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CHAPTER THREE

The Voice of Duty

A LONG WAR AHEAD, AUTUMN 1861 TO SUMMER 1862

After the rout at Bull Run, Joe Hawley, a captain in the 1st Regiment, sought out Col. Alfred Terry of Connecticut’s 2nd Regiment.

“Colonel,” said the captain, “This makes me feel that the whole North is humiliated; what effect do you think it will have on future enlistments?”

“How does it make you feel, like backing out?”

“No! I feel if possible more like seeing the thing through than before.”

“Well, I think that will be the effect all through the North; I, for one, am determined to commence recruiting a regiment for the war as soon as this farce of three months’ regiments is played out.”¹

Despite the humiliating defeat at Bull Run, roughly half of the Connecticut soldiers who fought there reenlisted. Joining the veterans were thousands of new soldiers, flushed with a desire to avenge the Union’s early loss. Horace Garrigus, seventeen, joined the 8th Connecticut. The Waterbury teenager reported to training camp in Hartford along with his brother, and wrote a hurried letter to their father in New Jersey. “I am going to war. I have enlisted in the U.S. Army and will fight till the last. The Regiment will leave in a week I think. Dear Father think not hard that I have not let you know before … I cannot come to Morristown. It is too late to think of that. We must save the Union!”²

This time, the soldiers were not three-months’ men. The day after Bull Run, Congress had authorized President Lincoln to call for 500,000 troops to enlist for three-year terms. Three days later, Lincoln called for an additional half million men.

(Hartford Daily Courant, August 20, 1861.)

Within a month, two Connecticut regiments had left for the south, another was nearly ready, and a fourth was training. When enlistments slackened in the summer of 1862, President Lincoln asked for 300,000 more men to enlist. Connecticut’s share was 7,145 soldiers. Governor Buckingham sent an impassioned entreaty to his people: “Close your manufactories and workshops—turn aside from your farms and your business—leave for a while your families and your homes—meet face to face the enemies of your liberties.”³

Rallies in almost every city and town spread “intense patriotic enthusiasm and fervor. The effect of the Governor’s appeal and the influence of these meetings were electrical. From one end of the state to the other, the stirring scenes of April, 1861, were reenacted. Young men flocked to the recruiting offices eager and earnest to enlist in the service of their country.”⁴

In Guilford, nearly 40 men enlisted in Connecticut’s 1st Light Battery. A local man described their departure from their hometown:

The whole population turned out to see them off. A drum corps, … acted as escort, and as the contingent marched out of the Music Hall, one hundred of the “Fathers of Guilford,” (old militiamen) were drawn up in line to join in the march … Grand old men were those “Fathers of Guilford”! They represented a century of patriotism. Closely allied to the veterans of the revolution, of the war of 1812, and the Mexican war, they again testified their devotion to their country by encouraging their sons and grandsons. Too old to volunteer, they could bid the younger ones do their duty, and though they kept a brave face as their sons and grandsons marched to the war, it could be seen that they inwardly realized that the parting with some would be until the Archangel’s trump shall sound …

One young Guilford man thought it his duty to enlist—in fact he heard the girls say that they would never speak to a boy who was afraid to go to the front—so he put down his name. His minister had told him it was his duty, but his father and mother urged him to stay at home. Enthusiasm won, and he marched with the boys to the camp. His parents cried; they knew he would never return; their lack of Spartan courage was demoralizing the crowd, every one of which had some relative in the army … A sturdy veteran, with not a tear in his eye, walked up to the agonized parents and exclaimed: “For God’s sake, dont send the boys away from us like that.”

“Now is your Time,” proclaimed a recruiting poster for the 21st Connecticut Regiment.

The small print listed multiple bounties for those who enlisted. A married man with two children landed a hefty $652, in addition to his army pay of $13 per month.

There was a loud cheer for the man, for they knew that all his sons had left him to go and fight.

In speaking of that march to the depot, Edward Griswold, thirty years after, wrote: “We can never forget those old patriots, their erect forms, firm step and patriotic spirit. How they marched, how we felt, the road lined with people, the flags waving, the ‘God bless you’ of the ladies, the way we were sent off made us feel that we could have whipped the whole rebel army that morning. We wondered if we were dreaming, if we were really going to war and to participate in such scenes of war as had been told us around the fireside by our patriotic grandsires.”⁵

When the New York Evening Post published a poem called, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More,” composer Stephen Foster set the words to a jaunty melody. By the end of the summer of 1862, it seemed no one in the North could stop singing it.

THE ENEMY AT HOME

Did all of Connecticut’s people back the Union? By no means.

When Confederate troops first attacked Fort Sumter, plenty of Democrats aligned themselves with the Union cause, but thousands of Connecticut residents remained strongly opposed to the war and the Union.

In July of 1861, when the telegraph carried to Connecticut the distressing news of the Union loss at Bull Run, Nathan Morse smiled smugly. The thirty-two-year-old editor of the Bridgeport Advertiser and Farmer newspaper could hardly wait to set the type for his editorial. “The ‘grand army’ marched on the 17th … It also ran back on the 21st,” he sneered. For abolitionists, he declared contemptuously, the defeat “blasted prospects of their fanaticism.” Of the Confederates, he wrote glowingly, “Like our Revolutionary fathers, they are fighting for their just rights.”⁶

Nathan Morse was not alone. Across the state, and especially in western Connecticut, throngs of protesters arose. In Darien, a farmer named Stephen Raymond fired a cannon to celebrate the Confederate victory at Bull Run. (Union supporters replied by dumping the cannon in a river.)⁷

The Hartford Times, a Democratic paper, had reported sightings of white flags, often adorned with the word “Peace,” as early as May of 1861. “Peace Democrats,” as the war protesters called themselves, had raised their banners in Ridgefield, Windsor, West Hartford, and Goshen.⁸ Union supporters ripped them down and raised the American flag in their stead.

