Heroes for All Time. Dione Longley
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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