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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 wrote to a friend. “The great cause, the honor of the state—of our regiment, our company, the lives and health of my boys—you can see what considerations press upon me every instant and demand that I, five weeks ago a greenhorn in military matters, should exert myself to the utmost.”²

Turning volunteers into soldiers was a long, difficult process. Drilling was just a fraction of that process. The men had to learn unquestioning obedience to officers who just weeks earlier had been merely neighbors or cousins. They had to march long distances, and accept being deprived of sleep and food. They had to learn to mend their uniforms and make coffee over a fire.

The Union’s general-in-chief was Winfield Scott, nearly seventy-five years old and so obese he could no longer ride a horse. Commanding the troops in the field was Gen. Irvin McDowell. A career army officer, McDowell could see that weeks of drilling had not prepared his volunteer troops for battle. But he felt constant pressure from Washington, and it was obvious that if the Union army were to annihilate the Confederacy, he would have to act before his troops’ ninety-day enlistments elapsed and they all went home.

A month after arriving in Washington, the Connecticut soldiers found themselves crossing the Potomac River and marching into Virginia. This was enemy territory, and each man realized that here a Confederate attack could come at any second.

PICKET DUTY

“I don’t think I shall ever forget my first night on picket,” an anxious Connecticut soldier confessed later. He stood picket in the woods overnight, at some distance from camp.

Hour after hour rolled on. ‘Twas midnight … Thought it very reasonable to suppose that if the rebels intended to make an attack they would avoid the regular road and go through the woods … somewhere near where I was posted … I heard, or fancied I heard a slight disturbance in a clump of bushes near by … Had the rebels appeared? …

Army regulations require a sentinel to challenge an approaching party … I proceeded to address myself to the mysterious clump of bushes. Opened my mouth and went through all the motions of saying something … A sound issued from my mouth; but such a sound!

Just then a dark form seemed to be moving out from the bushes. It looked like a man crawling along on his hands and knees … Then the dark object spoke! It spoke in a language that had been familiar to my ear since my boyhood days. It was the grunt of a hog! … Was delighted to see that hog … Felt like twining my arms around its neck and shedding a few tears of joy …³

Elnathan B. Tyler of the 3rd Connecticut met the enemy—or was it a friend?—in an illustration from his 1872 book, “Wooden Nutmegs” at Bull Run, A Humorous Account of Some of the Exploits and Experiences of the Three Months Connecticut Brigade and the Part They Played in the National Stampede.

Hogs or no hogs, the boys soon got undeniable proof that the enemy was real and nearby. On the 17th of June, the 1st and 2nd Connecticut regiments rushed to the aid of Ohio troops that had been ambushed by the enemy at Vienna, Virginia. “We found the Ohio boys near the track,” wrote a shaken private. “By the aid of campfires and a lantern they were burying their dead, amputating the limbs of the wounded and caring for others who were badly wounded … It looked hard to see the long row of wounded dying and the dead.”⁴

Besides fear and inexperience, the new soldiers had to contend with bureaucratic incompetence. John C. Comstock, a Hartford printer who served as captain in Connecticut’s 1st Regiment, complained “We are yet suffering for lack of shoes and pantaloons … Many of the men are absolutely shoeless, and have not trowsers enough to cover their legs.”⁵

Gus Dana, a private in the same regiment, groused about “insufficient and very poor” rations. One lot of hardtack was impossible to eat; Dana and his buddies bored holes through them and hung them around their necks in protest. When their colonel cursed them, “we revenged [ourselves] by skyving our tin plates at his tent while we stood in line waiting for supper.”⁶

Still, in spite of the difficulties, most soldiers felt confident that the Union would put down the rebellion quickly and easily. Eli Walter Osborn, a captain in the 2nd Connecticut, confided to his family, “between you and me, I do not think we shall be required to fight much. The other side is too much frightened.”⁷

By mid-July, many regiments had only days left on their ninety-day enlistments. General McDowell had to act. “We have orders to prepare for a long march,” Andrew Knox wrote excitedly to his wife. “All that we are to carry is our blankets and three days provisions … you can expect by far the largest battle or the most inglorious retreat the coming week.”⁸

With the Confederates massing near Manassas Junction, McDowell ordered his officers to push the Union troops forward rapidly. He planned a surprise attack on the Confederate troops commanded by General Beauregard, his old classmate from West Point. It was imperative to strike before Confederate general Johnston could arrive with reinforcements.