But the loss at Bull Run gave the Peace Democrats more confidence. Three days after the battle, a group of about thirty young women from Danbury, accompanied by a band of musicians, paraded to the hickory pole in their town, where they took down the American flag and raised a white “peace banner.” At the Farmer, Nathan Morse crowed over the incident, running the story under the headline: “A Proud People Beginning to Move.”⁹

An upside-down flag symbolizes distress—perhaps the message sent by a Connecticut Democrat in this unusual wartime image taken in Hartford.

“Peace meetings” took place in scattered communities, where participants raised their flags and gave speeches. But once the veterans of Bull Run returned to Connecticut, the stage was set for a showdown between Union supporters and Peace Democrats.

A peace-meeting was called at Stepney [in Monroe], for Aug. 24, to declare against the war. The three months’ soldiers, just mustered out of service, were in no mood to tolerate what they regarded as incipient treason, and resolved to disperse this assemblage. On the morning of the appointed day, two or three omnibus-loads of Capt. Frye’s company, Third Regiment, armed with revolvers, made their way out of Bridgeport, accompanied by a long procession of citizens. There was an immense gathering of peace-men at Stepney. Families had come from all the towns around to “stop the unrighteous war.” A very tall hickory pole was raised [flying] the pale emblem of their patriotism, bearing the word “peace” … a multitude of armed peace-men rallied around the strange bunting, and swore to defend it …¹⁰

Men on both sides were knocked down, and threats exchanged. In the end, the Union men tore down the peace flag and raised the American flag, while the Peace Democrats dispersed. The New Haven Palladium newspaper carried the story of what happened next:

Upon the arrival home of the Bridgeport party, with the white flag as a trophy, an excited concourse of people surrounded them … rending the air with shouts, and apparently ready for any desperate enterprise … when voices in the crowd shouted “To the Farmer office.”

A body of four or five hundred persons, followed by thousands of spectators, immediately moved down the street … Once within the walls [of the Bridgeport Advertiser and Farmer newspaper], a scene of destruction occurred that almost passes description … Type, job presses, ink, paper, books, all the paraphernalia of a printing establishment were thrown into the street, and two presses, too large to get through the windows, were broken in pieces by aid of a large and heavy lever. The crowd even ascended to the roof, and tore off such of the signs as they could reach. The appearance of the building on Sunday morning, windowless and rifled, was dreary in the extreme …¹¹

A rare photograph taken soon after the riot at the Bridgeport Advertiser and Farmer showed the aftermath of the chaos.

The Peace Democrats, later known derisively as “Copperheads,” never gave up. Their voices were to rise again and again for the duration of the war, especially when Union morale was low.

TRAINING CAMP

Once a man had enlisted in a regiment, he was examined by a doctor. “We had to strip naked and be pounded in the back, punched in the ribs, lungs and heart sounded and we were put through certain motions and antics to show our strength and endurance,” said James Sawyer of Woodstock when he joined the 18th Connecticut.¹²

At training camp, the brand-new soldiers received their uniforms and equipment. Sawyer listed his new gear:

1 dark blue blouse	2 pr drawers
1 pr of pants, sky blue	1 knapsack
1 overcoat, sky blue	1 canteen
1 forage cap	1 haversack
1 pr coarse wide shoes	cartridge box with shoulder belt
2 pr socks	waist belt with bayonet scabbard attached
2 shirts

“There was a good deal of changing about after we got our clothes,” Sawyer added; “they were handed out regardless of size so that but few received clothes that fitted. The long slim man got a short fat man’s suit and vice versa. I had lots of trouble in getting fitted in pants, and did not get suited till … mother cut the bottoms off.”¹³

Wearing their forage caps and blue uniforms, the men must have been pleased with their military appearances—but scarcely any of them were prepared for what came next. One soldier described the rude awakening they faced at training camp:

The enthusiasm awakened by public meetings and the enlistment fever … passes away; while the frequent call of the drum to various duties, the command of superior officers and the rigid regulations of the camp, combine to impress upon him the serious change that has come in to his hitherto peaceful experience …

Soon it dawns upon him that he is no longer his own master. The oath to support the Constitution of the United States is as yet a theoretical pledge in which he glories, but the obligation to obey the officers appointed over him he finds a practical thing and sometimes very difficult.¹⁴

While James Sawyer left a detailed list of his army gear, this unidentified soldier, his blanket rolled snugly atop his knapsack, had a photographer record his transformation from civilian to soldier.

It wasn’t always easy to make a man obey when a few days earlier he had been a private citizen who made his own decisions.

“Guard duty” at Camp Lyon when first established was something to be remembered … Capt. Smith was the first officer to mount a guard, and it is related that for the first few days it took all of his men to watch Capt. Bassett’s company, and vice versa. Only a few old State muskets were in use about headquarters and the “gate.” Corporal Griffin recounts how he paced the lonely rounds of his beat armed with only a fence picket. Many of the boys carried nothing whatever, but if a comrade sought to “run the guard” chased him and if able, collared and marched him back to headquarters.¹⁵

Many of the men were less concerned with learning military drills than with enjoying themselves before they left for the war. And whether they’d enlisted for patriotic or other reasons, they found their new regulations eye-opening. Michael Kelly described an incident in the 19th Connecticut’s early days in camp:

At about 11 AM we were all amazed at the sight of a tall and portly man equiped from his spurs to his shoulder straps. I[t] was our Lieutenant Colonel Elisha S. Kellogg … [We] were drilling quiet [quite] awhile when Lt. Col. Kellogg came along & shouts like a tiger at a soldier named Burns who was smoking. “Take that pipe out of your mouth, Sir, and attend to your drill.” Poor Burns trembled like a leaf. He [Col. Kellogg] caught the pipe & threw it with such [force] he never knew to this day where the pipe gone.¹⁶

