often finding relief in pouring out their feelings. That night after the battle I never shall forget the groans and sreiks of the wounded, a shaken soldier reported to his mother.¹ Others kept diaries, recording dramatic events and snippets of daily life. Thanksgiving. Snow Storm. Shoes full of holes, think of home, wrote a woebegone teenager from Gales Ferry.² And in the years after the war, some veterans felt the need to preserve their stories in memoirs. A Suffield cigar maker hoped his reminiscences would awaken in my Children a deep love of the Government that their Father shouldered his musket to defend.³

Some soldiers wrote eloquently, like Henry Camp, a Yale graduate and infantry officer: We were to storm the fort. Our hearts beat high and fast … The feeling was not of doubt or shrinking, but of curiosity mingled with firm resolve.⁴ Just as moving were the words of men like Lucien Dunham of Warehouse Point, who mused about the Confederates and the war: it dident sean like they wear enmeys to us if they would let the soilders come together they would settle this prutey quick.⁵

While some soldiers used the written word, many men chose to document their history in a different medium: photography. The camera caught their proud expressions as they posed in their new uniforms; or their weathered, philosophical faces transformed by hard service and the appalling scenes they had witnessed. In some images, a man’s intensity of gaze conveyed his resolve more clearly than any letter could.

Soldiers often brought home artifacts that held important memories. Levi Jewett carefully preserved his felt hat, marked with a bloodstained gash from a shell fragment that wounded him. George Stannard’s family treasured the bone ring he carved on the battlefield at Antietam. Such personal mementoes are vehicles to the past, connecting us to a soldier’s story with surprising immediacy.

Together, the individual stories of Connecticut soldiers create an astonishing whole that lays out the war before us. We offer this book so that, as one old soldier put it, our children’s children may see with their eyes, as we saw with our eyes, the scenes and places of the great War for the Union. Lest we and they forget.⁶

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A great many kind people went out of their way to help us. Dean Nelson, Museum Administrator of the Museum of Connecticut History, made the museum’s collection available to us time and again. Dean provided twenty-five years of Civil War tutelage, along with some memorable lines like Right as rain and If you’re going to buy a fake, make it a good one. Andy deCusati gave us his insights and advice. Bill McFarland graciously allowed the Wadhams brothers to be reunited. John Giammatteo, with camera, skill, and patience, was always there when we needed him.

At historical societies and museums in Connecticut and elsewhere, staff people were infinitely helpful. In particular we thank Deborah D. Shapiro at the Middlesex County Historical Society; Rich Malley, Diana McCain, Nancy Finlay, Judy Johnson, Sierra Dixon, and Karen DePauw of the Connecticut Historical Society; Gail Kruppa at the Torrington Historical Society; and Don McCue of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine.

We are also indebted to the New Haven Museum, Litchfield Historical Society, Deep River Historical Society, the Gunn Memorial Museum of Washington, Connecticut, Stamford Historical Society, the Cheshire Historical Society, Danbury Historical Society, Mansfield Historical Society, the New England Civil War Museum, the United States Army Military History Institute, the Virginia Historical Society, the Montana Historical Society, the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Ted Alexander at Antietam National Battlefield, National Park Service, and Eric Leonard at Andersonville National Historic Site, National Park Service, also gave us their help.

We were fortunate to have the help of professionals at libraries and archives at colleges and universities, as well as public and private libraries. Our thanks go to Suzy Taraba and Leith Johnson of Special Collections and Archives at Wesleyan University, Peter J. Blodgett of the Huntington Library, Kate Collins and Valerie Gillispie of Duke University Archives, Tom Mullusky of Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Mary Witkowski at the Bridgeport History Center, the Southington Library and Barnes Museum, Edith B. Nettleton Historical Room at the Guilford Free Library, the Pearce Museum at Navarro College, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the State Archives at the Connecticut State Library, and of course the Library of Congress and National Archives.

Many generous people kindly allowed us to use images and manuscripts from their collections: Linda L. Goodyear, Lawrence S. Matthew, the family of Horace Purdy, Don Troiani, C. Paul Loane, Joyce Werkman, Cathy Branch Stebbins, Mary Rounsavall, Toddy Turrentine, Chris and Louise Wilkinson, Jeff Kowalis, Mike McAfee, Thomas Harris, Nancy George, Diane Ulbrich, Ken and Jean Owings, Scott Hann, Bruce Rebman, Gary O’Neil, Ron Coddington, Calvin Goddard Zon, Ernie Barker, the family of Evelyn E. Packard, Soldierstories.org, Cal Packard at MuseumQualityAmericana.com, Cowan’s Auctions, as well as several private owners who chose to remain anonymous.