“General Tyler, a Connecticut man, was in command of the first and largest division of the army [about 30,000 men],” explained a Middletown private, “and the Connecticut Brigade, consisting of the [1st, 2nd, and 3rd] Connecticut regiments and the Second Maine, formed the first brigade of that division, and were thus, in regular formation, the advance of the entire force. On the afternoon of the 16th of July General Tyler put his division in motion, the Connecticut men in the advance.”⁹

Hoping to move swiftly, McDowell was disgusted to find he could not. “The men were not used to marching; they stopped every moment to pick blackberries or to get water. They would not keep in the ranks, order as much as you pleased. When they came where water was fresh they would pour the old water out of their canteens and fill them with fresh water; they were not used to denying themselves much.”¹⁰ For the next three days, McDowell fumed over continuous delays.

Gus Dana described the march from the enlisted man’s view:

About noon of the 17th we came in sight of Fairfax Court House and could plainly see the enemys gun barrels glisten: the officers who had glasses said they were in rapid retreat … We were halted and ordered to lie down while a [Union] battery fired over our heads; we only scooched though, because great luscious ripe blackberries were in abundance within our reach. We would occasionally hear Maj Speidel yell at us “Keep your intervals damn you” when an especially fine bush had caused several men to group together. But we had to fill up on something.¹¹

Confederate troops fled before the First Division’s advance. When the Union soldiers halted to rest, they were not far behind the enemy. “We found campfires burning which the Rebels had left in their hasty retreat,” wrote Horace Purdy of Danbury. “Also some provisions Ham, Whisky & Tents—Drums—shoes, clothing were also found. We had some sport at this place, some of the men dressing themselves in secession clothing and such rigs as some of them were, it was enough to make ones sides ache with laughter.”¹²

At daylight, three days before the Battle of Bull Run would take place, the advance resumed.

[We] followed the rebels through Germantown trying to head them off but the trees they had felled across the road during their retreat delayed the artillery and we had to … chop the obstructions away. We bivouacked that night about four miles west of Centerville, nearly famished for food and water … our stomachs ached with emptiness … finding an old cow, one of our boys killed it and cut it up, each one that could get near enough cutting off a gob and then frizzling it over a little fire of leaves and twigs. Nat Middletown had half a hard tack & I had a piece of beef the size of the palm of my hand, so we divided and banquetted.”¹³

With the 3rd Connecticut Regiment marched Sgt. Charles Upham, a quiet twenty-two-year-old imbued with a strong sense of duty. In his pocket, Charlie carried a roll book in which he’d written the names of each man in his company, and recorded assignments such as guard posting. Charlie knew many of the men well; most came from Meriden, where he lived and worked as a dry-goods clerk.

In the days ahead, Sergeant Upham would lead and encourage these young soldiers as they faced the enemy for the first time. At times like this, a soldier’s thoughts shifted inexorably to home. Setting aside his roll book, Charlie could reflect on a small memento he carried: a lock of fine brown hair encircled by a silk ribbon. The lock was folded into a slip of paper inscribed “Evening. May 18, 1861”—presumably when Charlie had received it from eighteen-year-old Emma Clark as he departed for war.

BLACKBURN’S FORD

General Tyler had left the Connecticut men of the 1st Brigade with their colonel, fifty-one-year-old Erasmus Keyes, and pushed ahead with other units to determine the position of the Confederate flank. At Blackburn’s Ford, a crossing of Bull Run, Tyler suddenly met a Confederate force that pulled him into a sharp skirmish.