Years later, soldiers looked back on their training with a laugh at how “green” they’d been. Jim Sawyer of the 18th Regiment allowed that at Camp Aiken in Norwich, “Our rations seemed pretty coarse, and of course there was a great deal of complaint about it. We hadn’t yet become very well educated in privation. We saw the time afterward when the rations we had in Camp Aiken would have seemed luxurious.”¹⁷

When a New Haven newspaper hyped the bulletproof vests made by Atwater Armor Company on Chapel Street, Connecticut soldiers rushed to acquire them. William G. Ely, colonel of the 18th Regiment,

found a man in the camp dispensing to the soldiers “bullet-proof vests.” To be “iron clad” when the bullets should fly as thick as hail! what more could a soldier ask? But Col. Ely, who had often smelt powder in dangerous proximity to bullets, was incredulous of the statement made by the dispenser of the steel vests. He took one of the garments from the dealer, and setting it up as a target for his revolver put several holes through it. He then ordered the arrest of the vender, made him refund to each soldier the amount which he had received in exchange for the worthless armor, and gave him opportunity for reflection in the regimental guard-house.¹⁸

The green soldiers of the 15th Regiment were not so lucky. They shelled out the money for the “iron-clad life preservers,” and struggled under the extra weight when they went off to war.

“It is said that at least fifty per cent of the regiment first wore away and then swore away this device. The track of the command from Washington to Arlington Heights was marked by these abandoned ‘armor plates,’ the largest quantity being hurled from Long Bridge into the Potomac … The balance of the lot, after being rudely perforated with bullets at ‘Camp Chase,’ was ignominiously kicked aside, and the skeletons probably repose there to this day.” (Sheldon Brainerd Thorpe, The History of the Fifteenth Connecticut Volunteers in the War for the Defense of the Union, 1861–1865, p. 15.)

In their new roles as conquering heroes, men often posed with muskets or swords, showing they meant business. Standing with the flag of his country or regiment also gave a soldier’s portrait a patriotic message. But occasionally a soldier’s choice of “props” leaves the viewer wondering.

George Parmelee, a farm laborer in Woodbury, sat beside a winsome boy who might have been his little brother. George enlisted in the 7th Regiment in August of 1861. Were the flowers a gesture for his wife Sarah before he departed for war? If so, it was a prescient choice: Sarah died at the end of September.

For some, training camp had its perks. Connecticut’s 19th Regiment, largely composed of Litchfield County residents, trained at Camp Dutton, about a mile from the town of Litchfield—close enough to the soldiers’ homes that they often had visitors. “Camp Dutton was a beautiful spot,” joked the adjutant, Theodore Vaill, “but no place for a regiment to learn its hard and ugly trade. Fond mothers and aunts raked the position with a galling and incessant fire of doughnuts, apples, butter, pies, cheese, honey, and other dainties not conducive to the suppression of the rebellion.”¹⁹

Before their regiments left the state, many soldiers opted to have their likenesses taken. “The Moore Bro’s, photographers, always first in the field, are building a large wooden house on the grounds of the 16th Regiment for the purpose of taking soldiers’ pictures,” reported the Hartford Daily Courant. “Now the girls will have a chance to have their lovers taken before they go to war.”²⁰

The Moore Brothers cranked out hundreds of portraits for the new soldiers. In fact, Nelson Augustus Moore, a Kensington native, had begun as a painter, known for his Hudson River landscapes. But in 1854, he and his brother Roswell had adopted the new medium, photography. Nelson’s artistry was apparent in the backdrops of many of their images.

The Moore Brothers photographed this unidentified soldier of the 16th Connecticut standing stiffly before a backdrop of a camp scene, as if on guard duty. A cast iron headstand (its base visible beside this soldier’s shoes) held the head stationary over a long exposure time, making the subject’s posture look unnaturally rigid.

Using the same backdrop but a different pose, the Moore Brothers produced a soldier portrait radically different from the one on the left. Here it’s easy to see a connection between the old art form—painting—and the new one—photography. With shading and hand coloring, the Moores’ backdrop took on depth and perspective. Though this picture is only a few inches high, it manages to evoke the formal painted portraits of earlier decades.

Before the final departure, some soldiers made a last visit home to say goodbye. “I shall never forget the scene of my parting with mother and the girls,” recalled Jim Sawyer. “About the last words I heard her say were, ‘O, Jimmie, how can I let you go?’ Father took me to the depot. A great crowd was there for most soldiers had friends with them who came to see them off … There were many affecting scenes. Father shook my hand with tears running down his face, and I know they were running down mine.”²¹

The final ceremony before leaving the state was the presentation of the colors. Each regiment would carry an American flag and a state flag, usually painted with the seal of Connecticut, then customized with the name of the regiment. At the presentations, speakers urged the troops to protect their flags with their lives. “Bear it bravely up above the storm of war,” said Hartford mayor Henry C. Deming, “follow it to the death in the crisis of battle, and return it to our midst emblazoned with triumphs nobly won, or leave it behind in a soldier’s honorable grave.”²²

The flags would become sacred to the men. In battle, color-bearers carried the two silk banners, each over six feet by six feet, waving from staffs that stood nearly ten feet high. Their large size made them visible in the chaos and smoke of combat when the soldiers most needed them. A regiment’s flag didn’t just mark battle position for the troops; it became a physical symbol that actually inspired the men’s courage and recharged their passion.

Before the 25th Regiment left Hartford for the South, privates Lucien Royce (left) and Aaron Cook visited Wilson Brothers Photographers on Main Street. The new soldiers displayed all their military gear: at center stage was a black canvas knapsack painted with “25 CV” (for 25th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers). Royce wore a four-button blouse while Cook had a nine-button frock coat, both common to Union infantrymen. Cook also wore his Union overcoat. They slung their canteens over their shoulders, and rested their forage caps atop the knapsack, while Cook prominently displayed a piece of cloth in his left hand. Was it a handkerchief made by an admirer?