To those who helped us with research and advice, we extend our warmest thanks: Nick Picerno, Frederick W. Chesson, Dale E. Call of the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry website (www.17thcvi.org); Peter Drummey at the Massachusetts Historical Society; and Phil Devlin, Walt Powell, David Bingham, Michael Diamond, Jacques F. Peters, Geraldine and Bill Caughman. Mike McAfee and Roger Hunt answered countless questions over the years.

Our grateful thanks go to the ever-patient and supportive Suzanna Tamminen at Wesleyan University Press, as well as Leslie Starr, and Parker Smathers. Kudos to editors Cannon Labrie and the amazing E. Ann Brash. We offer our admiration to Dave Wolfram, who manages to be both a brilliant designer and a guy that we really like to be around.

To all those who helped us along the way—especially those whose names we’ve forgotten to include—we offer our gratitude. We each extend personal thanks as well.

Dione:

I’d like to blame my sister, Lois Thibault, for starting me down this path. At age seventeen, I felt the first magical shiver when Lois brought me to the Wilderness, where I stood in a hollow dug by soldiers in 1864, and imagined flames overtaking the wounded.

That first tentative interest in the Civil War was fostered years later by a dentist on his lunch hour, who showed up at the historical society where I worked and asked if we had any Civil War artifacts. Buck Zaidel’s enthusiasm was contagious, even to someone who didn’t know a haversack from a havelock. I quickly came to share his reverence for Civil War soldiers and Abraham Lincoln. After years of discussing history and playing hockey together, we hatched the idea for this book. Buck brought a highly trained eye and an unshakeable determination to the project, and remained patient and encouraging when I faltered. His dedication to honoring those who fought in the war continually inspires me.

Meredith Roberts, my sister, helped make this book a reality by keeping our household running smoothly while simultaneously cracking her metaphorical whip to keep me on task. Thank you, Meme. I’m also thankful for Kate Knopp’s thoughtful editing, Sarah Leavitt’s fine research, and Avery Schmitz’s curiosity.

My most heartfelt thanks go to Chris Diamond, always my cheerleader, who encouraged me at every step of this book. He read chapters, made suggestions, and somehow never looked bored when listening to my endless anecdotes about my dead guys. Our daughters Lilly Diamond and Meredith Diamond cheerfully traveled to battlefields, planted flowers on soldiers’ graves, and understood why I couldn’t be with them when I was researching and writing. Their three names should be on this book as surely as mine should.

Buck:

I thank Mom and Pop for the 1965 trip to Gettysburg, and the set of toy Civil War soldiers, which proved to be the seeds of a lifelong interest in history. Your enthusiastic and enduring support, encouragement, and occasional funding was and is most appreciated. Pop in particular would have loved to see this book and passion come to fruition. No folks ever did more for a number one son.

To S.P., Peter, and K.K.: thanks for the photo log, typing, transcriptions, and the annual trips to Gettysburg. Thank you for patiently listening to another story about some new little sepia-toned photo that’s neater than the last one. Peter said it best as a four-year-old at Civil War Day, when asked why we were there: To remember the soldier men.

Many thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Ramisk for many good newspaper clips on Lincoln and the Civil War, plus years of support for the C.W.R.A.F. Thanks to Unkie Mike for his insightful collecting philosophy: I like what I like.

I will always appreciate the late Bernie Rogers, whose stories of the early days of collecting could fill a ten-hour car ride (with no radio), and who always had a kid’s enthusiasm for what we would find at the next show. I thank Tom Harris for his keen artist’s eye that made me search for the fine line where art and history meet.

What Bobby Orr was to hockey, Di Longley is to Civil War research—always looking for stories of sacrifice, duty, courage, and humor buried in libraries, museums, graveyards, or webpages. And thank God for beer drinking after Panthers hockey games, or this book might never have been written.

CHAPTER ONE

Men of Connecticut!

