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A Corporal's Story
Civil War Recollections of the Twelfth Massachusetts
By George Kimball, Alan D. Gaff, Donald H. Gaff UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4742-0
CHAPTER 1
War
It is popularly supposed that our great Civil War was occasioned by the triumph, in the autumn of 1860, of the principles represented by Abraham Lincoln, but there are authorities who think it was inevitable from the moment that government by the common people was established in Massachusetts in virtual opposition to the plutocracy of Virginia. Others think that it had its origin in the landing of the first cargo of African slaves upon our shores; in the early and continued agitation of the slavery question and particularly in those heated discussions which preceded the adoption of the Missouri Compromise in 1820; in South Carolina's attempted nullification during Jackson's administration; in the subsequent encroachments of the slave power; in the passage of the Rendition Bill at the behest of the Southern oligarchy; in the emphatic assertion of the Northern sentiment in the great campaign of 1856; in the troubles in Kansas and Nebraska; in the John Brown raid at Harpers Ferry. But with me, individually, it certainly did begin in the fall of 1860 and the place where it began was Bowdoin Square, Boston. It was precipitated by a brick thrown by a ruffian while I was trying to listen to a speech by Anson Burlingame in the open air.
I was not only enough by a twelve-month to vote, but being nearly six feet tall, and fairly well proportioned, I was desirable timber for a Wide Awake. So I joined. The first parade of the company to which I became attached was to the locality named. Burlingame was particularly aggressive that night and was hissed and jeered by a crowd of roughs in Chardon Street. My company happened to be opposite the head of that thoroughfare and consequently we had to bear the brunt of the battle. As an offset, we inaugurated a counter demonstration, more friendly to the Republican cause. This so riled the disturbers that they finally threw missiles as well as epithets and one of the former, as well as many of the latter, landed on my ear. After breaking the pole that supported my torch upon the head of one of the nearest and noisiest of the blackguards, I started for home with blood actually in my eye.
I was ready to have war declared at once. That brick was to me as much a casus belli as was the firing upon Fort Sumter and from that moment I was ready to identify myself with any organization which should have for its object the emphatic assertion of Northern sentiment.
All that winter the political caldron boiled as it never boiled before. My associates among the Wide Awakes were ready to a man to enlist the moment they should be called upon. In fact, it is safe to say that ninety-nine per cent of the men who aided as torch bearers in the election of Lincoln in the fall of 1860 were ready in the spring of 1861 to march forth as soldiers to uphold him in his efforts to sustain the Union. Many companies even maintained their organizations until the crisis came.
The grand uprising of the North, in the winter and spring of 1861, excited the wonder of the civilized world. A degree of enthusiasm prevailed throughout the Loyal States that was truly phenomenal. It surprised even the philosophers themselves. No one had ever before dreamed that the proverbially cold-blooded Northerner could be stirred to such depths. Prayer meetings were turned into war meetings; stores were changed into recruiting stations; workshops became rallying places for men who had no heart for anything except solicitude for the safety of the Government and for free institutions; while at every tea table and around every fireside naught was discussed in the closing days of President James Buchanan's administration save the question that was uppermost in every mind: What will the new president do?
The 4th of March came and the inauguration of President Lincoln was peacefully accomplished. A feeling of partial relief now set in, but the enthusiasm increased and men everywhere became more and more determined to resist the conspirators should they indulge in an open revolt. The inaugural address of the incoming chief announced a policy and that announcement gave no uncertain sound. Its tones rang out clear and loud in every town and village in the land, for men everywhere were ready and waiting for the word. The president would stand by the Union and the Constitution.
While the people of the North waited for the word to spring to arms, the Southern plot went on. The secessionists of the South accepted the inaugural as a virtual declaration of war. Soon after its delivery, the Congress of the Confederate States passed their Army Bill and began to organize for resistance to constituted authority. On the 12th of March the Confederate Commissioners addressed a note to Secretary of State William Seward containing the impudent proposition that the disaffected states be allowed to peacefully secede. On the 18th, by a general order, the supply of fuel, water and provisions was cut off from the armed vessels in Pensacola harbor.
