Heroes for All Time. Dione Longley
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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.”
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.