In the center of Litchfield, surrounded by well-wishers, the men of Connecticut’s 19th Regiment stood at attention to receive their colors on September 10, 1862.

The colors were a special target for the enemy, so color-bearers were often the first to fall. Then the next man in the supporting color guard would snatch up the flag and continue until he was hit. “All but one of the color guards were shot & the colors were down several times but up they would go again,” wrote Capt. Charles M. Coit of the 8th Connecticut after his regiment saw battle.²³

But in these early days, the new soldiers didn’t yet know what the flag would come to mean to them. For most, the flag presentation was just part of the excitement of departure day. An officer of the 14th Connecticut remembered departing from Hartford, “which was all alive with flags and the waving of handkerchiefs in the hands of her fair daughters, whose eyes filled with tears as our magnificent band … played ‘The girl I left behind me,’ leading us to sob, some, for the girls we had left, others, because we hadn’t any girls to leave behind.”²⁴

The 14th’s steamboat headed from Hartford down the Connecticut River, pausing at Middletown where many of the regiment lived. Their assistant surgeon, Levi Jewett, wrote:

“When we reached Middletown it seemed as if the whole city had turned out to meet us. The dock and all the space about was black with people. Many came to the boats with baskets of fruit and food, which were greatly appreciated by ‘the boys.’ At Cobalt a great gun on the hill gave us a roaring ‘God-speed’…”²⁵

Many soldiers—especially officers—brought along small flasks as they went to war. Few could equal the fine style of the flask owned by Charles Upham of Meriden.

This soldier of Connecticut’s 1st Light Battery went south by steamboat, along with his regiment’s soldiers, horses, and artillery. It wasn’t an easy voyage, as one of the men recalled: “The most of my time was taken up in throwing dead horses and the contents of my stomach overboard.” (Herbert W. Beecher, History of the First Light Battery Connecticut Volunteers, 1861–1865, vol. 1, p. 78.)

Lt. Henry P. Goddard recalled, “As we passed out of the Connecticut that night, I remember standing with Johnny Broatch on the after deck of the boat, for a last look at the dear old state, whose good health we drank, emptying a half pint flask that a worthy relative had filled, telling me that unless I was badly wounded it ought to last me through the war.”²⁶

But the trip south was definitely not all hope and glory. “Our boys on their way to the field slept on the dirty decks of a steamer, lying together as thick as rows of pins on a paper,” wrote Samuel Fiske of the 14th Regiment. Later they “were packed in dirty, close [railroad] cars like sheep in a pen.”²⁷

And while citizens had showered the troops with cakes, fruit, and other tidbits along the way, soldiers found a slightly different diet awaited them in Washington.

Here was a long building, having painted in large letters upon it “The Soldiers’ Rest.” In this we found long wooden tables, and on them the usual fare, boiled corned beef and hard bread, with potatoes boiled in their jackets. The tables were not very clean and flies were much in evidence, but we were too hungry to mind such little things. Along the tables here and there were placed camp kettles filled with coffee.

One of the boys took his plate, knife and fork from his haversack, laid the plate on the table and laid on it an attractive hunk of beef. On cutting it open two or three fat maggots rolled out. He emptied his plate on the dish and reached for a hard tack. This broke easy. The reason was shown, as several lively skippers trickled down on his plate. “I Yum!” said he, “I’ll drink my coffee with my eyes shut,” and he did.²⁸

From the very beginning, one Connecticut regiment—the 14th—showed it had more than enough bravado to go around. Cpl. Albert Crittenden looked back on the green regiment’s spunk as it marched in a formal review of troops just after reaching Washington:

I recall the reviewing stand where President Lincoln, General Scott, Secretary Stanton and other dignitaries stood while we passed in review. Our staff-officers and captains entered the reviewing stand and were in turn introduced to the President and his staff of officials. When the head of B Company, the left of the regiment, reached the stand, President Lincoln was so busy we felt we were not to be noticed, so with one accord, we struck up loudly singing, “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.” At once he faced us, straightened up his tall form, doffed his high silk hat and bowed and bowed until we were by.²⁹

IN DIXIE

When the Nutmeg troops arrived in the vicinity of Washington, many found a new general waiting to lead them. George B. McClellan commanded the newly formed Army of the Potomac. “Young Napoleon,” as the papers dubbed him, set about transforming the gawky farmers, bank clerks, and factory workers into a professional fighting force.

That meant more drilling, and here the learning curve rose far more sharply than it had back in training camp in the Land of Steady Habits. The volunteer officers especially struggled with their responsibilities: it wasn’t so easy “to take the Company of one hundred men and so discipline them that each shall observe his position so that the whole body may move as one perfect machine, keeping step in the march—observing a perfect line in company front—march without crowding—break up into platoons and re-form with no confusion—to accomplish all this is no little task.”³⁰

When an officer from the regular army took command of the 4th Connecticut, “He found the regiment … an uneducated and undisciplined body of men. It was his task to make soldiers out of them.” Though the troops lacked uniform coats and shoes, Colonel Tyler required rigid military order. He punished the loafers and praised those who adopted a military bearing; Here, the 4th soldiers marched smartly to the parade ground for drill in Arlington, Virginia, in the fall of 1861.