At Savannah, Georgia, on the 21st, Alexander H. Stephens announced the principles upon which the Confederacy was founded. He said: "Its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth." This announcement stirred still deeper the moral sensibilities of the people of the free states of the North. Men began to think that the days of Nero and Caligula had come again.
Then came the acts that brought the agitations of the hour to an actual issue—the firing upon the Star of the West and the attack upon Fort Sumter. The world knows the rest of the story by heart; how the outraged sentiment of the loyal masses could brook no further parleying and delay; how that never did British blood nor Celtic ire leap quicker to resent an outrage than did the farmers and mechanics of the North to defend the flag. On the 15th of April, the day after the surrender of Major Robert Anderson, came the proclamation of President Lincoln calling for 75,000 militia to execute the laws.
The die having thus been cast and the gauntlet thrown down, nothing now remained but an appeal to the sword and we all know how the young men of the Loyal States rushed en masse to the recruiting stations. No sooner had the organized militia regiments left for the protection of the capital than new regiments of untried but determined soldiers were forming everywhere. It would have been as easy to have raised an army of a million men as to have filled the small requisitions that followed.
Having outlined the great uprising and hinted at some of the causes that brought it about, let us consider briefly the motive that actuated the young volunteers of 1861. We shall find, at the same time, that the same influences controlled the thousands who, later in the war, stung by reverses to our arms, rallied to the defense of the Union. There has been much discussion since the close of the great conflict as to the actual cause which impelled the young volunteer to leave his home and enter upon the hard and hazardous life of the soldier. Various reasons have been assigned by the veterans themselves; they who should know most about it. It is a common thing to hear men say "Oh, I suppose it was excitement as much as anything that took me into it." Is this true? I say no.
Every young man considered well the step he was taking when he signed his name to the roll of volunteers. Excitement might draw him to war meetings; it might influence him to join the crowds in the streets; it might attract him to the flag-raising in the public square; but it would hardly cause him to offer his life in the defense of his country. Men stop to consider such a grave step as that. Excitement gives place then to a deeper feeling. Excitement at best is but the effervescence of human feeling, only the froth that bubbles up from the surface.
Even if we were to admit that excitement did have some influence in thickly-settled communities, how about the farmer's boy, away from all these great popular demonstrations, alone with his cattle and his plow? Did excitement cause him to drop the goad and the hoe and hasten to where men were forming for the march? And despite the father's plea and the mother's tears? How many thousands of noble young fellows there were who went simply because they could not help it, even though she who was dearer than everybody and everything else, except duty and country, pleaded and begged and turned broken-hearted as they disappeared one after another down the lane! To these no great tumult appealed, no strains of martial music spoke. Nothing moved them but the deep, strong prompting of conscience, the conviction that it was their duty to go.
Was it love of adventure that drew the volunteer into the conflict? Was his mind fired by the romance and fascination of military life? Was he dazzled by anything he had read of the wild charge and the gorgeous pageant of moving battalions? I think not to any great extent. The American people are not a military people. We had had no war within the recollection of the young men of 1861, of any consequence, except the Mexican War, and of that we then knew but little, for that was a war of conquest and there was little in it to excite or move us.
For my own part, I confess that what I had read of the struggles of the early settlers of New England, the sacrifices of the Fathers in the Revolution, the bravery displayed in the War of 1812, had some influence in helping me to come to a decision as to what was my own duty. But this was not the grand moving force itself; it was only the lever that helped to raise me to the higher plane. The motive was deeper and stronger than desire for adventure and was inspired by something grander than the glamour of romance.
Was it a desire to travel over hitherto unknown parts of our country that influenced us to enlist? That may have had weight with some, but if so it was only a secondary consideration and bore but little relation to the real underlying motive itself. If the volunteer entered the service with the expectation of getting much enjoyment out of the privilege, he soon discovered his mistake and the "opportunity for travel" thereafter became a byword and a joke.
Was it the hope of winning personal renown or the expectation of promotion to high command, with its consequent advantages in after life, that drew the volunteer from his home to the tented field? To those belonging to wealthy and influential families this undoubtedly had more weight than any other consideration I have named, except what has been discovered between the lines; but to the great mass of men, to the average volunteer, to the son of the poor man—he who won his bread by the sweat of his brow—it was a contingency scarcely thought of. What chance was there for a farmer's boy or a plain mechanic, no matter how much genius or heroism there might be lying dormant and unseen in his nature, to obtain high places, when applicants were numbered by thousands with plenty of wealth and home influence to back them? The great masses of the army, and the bravest and best, too, were those who had hitherto led uneventful lives and were among the world's poor—the toiling millions of our farms and workshops.