The brief engagement “had a disheartening effect upon our soldiers,” mused Elnathan Tyler of Middletown, “especially those who thought the rebels would not fight, or at most would only fight a few minutes and then run away … As our dead and wounded soldiers lay in the shady door yard of an old house in Centreville we had a chance for the first time to see some of the horrors of war. To many of us who had seemed to think the whole thing was a grand military picnic, those dead and dying soldiers was a dispiriting reality, and our enthusiasm which had been at the boiling point, was chilled by a doubt.”¹⁴

It was now July 20, the day before the fight at Bull Run was to take place. Few of the soldiers got any sleep that night. Quartermasters hurriedly issued rations, and the Connecticut regiments’ brigade pulled out shortly after 2:00 a.m., leading the advance.

One of the chaplains with the 2nd Connecticut was forty-eight-year-old Hiram Eddy, a Presbyterian minister of imposing physique. Eddy had left his pulpit in Winsted, as well as his wife and five children, to volunteer. His diary preserved his impressions from the historic morning when 30,000 Union troops prepared for battle: “The grandeur of the army. All parts of the nation, representatives passing by from Main[e] to Minnesota and Iowa—All in good cheer & thousand ‘buly for yous’ rang out as the regiments & brigades went past. Every body was hopeful. No one dreamed of anything but victory.”¹⁵

“We had heard the artillery of both sides for some time, and as we went rapidly forward for the last mile or two before reaching the scene of action, the increased roar warned us that we might soon feel as well as hear. We soon emerged from the last piece of woods between us and the battle-field … the perspiration streaming down our faces … panting, and puffing, and trying to catch our breath,” wrote Elnathan Tyler.¹⁶

Just before ten in the morning, the Connecticut soldiers approached the stream called Bull Run. Gus Dana described the 1st Connecticut’s movements: “We inclined to the right to cross an open field & ford the stream … half way across this field the rebels opened on us with shot and shell, one plowing a furrow at the feet of Maj Rodman and turning him a somerset unhurt. Orders to doublequick soon brought us to the bank of Bull Run; the stream itself was insignificant but the banks very precipitous … On nearing the run an officer on a grey or white horse on the high bank on the further side, shouted ‘What regiment is that,’ ‘First Conn’ we shouted and Gen. W. T. Sherman, as it proved to be, said ‘Bully for the First Conn, here’s work for you up here.’”¹⁷

News of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Winsted, Connecticut, on a Sunday morning. Rev. Hiram Eddy, minister of the town’s Second Congregational Church, immediately rewrote the sermon he was to give that day. According to a parishioner, Eddy’s fiery new sermon, emphasizing devotion to the Union, “electrified his hearers, and raised them to the plane of his own patriot ardor.” At forty-eight years old, Reverend Eddy was twice the age of most soldiers, but he asked his church for a leave of absence and joined the state’s 2nd Regiment as chaplain. (John Boyd, Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Connecticut, p. 462).

The men of the 1st Connecticut pounded onto the battlefield with their regimental flag held aloft by the color-bearer. Two months earlier, Julius Catlin, Connecticut’s lieutenant governor, had presented the national flag to the regiment with these words: “Take the flag, and, when it presses closest on the foe in some hard-set contest, will some brave boy among you strike one true blow for freedom for an old man at home, whose heart and prayers go with these colors to the field?” (W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, The Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the War of 1861–65, p. 67).