WAR BEGINS, SPRING 1861

Men of Connecticut! to arms!! thundered the Hartford Daily Courant on April 13, 1861.¹

Splashed across the newspaper was the shocking news: The day before, the Confederate military had opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Forty-three Confederate guns and mortars pounded Sumter until the Union commander surrendered the fort to the Southerners. With undeniable certainty, civil war had arrived.

Suddenly the Land of Steady Habits was anything but. Agitated and confused, people drew together to discuss the astounding events.

Large groups were congregated upon the streets, and … the war was the all absorbing theme … In the conversation, heated and passionate, in which the crowds participated, there was but little to be heard except indignation at the outrage of the Southern Rebels. It was deep and earnest.²

In the quiet town of Winchester, it wasn’t much different. The bombardment of Fort Sumter flew over the telegraph wires on Saturday, April 14, 1861, and electrified the country, wrote resident John Boyd. The Winsted Herald declared grimly, Northern blood is up, and history, faster than the pen can write, is making.³

But not everyone was astonished by the South’s attack. For months, Governor William Buckingham had vigilantly followed each development in the national conflict. After Abraham Lincoln’s election on November 6, 1860, South Carolina had moved to secede. Six other states had quickly followed. When Southerners fired upon an unarmed ship bringing troops and supplies to Fort Sumter on January 9, 1861, Buckingham had quietly directed his state quartermaster to order equipment for 5,000 troops, and advised militia units around the state to fill their ranks and stand ready.

Just days before Fort Sumter fell, members of the Governor’s Foot Guard assembled at the state armory. Before long, many of the men—like George Haskell—would lay aside their ceremonial Foot Guard uniforms to don the utilitarian blue wool of the Union army.

An impassioned early broadside proclaimed, Your country is in danger! and urged Connecticut men to "drill, drill with such muskets as are at hand" in preparation for war.

Buckingham’s forethought was providential: on April 15, President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion. The governor turned to his citizens and asked for a regiment of volunteers. Would Connecticut respond?

FOR OR AGAINST

You must be counted for or against the government: which shall it be? the Hartford Daily Courant demanded. Descendants of those who marched under the banner of George Washington, which shall it be? … Sons of the old Charter Oak State, on which side do you enlist?⁴

The answer came swiftly, from virtually every community in the state. Men crowded into hastily called meetings in town halls, assembly rooms, and churches. In Hartford, men of all parties met, buried in a common grave all differences of opinion, and stood up as one man, brave, earnest, and steady for the contest. There was no faltering voice.⁵

Men gave passionate speeches, calling for volunteers to defend the nation. George Burnham, a clerk, "said that if he had been so mean and despicable as to hesitate about his duty to his country’s flag, he could not have hesitated longer after seeing the brave, determined men before him … what he could do, he would do, and with his whole heart."⁶

The dispute between North and South, and between Republicans and Democrats, was many years in the making. In 1859, John Brown, a deeply religious native of Torrington, Connecticut, brought the situation to a boiling point. A radical abolitionist, Brown advocated violence against slaveholders. He and twenty-one followers tried to initiate a slave rebellion, seizing a Federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the aim of arming slaves and abolitionists to fight for freedom. The plan failed. Captured and convicted of treason, an unrepentant Brown was executed on December 2, 1859. Brown’s plot outraged and frightened Southerners, and fueled the antagonism of Democrats everywhere. Slavery was now the issue dividing the nation, and the Republicans and Democrats squared off.

Farmers, teachers, factory workers and college students jumped to their feet and cried, I’ll go! At a meeting in Brooklyn, Connecticut, a town of perhaps 2,000 people, 60 men enlisted in the space of half an hour.⁷ John Boyd, the secretary of the state, enrolled in the 3rd Regiment—at the age of sixty-two.

O! Pa. you do not know what enthusiasm, what patriotism, there is here among all classes, a New Haven woman wrote excitedly to her father. Party distinctions are not named, every body is for our country and the right. Not only the American born but the Irish and the Germans [immigrants] are ready to take up arms in our common defense.⁸

WIDE AWAKE

The spirited support for the Union had emerged in Connecticut more than a year earlier, in February of 1860, sparked by the enthusiasm of a group of young Republican men in Hartford.

A group of Northerners had formed the Republican Party in 1854 to fight the spread of slavery into the nation’s western territories. Steadily, the Republicans gained support in the Northern states and began to challenge the long-established Democratic Party, which supported the extension of slavery.

