Heroes for All Time. Dione LongleyЧитать онлайн книгу.
they knew nothing about. Each man wondered what the future would bring for him.
CONNECTICUT’S LYON
Nearly 1,000 miles from his home in Connecticut, Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, a West Point graduate and a twenty-year veteran of the regular army, recognized the strategic importance of the arsenal at St. Louis, Missouri. Outfoxing the Rebel opposition in April of 1861, he secured most of the arms in the arsenal, thereby preventing thousands of guns from falling into Confederate hands.
Hoping to avoid fighting within Missouri, conservatives from the state called a meeting between its Southern-leaning militias and officers of federal forces. When Confederate sympathizers proposed that each side should disband its military units and keep troops of both armies out of the state, the red-headed Lyon spat: “Rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any matter … I would see you … and every man, woman, and child in the State, dead and buried. This means War.”32
He meant it. After driving Confederate forces to the outskirts of Missouri, an outnumbered Lyon—now promoted to general—launched a bold attack at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek on June 11. The assault worked initially, but fizzled after Lyon, waving his hat to encourage his men, was shot through the heart.
Known for his red hair and equally fiery personality, Nathaniel Lyon was the first general to give his life for the Union. As the procession carrying his coffin made its way through the night to his hometown of Easton, hundreds of citizens lined its route, lighting the way with candles, lanterns, and torches. Thousands of people (estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000) attended General Lyon’s funeral.
Joe Hawley, a thirty-four-year-old newspaper editor in Hartford, enlisted as soon as Governor Buckingham issued the call. He and two friends immediately began recruiting soldiers. Just twenty-six hours later, they had signed up an entire company (eighty-four men), with more waiting. Joe’s wife Harriet was as fiercely patriotic as her husband. Over and over she expressed her frustration at not being able to serve as the soldiers did. “I envy him,” she wrote of her husband. “I ain’t sure but that I wish I was his brother instead of his wife—or him instead of myself.” The Hawleys fervently opposed slavery, and their devotion to the Union cause was unshakeable. In the next four years, both of them were to offer their lives for it repeatedly. (Letter from Harriet Foote Hawley, June 18, 1864, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.)
In Meriden, an eager twenty-one-year-old clerk in a dry-goods store took off his apron and signed his enlistment papers. Charles Upham began as a sergeant in Connecticut’s 3rd Regiment. By war’s end, he would wear a colonel’s silver eagles on his shoulder straps. He would also bear the marks of personal tragedy and a battle wound that would never heal.
In April 1861, Col. Joseph Mansfield waited tensely at his home in Middletown. A career army officer, the fifty-seven-year-old colonel had more than an inkling of what lay ahead.
His courage in battle during the Mexican War had earned him advances, but Mansfield was also highly respected for his skill and experience as an army engineer. He had supervised the construction of military forts across the West and the South—and at the same time, observed the nation’s gathering storm. Now orders summoned him to Washington: the capital lay open to attack. Thorough and methodical, Mansfield could be trusted to direct the city’s defenses. President Lincoln promoted him to brigadier general, commanding the Department of Washington. General Mansfield went to work immediately, creating a ring of forts that would protect the capital from every direction—but in his heart, he longed to lead troops into battle.
LEAVING HOME
For the Nutmeggers just finishing their training, the adventure was about to begin. Each regiment, before leaving the state, received its regimental colors in a solemn ceremony. On May 8, former lieutenant governor Julius Catlin spoke movingly to the 1st Regiment as he presented it with an American flag and a hand-painted silk regimental flag. “Take this flag to be your standard in the battle,” Catlin declared, “where blows fall thickest and the fight rages hottest, there may it float, and beneath it strike the strong arms and brave hearts of Connecticut. Remember whose children you are—whose honor you inherit.”33
With proud, jaunty airs, the men fell in behind the spotless flags. Onlookers cheered and bands played. Three months later, the flags would return bullet-ridden; the men beaten and shocked. The war, which that day looked to be brief and glorious, would drag on for years and affect every single person in Connecticut.
CHAPTER TWO
No One Dreamed of Anything but Victory
BULL RUN, SUMMER 1861
The officers didn’t know what they were doing. A bookkeeper, a hatter, a few machinists, some store clerks, a carpenter—what did they know about war?
Yet here they were in the nation’s capital, with the Confederate army just a few miles away. Thousands of men were looking to them for direction. The generals, who were used to experienced soldiers from the regular army, had all kinds of demands. Desperately, the new captains and lieutenants pored over their tactics manuals.
It was hard enough putting the men through squad drill, dress parade, and regimental inspection, never mind memorizing what their manuals called “By the rear of column, left or right, into line, wheel” or “To form square by double column, marching.”
A private in the 3rd Connecticut wrote sarcastically:
The most remarkable thing we did is drill; and we did do some drilling during those five or six weeks that we stayed at Washington. For instance, we would take an hour’s drill before breakfast; that was to give us an appetite. After breakfast we would take an hour and a half drill; that was to settle our breakfast. After the breakfast settler came guard mounting. After guard mounting came the regular forenoon drill, which ended about dinner time.
An hour or so allowed for dinner, then we went out and drilled some. Then the regular afternoon drill lasting until late in the afternoon. Then we were dismissed for fifteen or twenty minutes to get ready for dress parade … it began to grow a little monotonous; we wanted a change of some kind … If the rebels could only have quietly surrounded us some night and have taken us all prisoners, we should doubtless have hailed the circumstance with delight, for it would probably take our officers two or three days to get us paroled and exchanged so that we might go to drilling again.1
A Connecticut soldier described their new routines in Washington: “for every drill we are called out & back by tap of drum.” (Letter of Wolcott P. Marsh to his wife, May 19, 1861, in Letters to a Civil War Bride: The Civil War Letters of Captain Wolcott Pascal Marsh, compiled by Sandra Marsh Mercer and Jerry Mercer [Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2006], p. 11.)
Between drills, a photographer captured an image of a company of the 3rd Connecticut Infantry in Camp Douglass in June of 1861. At left knelt the drummer who rousted the men to duty, while the captain and two lieutenants—with sashes and swords—struck confident poses in front. Behind stood the enlisted men, muskets at the ready.
For several weeks the men camped here in a grove of trees just north of the city. In the brief periods they were off duty, some soldiers walked into Washington to see the sights. Grand government buildings like the White House and the unfinished Capitol awed many of the boys who had never been outside of Connecticut.
Joe