“We followed Gen Sherman … through the woods and half way down the valley that separated us from Beauregard’s command,” went on Gus Dana. “Orders to fire were given and afterwards we learned that we drove off a force of rebel Inf and Cav but I could only see the white gate posts I was ordered to aim at. I fired 22 rounds, kneeling down, while the rear rank fired over us … One of my comrades from East Hartford, the next to me in the front rank kneeling to fire … said ‘Ain’t this glorious Gus, I’m going to re-enlist.’”¹⁸

The 2nd and 3rd Connecticut regiments, along with the 2nd Maine, had diverted into the woods to avoid artillery fire before reaching the stream. A soldier from the 3rd recalled: “We found General Tyler there awaiting us … As we came up in good order and on the double quick, the General greeted us with ‘Ha! Ha! Here comes my Connecticut boys!’ and then he ordered one of the bands … to stop there and strike up ‘Yankee Doodle’ while we pressed forward and crossed the Run.”¹⁹

“At 11 or 12 the contest was at its height & the spectacle was grand & awful,” wrote Chaplain Eddy.

The cannonade—The musketry—The working of the great Parrot gun planted in the corner of the woods. The discharge & the bursting a mile & a half away. It seemed like a tuft of cloud bursting out … then the runing of the soldiers away from beneath it to avoid the contents of the shell. And finally, about two o’clock we co’d distinctly see the rebels leave the place on double quick. From the commencement there was not a doubt but that the day wo’d be ours. Among the large number of spectators there was not the least appearance of fear … And at this time there was no doubt the enemy was in our hands. They had been driven from all the positions which they occupied in the morning.²⁰

Gen. Daniel Tyler, commanding the 1st Division (approximately 5,000 troops) opened the Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. Born in the village of Brooklyn, Connecticut, Tyler was nearly sixty-two years old. He was a graduate of West Point but had left the military nearly thirty years earlier to become a manufacturer.

From the crest of a hill, a Confederate battery was shelling Union forces. About two in the afternoon, General Tyler ordered Colonel Keyes to capture the battery.

A twenty-two-year-old tinworker in the 3rd Connecticut recounted: “Keyes took the Second Maine and our regiment and pressed forward up the hill at double quick. We went up that hill shouting and yelling as if two thousand demons had suddenly been let loose from Pandemonium … We pressed forward towards the top of the hill. Here we found ourselves under the fire of infantry as well as artillery.”²¹

Colonel Keyes reported, “Colonel Jameson of the Second Maine, and Colonel Chatfield of the Third Connecticut Volunteers, pressed forward their regiments up the base of the slope about one hundred yards, when I ordered them to lie down, at a point offering a small protection, and load. I then ordered them to advance again … As we moved forward we came under the fire of other large bodies of the enemy posted behind breastworks, and on reaching the summit of the hill the firing became so hot that an exposure to it of five minutes would have annihilated my whole line.”²²

“We fell back a few rods and lay down on the Warrenton road, where by lying close to the ground we were somewhat protected from the enemy’s guns,” wrote one of the men. “General Tyler, who had followed us up the hill, was now seen talking anxiously with Keyes and some of the other officers, as well as taking a general survey of the situation himself. The old General evidently wanted us to try the bayonet. But the other officers tried to discourage him.” Tyler now appealed to the men, asking if they could take the battery at the point of the bayonet; “but you see we wasn’t that kind of heroes, so we just said, ‘No sir! We can’t take it, and there ain’t no use of trying.’”²³

For hours, the Union forced the Confederates back. But between three and four in the afternoon, the Rebels launched a strong counterattack and the tide began to turn. “[The Confederates] had their choice of the ground and had a strong position but notwithstanding this we whipped them and the Battle was ours up to 3 oclock when they were reinforced by Gen Johnston and we were obliged to retreat,” wrote Horace Purdy of the 1st Connecticut.²⁴

“At 4 P.M. I heard [Colonel] Keyes tell another officer, with the tears running down his cheeks, ‘My God, the whole day is lost; we have been ordered to fall back!’ We supposed till then we were victorious for every move to the front we had made, the rebels had fallen back.”²⁵

Chaplain Eddy had been bringing water to the field hospital when he saw Union troops moving away from the battlefield “so quietly as to suggest nothing special … while there I heard the cry ‘They come. They come.’ Then followed the discharge of arms & the flying of the multitude into the woods back of the hospital. All was consternation, each one runing for his life & I with the multitude.”²⁶