In early 1860, Connecticut’s gubernatorial race was in full swing. Thomas H. Seymour, a pro-South Democrat, faced Republican governor William Buckingham, who strongly opposed the expansion of slavery. Connecticut’s election for governor was viewed as a bellwether for the upcoming presidential election.

It is the commencement of the contest between free and slave labor, announced the Hartford Daily Courant, adding that a vote this spring in Connecticut for Thomas H. Seymour, is a vote for slave labor in the territories. Laboring men—young men of enterprise and muscle—you are interested in this decision! … Shall the territories become plantation of negroes?—or shall they be the homes of … every man following his own plow, on his own soil, working for his own family?⁹

The young men that the Courant addressed were not asleep. Daniel Francis, twenty-four, and Edgar Yergason, nineteen, were clerks in a dry-goods store in Hartford. In February of 1860, the two attended a meeting of Hartford Republicans, which closed with an enthusiastic torchlight parade. Several hundred men lined up and lit kerosene torches, only to find that many were leaking. Just a few steps away was the store where Francis and Yergason worked; they hurried in and emerged with lengths of inexpensive black fabric which they and a few others tied around their necks like capes to protect their clothing from the kerosene. The capes gave the men a military look, and the procession’s organizer put them at the head of parade.

A few days later, Dan Francis, Ed Yergason, and thirty-four other young working men formed a Republican club. The group would promote the election of Republican candidates, beginning with William Buckingham. The members decided their organization would assume a military air: they would wear dark capes and caps as they escorted Republican speakers, kept order at political rallies, and generated enthusiasm for the upcoming elections. Francis, Yergason, and the others might as well have slapped the Democrats in the face with their gloves—the challenge was clear.¹⁰

Several weeks earlier, the Republican state convention’s chairman had spoken of the party’s wide-awake spirit.¹¹ Now the young men took up the phrase for their club: they became the Wide Awakes. For decades, political questions had been decided by older, established men; now, suddenly, the young men found they had a voice.

THE RAIL-SPLITTER ARRIVES

The club’s inception could not have come at a better time. Just a week before, Abraham Lincoln had come east. In New York, 1,500 people came to hear what the ungainly Illinois lawyer had to say about the issue facing the nation. Deftly, Lincoln showed that America’s founders had expected to regulate slavery. President Washington had signed a bill modifying slavery, and a majority of the signers of the Constitution voted in Congress to limit slavery.

Members of Hartford’s Wide Awakes, with their distinctive capes and swinging lanterns, posed for a historic portrait in 1860. In just a few short months, the group of young Republican men from Connecticut would create an astonishing impact on the presidential election.

As he drew to a close after more than an hour, he urged quietly, Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.¹² The audience exploded into cheers.

The next day Lincoln’s speech graced the front page of the New York Times, and suddenly his name was everywhere. Republican leaders in Connecticut invited him to speak. On March 5, he faced a large and curious audience at Hartford’s City Hall. Lincoln got right to the point: Whether we will have it so or not, the slave question is the prevailing question before the nation.

As he often did, Lincoln drew his listeners in with stories and metaphors.

Suppose, he said, he found a rattlesnake out in the field. I take a stake and kill him. Everybody would applaud the act and say I did right. But suppose the snake was in a bed where children were sleeping. Would I do right to strike him there? I might hurt the children; or I might not kill, but only arouse and exasperate the snake, and he might bite the children … Slavery is like this. Getting rid of the rattlesnake, he cautioned, took careful preparation.¹³

In New Haven the following evening, Lincoln met with the wildest scene of enthusiasm and excitement.¹⁴ But his next appearance was to be the blockbuster. In spite of rain, sleet, and the resulting mud, the streets of Meriden were thronged with people. When Lincoln’s train arrived, the crush at the station included Wide Awakes, several bands, and thousands of citizens who marched along with the speaker’s carriage to the hall. As an estimated 3,000 people crammed in, with hundreds more standing outside the open doors, Lincoln held the crowd spellbound.¹⁵

Lincoln’s visit left Connecticut Republicans primed for the turbulent campaigns. Around the state, young men immediately launched more Wide Awake chapters. As the gubernatorial election approached, the Wide Awakes rallied for Republican William Buckingham. The Democrats, just as tenacious, assailed Republican rallies and parades, hurling derision and rocks. On April 2, over 88,000 Connecticut voters cast their ballots. Buckingham won by 541 votes. The Wide Awakes breathed a collective sigh of relief.