Charles Coit, the 8th Regiment’s adjutant, wrote to his parents: “am studying harder than I have before for a long time. I am so deficient in the ‘Tactics’ I make a good many blunders at Battalion Drills.”³¹

Plenty of officers got lost in the tangled wording of the tactics manuals, and no wonder; directions for “By Platoon, right wheel” included:

At the command march, the right front rank man of each platoon will face to the right, the covering sergeant standing fast; the chief of each platoon will move quickly by the shortest line, a little beyond the point at which the marching flank will rest when the wheel shall be completed, face to the late rear, and place himself so that the line which he forms with the man on the right (who had faced), shall be perpendicular to that occupied by the company in line of battle; each platoon will wheel according to the principles prescribed for the wheel on a fixed pivot.³²

The army ordered regimental commanders to send their officers to school. “All the non-commissioned officers in our Reg. are obliged hereafter to meet twice a week in the Captains quarters to recite lessons in Military Tactics,” wrote Fred Lucas of the 19th Connecticut. “We met last night for the first time. Not a man knew his lessons in our Co. We had considerable sport during the recitation. All the Field & Staff officers recite to Col. Kellogg twice a week.”³³

If their school sessions didn’t teach the officers, their colonel could always resort to swearing, as Michael Kelly described in his diary in 1862: “Col. Kellogg went for Capts. Gold, Peck, Sperry & Williams [during drill]. Gold made a mistake in the movements. Col. shouted, Capt., ask any of your privates &c., and he told Capt. Sperry he would drill his Co. (‘I’) from hell to breakfast, and Peck he called an old woman, & Williams, Turkey Cock. On the whole it was an excitable regimental drill or battallion drill. I tell you the Capts. trembled.”³⁴

Along with continual drilling came the introduction to forced marches. In the months ahead, marching twenty or even thirty miles a day would become commonplace for the Nutmeggers, but right now they were definitely still tenderfeet. The 14th Regiment was scarcely two weeks out of Connecticut when Frederick Burr Hawley noted in his diary, “Tuesday, Sept 9th, 1862. Drilled 2½ hours loading and firing. 12:00 march 5 miles and camp in a lot. One man belonging to Co. K marched to death.”³⁵ The soldier who collapsed and died was James McVay, a Norwich man with two sons in the same company.

Concentrating intently on his tactics reading, William H. Johnson apparently didn’t notice how close his book was to his candle, resulting in charred pages in his Casey’s Infantry Tactics. A second lieutenant in the 8th Connecticut, Johnson died of disease April 6, 1862.

On the flip side of the coin was the early experience of Connecticut’s 4th Regiment (later to become the 1st Heavy Artillery). Chaplain Edward Walker described the regiment’s camp in the Maryland fairgrounds in the summer of 1861:

In this beautiful spot we … made ourselves thoroughly at home. A number of buildings on the premises, which had been erected for the accommodation of the county fair, were refitted by the men for various uses. The largest served as an evening lectureroom, and as a church in rainy weather; in another were held our daily prayer-meetings, glee-clubs, rehearsals, etc.; another was occupied as a guard-house; another was used for forage, while excellent stalls were furnished for our horses.

In addition to these comforts, the men put up swings and bars for gymnastic exercises, so that we were abundantly provided with means of recreation, as well as with all the necessities of life. I think I never saw an equal number of men more happy, contented, and good-natured, than ours were at Camp Abercrombie. Our life there was like that of a summer picnic; and the men, though keen for fighting and prompt to perform all their military duties, had the air of a party of summer excursionists.³⁶

The picnic ended abruptly when the regiment’s lenient colonel resigned, replaced by a colonel from the regular army who “saw at a glance that rigid discipline was needed.”³⁷ Military procedures immediately replaced glee clubs and gymnastics.

John DeForest, an officer in the 12th Regiment, described the daily grind that most volunteer troops followed:

we get up at sunrise. Then the reveille beats; the men turn out under arms; the three commissioned officers look on while the first sergeant calls the roll; the muskets are stacked and the men break ranks. At half past six we breakfast; from seven to eight there is company drill; from half past nine to half past ten, more company drill; at twelve, dinner, which means soup and hardtack; from four to six, battalion drill; at half past six, hardtack, pork and coffee; at nine, another roll call; at a quarter past nine, lights out.

It is a healthy, monotonous, stupid life, and makes one long to go somewhere, even at the risk of being shot.³⁸

ON THE MOVE

Connecticut’s regiments didn’t remain long in Washington. The objectives of two generals had them moving all over the South in two early attempts to snuff out the Confederacy.

General Scott’s proposal became known as the Anaconda Plan for its resemblance to the constricting snake. By tightening the cord around the Confederacy, Scott hoped to cut off supplies to the Rebels, hinder their movements, and force their surrender.

General-in-chief Winfield Scott felt that reuniting the nation would be easier if little blood was shed. Instead of masterminding battles, Scott proposed to “envelop” the South with a blockade by sea, and a fleet of gunboats supported by soldiers along the Mississippi River.

Meanwhile, Union supporters in the North were impatient for battle. “Here we have spent some hundreds of millions of dollars; some six months of time; a vast amount of patience in collecting, and equipping, and drilling our forces, and have got together some three hundred thousand men, and now we begin to hear talk of ‘going into winter quarters,’” complained the Hartford Daily Courant. “The public will be disgusted! We have nothing but the bitter mortification of the Bull Run affair to chew upon … nothing but a good smart, ringing victory … will do … Gross disheartenment will settle down on the Union cause, unless more vigor is shown in taking the offensive.”³⁹

In November of 1861, Scott retired, and George B. McClellan sprang into his position. Little Mac responded to the North’s clamor, planning the Peninsula Campaign, which called for the Union army and navy to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. The winter gave McClellan time to further train his green troops while he polished his “On to Richmond” scheme for the spring of 1862.

Connecticut soldiers found themselves ordered throughout the South to prosecute the strategies created by Generals Scott and McClellan. The 5th Regiment, on picket duty outside of Washington, kept Stonewall Jackson’s troops from the Potomac River, the railroad, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Charles Squires of Roxbury groused about not going into combat, writing to his sister, “I think that you have more fighting at home than we have down here.”⁴⁰ (Squires would see action soon enough; in the Spring of 1862, the 5th would scuffle with Jackson’s troops around Winchester, Virginia, and in the Shenandoah Valley.)