In the 2nd Connecticut, Captain Eli Walter Osborn led a company formed of the New Haven Grays militia. His boys, he wrote, “stood fire like bricks it was a hard matter to keep them back, we were ordered to charge one of their batteries, and then the order was countermanded by Col Keyes if we had gone there would not have been a dozen of us left to tell the tale, but the boys wanted to try it, and could not see why they could not.” (Letter from E. Walter Osborn to his brother, July 27, 1861, typescript in private collection.)

As the Connecticut regiments began to retreat, the Confederate cavalry formed for a charge.

General Tyler, seeing the rebel cavalry meant mischief, ordered us to halt and face to the rear. A few, but at first a very few, obeyed the order promptly. The old general’s ire was up in a moment; galloping his horse through the retreating mass, at the imminent risk of riding over the men, his form erect, his eyes flashing, and with an energy we little dreamed was in the old man, he fairly yelled, “Halt! Come back here! Come back, you cowards, and face this cavalry!”

… Cowards we might be, but we wasn’t going to have it thrown in our faces in that way; so while some still pressed on, many more halted and resolutely turned our faces to the foe again … Several times we were obliged to turn and face them … but a few shots from us seemed to cool their ardor.²⁷

As regiment after regiment joined the retreat, the withdrawal devolved into pandemonium. A Connecticut soldier wrote:

the road before us was the greatest scene of excitement that I ever witnessed. The lots were full of men, the roads crowded with artillery wagons, their horses on a dead run, colliding with freight wagons, and smashing hacks containing gentlemen spectators. I cannot begin to describe the confusion … Everything that we had on, which had the least tendency to stop our progress, was thrown away …

… I took to the woods, threw off my haversack, which contained a number of eatables, writing materials, and many other things I would liked to have saved, next my belt, cartridge box, etc.; then went my blankets. It was hard to do it; but we were scattered, and running for dear life.²⁸

While Chaplain Eddy of the 2nd Regiment hurried along with thousands of retreating Union troops, he saw a familiar face: Captain Joseph Hawley of the 1st Regiment.

I now determined to move along with Capt. Holley’s [Hawley’s] company. The men were not in line but they might be said to be in company as birds are in a flock. Capt. Holley took a gun from one of his men & requested me to take it & go to the rear & endeavor to keep the men in line. This I did for some time as well as I co’d but I have seen geece march in better order. Nevertheless I worked at my task, but all the men seemed safer near Capt. Holley, & I confess [I] myself did when I heard his calm voice & saw his steady steps.

But soon there came another sharp crash of musketry a short distance behind us, followed by a universal runing for the woods. I still hear the Capt.’s voice calm as ever ‘Steady, men. Steady, men. Steady.’ But all in vain. The men scattered like patridges in the woods & the Capt with the rest & your humble servant was among those who scaled the fence, after which every man was for himself. I ran again until my right lung gave out, & seeing a clump of bushes with a close curtaine of leaves on all sides, I determined to try my chances in it. I dropped in.²⁹

Gus Dana, who marched on for miles with his exhausted comrades, finally approached the town of Centerville and noted with relief: “we found a line of troops, Blenkers Reserve, sent out from Washington … our tired and hungry army passed behind them and laid down supperless to sleep.”³⁰

“As we lay down on the same ground that we had left about eighteen hours before,” Elnathan Tyler continued, “it seemed as if we had never been so tired, so disheartened, so thoroughly disgusted with everybody and every thing as we were then. But even the most weary soldier had hardly got asleep, when the order came again to fall in and continue our weary march to the rear. The officers concluded it was not safe to stay there, even through the night; we might all be prisoners by morning.”³¹

A correspondent of The New York World reported:

Though so wearied that one officer of the [3rd Connecticut] regiment says that $10,000 and a colonelcy at Vienna would not have induced him to march there for it, they were pushed right along by orders, and reached their old camp at Falls Church after daylight on Monday morning.