WIDE AWAKE FOR LINCOLN

Six weeks later, the nation’s Republican convention chose Abraham Lincoln as its presidential nominee. Momentum can’t begin to describe the energy that the Wide Awakes now spread. All over the North and West, from Maine to California, hundreds of Wide Awake chapters sprang up and filled with members. In bigger cities, Wide Awakes filled car after car on special trains that brought them to rallies with other clubs.

Getting Lincoln into office promised to be a vicious battle. Wherever the fight is hottest, there is their post of duty, and there the Wide Awakes are found, declared the Hartford group in a circular it sent to other chapters.¹⁶

The day after Lincoln’s victory, the Hartford Times—a Democratic newspaper—predicted that the states that allowed slavery would "form a separate confederacy, and retire peaceably from the Union … We can never force sovereign States to remain in the Union when they desire to go out, without bringing upon our country the shocking evils of civil war, under which the Republic could not, of course, long exist."¹⁷

Democrats were bitter. Many would nurse their resentment against Lincoln, the Republicans, and abolitionists for years.

The Hartford Evening Press, November 7, 1860.

Daniel Gould Francis, a Hartford dry-goods clerk, helped found the Wide Awakes in March of 1860. When war broke out, Francis was one of the earliest to enlist, joining Connecticut’s 1st Regiment.

Females couldn’t enlist in the military, but that didn’t stop them from holding strong political opinions. This unidentified woman had her portrait taken in May of 1861, perhaps to give to a departing soldier. Like many civilians in the early weeks of the war, she donned a red, white, and blue ribbon that showed her loyalty—as did her inscription, Union now and forever.

The Wide Awakes, exultant in Lincoln’s victory, had little left to do. Their role in the presidential campaign had very possibly changed history.

It would be just a few months before Dan Francis and Ed Yergason put away their capes, donned the blue wool uniforms of Union infantry, and faced bullets instead of rocks as the fight moved from the political arena to the battlefield.

HELP FROM ALL QUARTERS

Now that war had arrived, those who couldn’t enlist found other ways to help. Factory owners promised to continue the salaries of employees who enlisted. Towns pledged to support their soldiers’ families: at a single meeting, Norwich citizens donated over $14,000.¹⁸ In Middletown, Dr. Baker proposed to treat soldiers’ families at no cost, and the photography team of Bundy and Williams promised free pictures of all the volunteers.¹⁹

Henry Schulze, a Hartford tailor, offered to cut out uniforms; other tailors throughout the state did the same. Thousands of Connecticut women joined them, sewing uniforms and haversacks in shifts, day and night.

Everywhere, Connecticut citizens showed their support for the Union. William North Rice, a Wesleyan student, described the scene in Middletown: The war spirit is rampant here. About half the people one meets in the street wear union badges—cockades, neck-ties, pins, buttons, etc… . Flags are hung out from many of the houses.²⁰

Already the national flag had come to have a new and strange significance, asserted one Connecticut writer. When the stars and stripes went down at Sumter, they went up in every county of our State.²¹

EVERYTHING IS WARLIKE

As Connecticut scrambled to organize troops, Massachusetts’ 6th Regiment had already filled its ranks and was on its way south. When their train pulled into the Hartford station on April 18, the Massachusetts boys found 2,500 Connecticut people waiting—at two o’clock in the morning—with enthusiastic speeches, food, and rousing cheers.²²

Dr. George Clary portrayed the mood in Hartford: Everything is warlike, the streets, the dress of people, the papers, etc. The air resounds with the din of war and nothing else can be thought or talked of.²³

CONNECTICUT VOLUNTEERS

Now Connecticut moved forward, rapidly filling three regiments during April and May of 1861. A regiment (usually 800 to 1,000 men) was composed of about ten companies, each assigned a letter.