Meanwhile, the men of Connecticut’s 6th and 7th Regiments boarded steamers for an expedition to the coast of South Carolina under Gen. William T. Sherman and the navy’s admiral DuPont. On November 7, Union ships bombarded the Confederate-held Fort Walker in Hilton Head, and Fort Beauregard across the sound, forcing their submission. The 6th and 7th Connecticut were the first infantry to land, prepared for hand-to-hand fighting if the Confederates resisted. As the boats approached land, the men of the 7th jumped out and splashed ashore at Hilton Head. Marching into Fort Walker unopposed, they had the honor of planting their regiment’s flags on the battlements—the first Union colors to wave over South Carolina since its secession.

Connecticut’s 8th, 10th, and 11th Regiments also took part in Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s expedition to establish control of the North Carolina coast. At Roanoke Island, the 10th Regiment advanced on a Confederate battery under heavy fire, taking the battery but losing their colonel, Charles Russell, to a gunshot wound at the outset of their first fight. In the port of New Berne, the 8th and 11th Connecticut successfully fought the Rebels to gain control of the Neuse River. “Gen Burnside came along up side our Regt and order us to charge on them,” wrote Cyrus Harrington of the 8th, “in which we did in double quick time in which they fired upon us killing 8 wounding several. It was a bold attempt but we won the victory driving the rebels in every direction.”⁴¹

The 5th Connecticut Infantry’s neatly laid-out company streets and orderly rows of Sibley tents, with a gentle plume of smoke wafting from a campfire, gave a feeling of serenity to this camp scene taken in October of 1861 on Muddy Branch, a small stream flowing into the Potomac River in Maryland, northwest of Washington.

“The order to charge was given,” wrote the 11th’s lieutenant Joseph Converse, “up sprang thousands of blue-coats,—a glittering wave of steel flashing in front,—and rushed forward with loud huzzas, an invincible line.”⁴² The Confederates fled their works.

Back in Connecticut, the 9th Infantry (also known as the Irish Regiment) broke camp at New Haven, finally ending up at desolate Ship Island, Mississippi. Under Gen. Benjamin Butler, the men of the 9th Connecticut, along with their comrades in Connecticut’s 12th and 13th Regiments, helped capture New Orleans.

The soldiers of Connecticut’s 1st Cavalry were always on the move, galloping throughout Virginia, as they scouted and skirmished with the enemy around the countryside. In the narrow valleys among the Allegheny and Branch Mountains, “The winding roads and countless convenient hiding-places … swarmed with guerrillas. These partisans of slavery and rebellion gathered everywhere in small squads to persecute Union citizens, annoy our soldiers, capture our scouts and carriers, and shoot our pickets … To destroy these roving rascals was to be the task of our cavalry battalion.”⁴³

It was March of 1862 when General McClellan launched the Peninsula Campaign, his first foray to capture Richmond. He pushed thousands of troops up the Virginia Peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Among them was Connecticut’s 1st Heavy Artillery, which had originated months before as the state’s 4th Infantry Regiment. Now the regiment traveled with sixty-five enormous field pieces and more than four tons of ammunition over land that seemed solid and dry, but wasn’t.

“Puncture the surface anywhere and water gushes forth,” declared one of the 1st Heavies. “The tent pins drew water where we pitched our tents … as the heavy hundred-pounder [gun] moved slowly along the road, the wheels of the sling cart would sometimes pierce the upper crust, and the monster gun would be almost hopelessly mired … it often happened that horses and mules would prove of no avail to draw them out. Then several hundred men would man the ropes; Major Kellogg would mount on the axle of the sling cart, give the word of command, and with a long pull all together the huge guns would be dragged out and drawn steadily along the road.”⁴⁴ In many places, the men had to chop down small trees and saplings, laying the slender trunks across the path, one alongside the other, to make corduroy roads for their big guns to travel upon.

“Perrine’s New Military Map Illustrating the Seat of War,” 1862

As the phrase “On to Richmond!” rang through the North, Union troops advanced ever so gradually toward the Confederate capital. They never reached it. After seven days of fighting, the Rebel forces (now under Robert E. Lee) repelled McClellan’s troops, forcing them to retreat toward Washington.

When the summer of 1862 arrived, the Union army had little to crow about. It had succeeded in winning strategic positions along the eastern coast, but hadn’t achieved its commanders’ greater aims. The anniversary of the loss at Bull Run called up dismay throughout the North, while the Confederates felt that victory was within their reach.

INTO THE FIRE

On the eighth of August, Connecticut’s 5th Regiment, along with a regiment from New York and another from Pennsylvania, encamped along a stream called Cedar Run near Culpeper, Virginia. Gen. John Pope had positioned their brigade to block a possible advance by Stonewall Jackson’s Rebel troops until Union reinforcements could arrive. But on August 9, Union general Nathaniel Banks took the situation into his own hands. Believing that a delay would allow the Confederates to amass more troops, he decided to attack.

Just before five o’clock on the evening of August 9, Banks ordered his men to prepare to advance. Col. George D. Chapman, leading the Connecticut 5th, took his post behind the regiment’s colors and spoke encouragingly to his soldiers, telling them “to remember their good name and to be sure to do credit to themselves and the state.” One of the color sergeants saw that the colonel wasn’t wearing a sidearm, and offered him his own revolver. “The Colonel refused it, telling the sergeant that his life was just as valuable.”