Here they found the Ohio camps, at which the First and Second Ohio had refused to pause in their retreat. Tents, stores and munitions were here all abandoned—property amounting in value to $200,000—and Col. Chatfield ordered his men to take hold and save it. Sending to Alexandria for a special train, they worked all day loading it with the deserted Ohio property, sent it off, and marched away themselves, just in time to escape the vanguard of the pursuing enemy.³²

The New York Times added, “This service was performed in thirty-six hours, during which time they were entirely without food, and drenched in the tremendous rain that raged without intermission.”³³

Word of the rout traveled north, reaching Connecticut before the soldiers did. Everywhere, shock greeted the news. “Our defeat at the battle of Bull Run corrected, as nothing else could have done, an extravagant estimate of our own strength … it swept away our ‘ninety days’ optimism, and showed us that what we had mistaken for an April shower was to be a long storm, and a hard one.”³⁴

The dazed soldiers made their way back home. Elnathan Tyler described the 3rd Regiment’s homecoming: “as the good citizens of Connecticut had assembled only a few months before to bid us good bye and wish us success in our defence of the old flag, so now they assembled to bid us welcome home again. Although our success on the whole must have fallen far short of what they desired … they listened patiently to our stories of hardships in the camp and field; inquired just how we felt when we first came under fire on the battle-field; asked if all the rest of the Northern soldiers did as well as we did, if we didn’t think we would have won the battle, and finally if we were going again.”³⁵

In fact, Private Tyler did go again, enlisting for three years in the state’s hardest-fighting regiment, the 14th Connecticut. Many of the “Three Month Men” did the same, joining the rapidly forming regiments that answered the Union’s call for troops.

But not everyone reenlisted. Some veterans had had enough; others had obligations to family or work. And some men didn’t return with their regiments after Bull Run: Chaplain Hiram Eddy, who had hidden in a clump of bushes during the rout, was captured by the Rebels some days later and remained a prisoner of war for a year.

David Case of Norwich never returned; during the battle, the twenty-six-year-old was hit by a cannonball and died an hour later. Yet the day after his death, David’s brother Joseph Case enlisted in Connecticut’s 5th Regiment, putting into action exactly what Reverend Horace Bushnell preached to his Hartford congregation a week after the Union defeat: “Let us … thank God for what is already made clear—that our spirit as a people is not quelled, but that we find ourselves beginning at once to meet our adversity with a steady and stout resolve, pushing forward new regiments and preparing to double the army already raised … the fire of duty burns only the more intensely, and the determination of sacrifice is as much more firmly set as it is more rationally made.”³⁶

And so, Bull Run became a catalyst. “The wonderful uprising which followed the fall of Sumter was repeated after our bewildered volunteers surged back upon Washington,” wrote the authors of the 1868 Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861–65. “If the second rally was less ardent than the first, it was more deliberate and determined. Instead of a brief military recreation, men felt it to be a struggle for life; and every town in the State renewed its patriotic resolution, and every neighborhood responded to the recruiting drum.”³⁷

Charles Pelton, a twenty-one-year-old druggist’s clerk, wore this wool jacket in Middletown’s militia unit, the Mansfield Guard. When war broke out, Pelton enlisted with scores of others from the guard, forming Company A of Connecticut’s 2nd Regiment. Until Bull Run, Corporal Pelton’s militia jacket, with its tails and gold trim, had seen only parades and drills. Its owner was equally inexperienced in warfare. Pelton came safely through Bull Run and returned to Middletown. Though his army had taken a beating, the young corporal was proud of his role in the conflict. He carefully preserved his sweat-stained battle jacket, and labeled his canteen so that all would know the part he had played: “Bull Run July 21, 1861 / Co A 2d Regt Conn Vols.”