Horace Purdy joined Company E of the 1st Regiment. A twenty-six-year-old hatter, Horace was a member of the Wooster Guard, a volunteer militia unit in Danbury. As events unfolded, the Wooster Guard gathered with a sense of rising urgency. Horace jotted the proceedings in his diary: "Wednesday April 17th … Attended a special meeting of the Guards at our Hall in the eve at which we volunteered our services to the Governor (Buckingham) as volunteers in the U States service in answer to the Presidents call for 75,000 troops. There were a large number of spectators at the room and when we with one voice offered our services, a long loud shout went up from the people."²⁴

Across the state, other militia units did the same, each acting as the nucleus of a company of 75 to 100 soldiers. Most community militias had drilled together and marched in parades, but few had serious military training. As the Hartford Daily Courant put it, The Hartford City Guard was not organized for the purpose of performing military duty … But the time has come when men are wanted to protect the government, and the Hartford City Guard have overthrown their character as holiday troops, and are putting themselves in condition for acceptance as volunteers.²⁵

Soldiers of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd regiments enlisted for only three months—a term so brief that it was hardly an impediment to the mostly young men who in a surge of patriotism had stepped forward to volunteer. Gustavus Dana, a toolmaker who enlisted in the 1st Regiment, noted: the general opinion was that the trouble would be ended and that we would be home at the end of the three months.²⁶

A Charter Oak insignia marked the militia uniform of an unidentified Connecticut man. Militia units from New Haven, Middletown, Danbury, Waterbury, and a host of other communities enlisted in Connecticut’s first three Civil War regiments in April and May of 1861 and made up the core of early officers.

While the governor appointed the colonels who would lead the regiments, the captaincy of each company was usually awarded to the man who had actively recruited most of its soldiers. Daniel Klein, the son of a German immigrant, became a captain in the 3rd Regiment after he enlisted scores of men from New Haven’s German community, with names like Gustav Voltz, Caspar Zimmerman, and Otto Frankel.

As each company filled, its soldiers left for training camp: New Haven, for the 1st and 2nd Regiments; Hartford, for the 3rd Regiment. As they left their hometowns, the soldiers found themselves surrounded by well-wishers. A young tinworker from Middletown described his departure:

In the early weeks of the war, stores around Connecticut could barely keep up with the demand for American flags, cockades, flag pins, and red, white, and blue ties. Other hot sellers were firearms and blankets for the soldiers, and military tactics manuals.

As our company were taking the [railroad] cars to Hartford, the rendezvous of the Third regiment, a good, honest farmer, from the village in which I had been living, came along … There was a large crowd around the cars, so that he could not get to the door, but he edged his way up to my window, and reaching up his hand, said, Pull me up, I want to see you. … He hung onto the car window for half a minute, wishing me the best of luck and good wishes generally, and then shook hands with me and left. As he shook hands, he left a five dollar bill in my hand … there was something in this man’s style that showed he was sincere in what he said; that his heart was with his country in the hour of trouble, and that his heart and sympathies were with those that were going to fight for the country’s honor. He might have made a patriotic speech two hours long, and it would not have impressed me as favorably as that five dollar bill did.²⁷

George Branch, a harness maker in Hartford, enlisted in Connecticut’s 1st Regiment on April 16. On the evening of April 19 he got married; the next morning, his regiment departed for camp.

Military fever struck the children as well, and boys like this one contributed to the din of war, many forming their own drum corps. This young drummer wore an improvised uniform based on the colorful Zouave style—baggy red pants, short jacket, and a fez or turban on the head—adapted from the uniform of the French Zouaves in the Crimean War, and popularized in America by Col. Elmer Ellsworth, whose Zouave drill team had toured and electrified the country in 1860.

Sgt. Andrew Knox, a housepainter in the 1st Regiment, left behind his nineteen-year-old bride, Sarah. In a letter from training camp, he tried to explain why: it was as much as I could do to tear myself away from you but my country called and I must obey my duty. For the first time the proud flag of my country has been insulted and disgraced it must be avenged at any cost and now my dear wife be true to me and I may soon [be] back but if I fall on the field of battle remember … that I die in [a] good cause the cause which our fathers fought for and died for.²⁸

THE BEGINNING OF SOLDIER LIFE

Once in camp, training began in earnest. Most men found it difficult, if not impossible, to adjust immediately to army life. Discontent amounting almost to mutiny in our Co on account of our rations, noted a private in the New Haven training camp of the 1st Connecticut.²⁹ A number of men ran the guard and headed into downtown New Haven for breakfast, earning a stern reprimand from their colonel.

But time was short. The Confederates could attack Washington at any time. Connecticut’s green troops had to rush to learn drills, tactics, and the army’s daily routine. Many volunteers had never handled a musket. Now they struggled to learn load in nine times, the intricate nine-step process to load and fire a single cartridge.