Then the order came: “Fix bayonets and charge,” “Charge, charge and yell”—and “the whole brigade sprang over the fence.” As the troops moved swiftly forward into the stubble of a wheat field, they entered a storm of bullets from the Confederates hidden in the woods before them. “Color Sergeant Jones, carrying the stars and stripes, fell on his face, killed outright … Captain Corliss … caught up and bore on the flag, until he was brought to the ground with a bullet … Sergeant Luzerne A. Palmer took it from Captain Corliss and bore it to the front again, until he fell wounded.”⁴⁵ According to one of its lieutenants, seven of the 5th Regiment’s color-bearers gave their lives for the flag that day; two more fell wounded.

Color Sergeant James Hewison, bearing the State colors, was wounded early in the charge, but kept along, bearing the colors till … he was again severely wounded and fell, unable to go further. Many were falling about him at the time, and his fall was unobserved till the line had passed on and he was left among the dead and dying with the flag in his possession.

After the first shock of his wound had passed and he had regained some strength he resolved that neither himself nor it should fall into the hands of the enemy if he could prevent it, and carefully tearing it from the staff, he wrapped it about his person beneath his uniform; then he crawled from the field on his hands and knees, as rapidly as his wounds would permit, and he was taken by comrades to a hospital, wearing the flag, and so he saved it.⁴⁶

Through the galling fire the brigade came on, until the blue-clad Union soldiers entered the woods and were in the midst of the Rebels. A section of the Confederate line gave way quickly, the soldiers fleeing to the rear, which allowed the 5th Connecticut boys to break through “surging into the woods through this gap thus made and swinging to the left as they advanced … our ranks, which had now become a furious yelling line, sweeping right forward towards the rear of the enemy’s line … From this point on, for the next fifteen minutes, it was a hand to hand encounter. There were few loaded guns on either side and very little chance to load them. Clubbed muskets and bayonets were the rule.”⁴⁷

But in a matter of minutes, the tide turned. Stonewall Jackson galloped forward, waving a battle flag, and his brigade rallied to him, charging the Union line. The Rebels, already in retreat, turned and reformed, and A. P. Hill’s troops rushed forward to reinforce them. The Confederates now outnumbered the Union troops two to one. The 5th Connecticut men and their comrades rallied, making a stand in the woods while they prayed for reinforcements to arrive.

The report of their brigade commander, General Crawford, described “vastly superior numbers of the enemy.” Of his own troops, Crawford wrote: “Their field officers had all been killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, the support I looked for did not arrive, and my gallant men, broken, decimated by that fearful fire, that unequal contest, fell back again across the space, leaving most of their number upon the field. The slaughter was fearful.”⁴⁸

That night, the soldiers of the shattered regiment tried to regroup. Henry Daboll, twenty-eight, had been the regiment’s eighth-ranked captain that morning. Now, with so many officers dead or wounded, Captain Daboll found himself in command of the 5th Connecticut—or what was left of it.⁴⁹

As the battered men of 5th Connecticut stumbled in to their regiment after the battle, there was no sign of one of their most respected officers, Maj. Edward Blake.

The major, called Ned, came from a large and close New Haven family. As a student at Yale, he’d gained his classmates’ esteem without trying. “Whoever knew Blake loved him,” declared the Class Record; “nor was it difficult to know him, for he carried his heart in his hand. A man of fine physique and of the most exuberant spirits, he delighted and excelled in out-door sport.”⁵⁰ A member of Yale’s crew team, Ned had also joined the mysterious Skull and Bones society, proudly wearing a gold pin with the group’s insignia.

Before leaving New Haven to join his regiment, Ned Blake faced the camera with the honest, open gaze that characterized him.

When the war began, Ned was in law school and did not immediately enlist. After much reflection, he decided that the rebellion was “a war on which the most immense results for the whole world depended,” a friend related.⁵¹

“Naturally of a mild gentle and peaceful disposition, a military career was the very last thing he would have selected if it had not been for the voice of duty sounding in his ears,” said his brother.⁵² The governor appointed Blake adjutant of Connecticut’s 5th Regiment; three days later, Ned left Connecticut for Maryland.

It was a hard winter for the 5th Regiment, full of exhausting marches. Maj. Henry B. Stone described one of the most grueling:

When I tell you that the snow was driving all day, and ankle-deep; that the men had just marched one hundred and thirty miles with scarcely two days’ rest; that their feet were sore and blistered, many of them without shoes, and using handkerchiefs and old rags to tie up their feet and keep them out of the snow,—you may appreciate the march, and the indomitable perseverance of our men to accomplish it. Some of the boys were compelled to fall out from exhaustion; and the poor fellows wept bitterly because they were unable to stand up longer.⁵³

That spring, the 5th Regiment’s brigade drove Stonewall Jackson’s troops out of Winchester, Virginia, only to find the tables turned less than three months later. With their brigade cut off from the rest of the army and in imminent danger of capture, the men of the 5th made a forced march of forty-three miles, reaching the Potomac River near midnight. Instead of riding a horse as officers usually did, Ned Blake marched with his men.⁵⁴

Weeks later, Blake received a promotion to major. In early August, his regiment went into battle at Cedar Mountain with him on horseback, leading his troops in the charge. Forced to dismount when his horse was wounded, Major Blake fought on foot with his men. Then the flow of battle changed; Union troops were forced to retreat, and the 5th Connecticut became divided. It was impossible to know who had been wounded, killed, or captured.

The next day both sides began to bury their dead. With the temperature nearly 100 degrees, bloating and decomposition quickly made many of the young men’s bodies unrecognizable. In addition, many bodies had been pillaged of their clothing and personal effects.

No one had come across Major Blake. He wasn’t among the Union prisoners, nor with the wounded. Yet no one had found his body on the field, either.