Many officers were as inexperienced as the enlisted men, and had to learn as they went along. They consulted their new copies of Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics for the Exercise and Manoeuvres of Troops When Acting as Light Infantry or Riflemen, more commonly called Hardee’s Tactics. The men of the 2nd Regiment, quartered in New Haven, swallowed their pride as boys at William Huntington Russell’s military academy taught them their drills.³⁰

Boys at the Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven—like this young drummer—had been learning military drills for years before the war began. Students there put the new soldiers of the 2nd Regiment through their paces, drumbeats keeping the marching soldiers in step. Some 300 of the Institute’s former students would go on to become commissioned officers in the Union army.

Connecticut issued 700 of these nonregulation blue-painted canteens to men in the 1st Regiment. The state quartermaster’s report described them as canteen-ration boxes. The upper half contained two compartments for liquids with brass spout caps marked patent April 2 1861 by Meriden inventor James Breckenridge. A swinging latch hook held the top and bottom compartments together. (Patent and quartermaster information courtesy of Dean Nelson, Museum Administrator, Museum of Connecticut History, Hartford.)

But being a soldier had its advantages, too: they hadn’t yet left for the war, and they were already heroes. O, it was a glorious thing to be a soldier in those days! recalled one volunteer.

[F]or those seventy-five thousand soldiers that had enlisted and were actually going to the war there was nothing too good. During the few weeks of preparation for the seat of war while they were at their rendezvous in their native states, they were petted and feasted, and grasped warmly by the hand with a fervent God bless you by the older people; smiled upon and urged to accept all kinds of presents, such as needle cases, pin-cushions, handkerchiefs, havelocks, pictorial newspapers, tracts and bibles, by beautiful ladies and bright-eyed girls, or invited into hotels and saloons and treated by some of their old chums who hadn’t quite courage enough to go for soldiers themselves, but heartily admired those who had; admitted to theaters and other places of amusement with no other ticket than enough of their soldier’s uniform on to show who they were.³¹

When they’d finished their brief training, the time came to depart for Washington. A great many had never been outside of the state. Opening ahead of them was a world they knew nothing about. Each man wondered what the future would bring for him.

CONNECTICUT’S LYON

Nearly 1,000 miles from his home in Connecticut, Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, a West Point graduate and a twenty-year veteran of the regular army, recognized the strategic importance of the arsenal at St. Louis, Missouri. Outfoxing the Rebel opposition in April of 1861, he secured most of the arms in the arsenal, thereby preventing thousands of guns from falling into Confederate hands.

Hoping to avoid fighting within Missouri, conservatives from the state called a meeting between its Southern-leaning militias and officers of federal forces. When Confederate sympathizers proposed that each side should disband its military units and keep troops of both armies out of the state, the red-headed Lyon spat: Rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any matter … I would see you … and every man, woman, and child in the State, dead and buried. This means War.³²

He meant it. After driving Confederate forces to the outskirts of Missouri, an outnumbered Lyon—now promoted to general—launched a bold attack at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek on June 11. The assault worked initially, but fizzled after Lyon, waving his hat to encourage his men, was shot through the heart.

Known for his red hair and equally fiery personality, Nathaniel Lyon was the first general to give his life for the Union. As the procession carrying his coffin made its way through the night to his hometown of Easton, hundreds of citizens lined its route, lighting the way with candles, lanterns, and torches. Thousands of people (estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000) attended General Lyon’s funeral.

Joe Hawley, a thirty-four-year-old newspaper editor in Hartford, enlisted as soon as Governor Buckingham issued the call. He and two friends immediately began recruiting soldiers. Just twenty-six hours later, they had signed up an entire company (eighty-four men), with more waiting. Joe’s wife Harriet was as fiercely patriotic as her husband. Over and over she expressed her frustration at not being able to serve as the soldiers did. I envy him, she wrote of her husband. I ain’t sure but that I wish I was his brother instead of his wife—or him instead of myself. The Hawleys fervently opposed slavery, and their devotion to the Union cause was unshakeable. In the next four years, both of them were to offer their lives for it repeatedly. (Letter from Harriet Foote Hawley, June 18, 1864, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.)