In the weeks that followed, Ned’s parents and siblings suffered in excruciating uncertainty. Telegrams and letters flew back and forth between the family and Ned’s regiment. Then an officer in the same brigade, who’d been wounded and taken prisoner, “stated that the body of a major, near where he lay, was rifled by an enemy officer, who showed him among other things a gold pin (skull and crossbones) which he had appropriated.”⁵⁵

Soldiers could see what happened to unidentified bodies after a battle: often, they were buried in mass graves without being marked. Since the government didn’t issue dog tags, the men solved the identification problem themselves. Alfred Bliss had a metal disc engraved with his name, unit, and hometown; he could pin it to his uniform or wear it on a string around his neck. His identification tag also bore the Masonic symbol, which might have earned Bliss special treatment if captured by a brother Mason from the South. George Stannard, a Clinton man in the 14th Connecticut, whittled a peach pit into a tiny basket (which later lost its loop) on which he carved his initials, company, and regiment number.

Two months after the battle, one of Ned’s friends wrote that he had located a soldier who had seen the major fall:

He tells me that in the second wood Major Blake told him they were falling back. He looked around & they two were almost the only ones of the regiment in sight. They went back to the fence & found Col. Chapman with a prisoner. They all started to go back across the wheat field and when half way across Col. C fainted (he had not been well) and Major Blake was struck, fell, and did not stir afterward.

Major told him in the wood he had been wounded twice. He did not know where he was wounded or where the last shot struck him but regarded his death as instantaneous from the fact of his making no motion afterward.⁵⁶

Still, some of Ned’s family clung to the belief that he could have been merely unconscious. His body was never found.

A year and a half after the Battle of Cedar Mountain, an envelope addressed to Ned arrived at the Blake home in New Haven. It was an invitation to the wedding of a Yale classmate. Ned’s brother George wrote to the groom, explaining that Ned had fallen in battle. “For weeks, and agonizing months, we could not believe him dead, and eagerly clung to the hope that he might have been taken prisoner, but nearly two long years have long since blotted out that hope and we now know that he [has] bravely fulfilled his mission and fallen a martyr to his Country,” wrote George sadly.⁵⁷

ANOTHER BULL RUN

Three weeks after Union general John Pope suffered the Cedar Mountain defeat at the hands of Stonewall Jackson, he faced him again at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Commanding the Army of Virginia, Pope aimed to protect Washington and the Shenandoah Valley, and distract the Rebels from General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, which was still licking its wounds on the Virginia Peninsula.

None of the Union commanders had reckoned on the skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee, who saw a way to take the conflict away from Richmond, toward Washington. Lee ordered Stonewall Jackson’s troops to cut around Pope’s forces, and capture the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, thereby cutting off Pope’s communication with Washington.

Jackson’s forces tangled with Pope over several days in engagements along the Rappahannock River. On August 26, the rebels flanked Pope’s troops and took the railroad, then marched on to capture a Union supply depot. The Confederate troops went on to take up position on the old battlefield at Bull Run. Stonewall Jackson knew that Confederate general James G. Longstreet was nearby; sure of reinforcements, Jackson goaded Pope into an attack.

For his part, Pope felt he had Stonewall Jackson cornered. He assumed that Jackson’s troops were retreating, and planned a series of attacks that he thought would crush the Rebels. During two days of battle, both sides suffered heavy casualties. On August 30, Pope watched as Confederate artillery decimated his troops; then, as Longstreet sent forward his force of over 25,000 Rebel troops, the Union once again fled Bull Run.

Pope’s two defeats—Cedar Mountain and Second Bull Run—left the Union army demoralized, while the Confederates, buoyed by their victories and Robert E. Lee’s leadership, proceeded confidently with their plans.

NO TIME TO LOSE

In September of 1862, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac into Maryland, and McClellan hurried his troops north to block the Rebels’ access to Washington.

By now, Connecticut had numerous regiments in the south, among them the 14th, 15th, and 16th Regiments. Several of the green regiments were quickly gathered into McClellan’s command. “Here it was,” wrote a soldier in the 14th Connecticut, “that the torn and tattered veterans of the army of the Potomac, fresh from the swamps and battles of the Peninsula campaign, excited our wondering interest as they marched by on their way to the front. But how they repaid our deprecatory looks at the condition of their clothes and accoutrements with their jeering ‘Hulloa children! Poor boys, dark blue pants, soft bread three times a week, three hundred miles from home and ain’t got but one mother a piece.’”⁵⁸

The Union army had to move fast. Men who days ago had been bank clerks, painters, barbers, and pastry chefs had to be soldiers. Instantly. Connecticut’s 8th, 11th, 14th, and 16th Regiments joined the thousands of troops hurrying north toward Frederick, Maryland. The 14th and 16th Regiments were still unaccustomed to their new rifle muskets, which they’d received just days earlier.

The men and boys of the 14th Connecticut—those who had impulsively burst into song before President Lincoln—swung along the road eagerly. “The boys were in the best of spirits and sang with a will ‘John Brown’s Body’ etc… . As they passed an old engine-house in which were a number of Confederate prisoners, one called out ‘What regiment is that?’ ‘The 14th Wooden Nutmeg’ was the reply, to which the audacious prisoner answered ‘You will soon get your heads grated.’”⁵⁹

But even the most gung-ho soldiers began to sober up as their inexperienced eyes took in the sights of real war. “Step by step they saw the desolation and waste of war-ruined homes, dismantled gun-carriages, piles of muskets and the putrefying bodies of horses and mules.”⁶⁰ In the dark, the regiment reached South Mountain, where a bloody battle between the troops of McClellan and Lee had left thousands dead and wounded. The next morning, the 14th men looked around them in horror.

“I awoke about five o’clock on the battle-field of yesterday,” wrote Benjamin Hirst, “and went out to see what war was without romance. I cannot describe my feelings, but I hope to God never to see the like again.”⁶¹

Nelson Bailey, nineteen, saw the bloody, broken bodies and swallowed hard. “We were in the enemy’s front yard,” Nelson realized, “and he was there with his lawn-mowers.”⁶²