In Meriden, an eager twenty-one-year-old clerk in a dry-goods store took off his apron and signed his enlistment papers. Charles Upham began as a sergeant in Connecticut’s 3rd Regiment. By war’s end, he would wear a colonel’s silver eagles on his shoulder straps. He would also bear the marks of personal tragedy and a battle wound that would never heal.

In April 1861, Col. Joseph Mansfield waited tensely at his home in Middletown. A career army officer, the fifty-seven-year-old colonel had more than an inkling of what lay ahead.

His courage in battle during the Mexican War had earned him advances, but Mansfield was also highly respected for his skill and experience as an army engineer. He had supervised the construction of military forts across the West and the South—and at the same time, observed the nation’s gathering storm. Now orders summoned him to Washington: the capital lay open to attack. Thorough and methodical, Mansfield could be trusted to direct the city’s defenses. President Lincoln promoted him to brigadier general, commanding the Department of Washington. General Mansfield went to work immediately, creating a ring of forts that would protect the capital from every direction—but in his heart, he longed to lead troops into battle.

LEAVING HOME

For the Nutmeggers just finishing their training, the adventure was about to begin. Each regiment, before leaving the state, received its regimental colors in a solemn ceremony. On May 8, former lieutenant governor Julius Catlin spoke movingly to the 1st Regiment as he presented it with an American flag and a hand-painted silk regimental flag. Take this flag to be your standard in the battle, Catlin declared, where blows fall thickest and the fight rages hottest, there may it float, and beneath it strike the strong arms and brave hearts of Connecticut. Remember whose children you are—whose honor you inherit.³³

With proud, jaunty airs, the men fell in behind the spotless flags. Onlookers cheered and bands played. Three months later, the flags would return bullet-ridden; the men beaten and shocked. The war, which that day looked to be brief and glorious, would drag on for years and affect every single person in Connecticut.

CHAPTER TWO

No One Dreamed of Anything but Victory

BULL RUN, SUMMER 1861

The officers didn’t know what they were doing. A bookkeeper, a hatter, a few machinists, some store clerks, a carpenter—what did they know about war?

Yet here they were in the nation’s capital, with the Confederate army just a few miles away. Thousands of men were looking to them for direction. The generals, who were used to experienced soldiers from the regular army, had all kinds of demands. Desperately, the new captains and lieutenants pored over their tactics manuals.

It was hard enough putting the men through squad drill, dress parade, and regimental inspection, never mind memorizing what their manuals called By the rear of column, left or right, into line, wheel or To form square by double column, marching.

A private in the 3rd Connecticut wrote sarcastically:

The most remarkable thing we did is drill; and we did do some drilling during those five or six weeks that we stayed at Washington. For instance, we would take an hour’s drill before breakfast; that was to give us an appetite. After breakfast we would take an hour and a half drill; that was to settle our breakfast. After the breakfast settler came guard mounting. After guard mounting came the regular forenoon drill, which ended about dinner time.

An hour or so allowed for dinner, then we went out and drilled some. Then the regular afternoon drill lasting until late in the afternoon. Then we were dismissed for fifteen or twenty minutes to get ready for dress parade … it began to grow a little monotonous; we wanted a change of some kind … If the rebels could only have quietly surrounded us some night and have taken us all prisoners, we should doubtless have hailed the circumstance with delight, for it would probably take our officers two or three days to get us paroled and exchanged so that we might go to drilling again.¹

A Connecticut soldier described their new routines in Washington: for every drill we are called out & back by tap of drum. (Letter of Wolcott P. Marsh to his wife, May 19, 1861, in Letters to a Civil War Bride: The Civil War Letters of Captain Wolcott Pascal Marsh, compiled by Sandra Marsh Mercer and Jerry Mercer [Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2006], p. 11.)

Between drills, a photographer captured an image of a company of the 3rd Connecticut Infantry in Camp Douglass in June of 1861. At left knelt the drummer who rousted the men to duty, while the captain and two lieutenants—with sashes and swords—struck confident poses in front. Behind stood the enlisted men, muskets at the ready.

For several weeks the men camped here in a grove of trees just north of the city. In the brief periods they were off duty, some soldiers walked into Washington to see the sights. Grand government buildings like the White House and the unfinished Capitol awed many of the boys who had never been outside of Connecticut.

Joe Hawley, the newspaper editor now captain in the 1st Connecticut, was not so cavalier. You can have no idea of the intense application, the perfect absorption of my mind and body in the duties before me, he