Though we have no half-fed peasantry in this country, like those of Europe, we have nevertheless a grand constituency of noble men, the very bone and sinew of our land, on whom the safety of our institutions depends, and to them be the chief honor, rather than to any coterie of dainty children of idleness and ease, for the great results of our Civil War, a contest grander in itself and its outcome than any war of modern times. While there were many from the ranks of the wealthy and cultured who won laurels and did great deeds, the masses who formed that solid front before the foes of the Union were made up almost wholly of the plain men of the time.
Now what was the motive that moved them to leave their workshops and their farms, even though those dear to them saw no way of living without their aid? It can all be summed up in one word: patriotism. They loved their country because it was worthy of their love. They had read and studied its history. They had been impressed with the sacrifices made by the Fathers of the Republic for the common weal. They had read of the heroes of Lexington and Bunker Hill. They felt it their duty to take up arms in defense of the Union. They enlisted naturally and because they could not help it.
Red, white and blue were everywhere in the North the favorite colors and, upon all the fashionable promenades, elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen illustrated their loyalty by appearing with knots of tri-colored ribbon and rosettes of varied hues in lieu of the customary boutonnieres. Indeed, one not so adorned was often looked upon with something like suspicion. Badges of various shapes, designs and sizes were also freely worn, all being emblematic either of sympathy with the Lincoln Administration or of devotion to the cause of the Union.
But to me the most curious expressions of loyal feeling were seen in the almost universal adornment of stationery, the market at times becoming almost flooded with the truck. Amateur poets appeared to vie with each other in their efforts to give voice to their patriotic feeling in their own and often unique way and the corners of envelopes and writing paper bore ample evidence of the loyalty of the Muses. Portraits of gallant soldiers and distinguished statesmen adorned many of these, but the scenes and portraits displayed were often more suggestive of hatred of treason than of regard for artistic merit. Many of these pictures were ludicrous in the extreme, some quite pathetic.
The favorite personage for caricature, of course, was Jefferson Davis and the "arch conspirator" was depicted in every phase of his supposed career, now thrusting his guilty hands into the archives or arsenals of the nation, then chasing after runaway contrabands and finally dangling at full length from the gallows.
Before me lies a package of nearly one hundred of these famous relics of the war. The collection forms an interesting study of one of the prominent features of the great contest and speaks loudly of the loyalty of the masses. It may also be said with some truth, as a friend at my elbow suggests, that they also illustrate the ingenuity of the Yankee and show his propensity to take advantage of every favorable opportunity to turn an honest dollar. Be that as it may, every dealer had the goods for sale and nearly everybody bought them.
On the evening of the 19th of April, 1861, being intensely excited by the news of the cowardly attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment in the streets of Baltimore, I went to the armory of what was then called the Second Battalion of Infantry ("Tigers") at Boylston Hall in Boston. There I joined Company B. The battalion, whose motto was "Death or an Honorable Life," comprised three companies, commanded by Major Ralph Newton. Night and day was heard the tramp of feet and the clatter of arms as the embryo soldiers learned their lessons. My captain was the late proprietor and publisher of the Boston Journal, Charles O. Rogers, and a more generous, patriotic man it was never my good fortune to meet. He was a superb soldier, too, and had he found it possible to forsake the engrossing cares of his great newspaper for the tented field, he would doubtless have won a place among the foremost heroes of the age.
One day, soon after joining the "Tigers," I met my brother, then employed as a compositor in the office of the Boston Post. He was three years older than I and took a manlier view of life and its affairs than I did, for I was boyish in many ways. We walked to the Common. I noticed that he was more serious than usual that day and, as we seated ourselves beneath one of the spreading elms of that historic inclosure, he said:
"George, do you know what all this excitement means? It means that we are going to have a great war. It will be no child's play. It will be the duty of every man who loves his country to go. I have carefully considered the question, have concluded that it is my duty to enlist and, as you are the youngest and as father and mother cannot spare us both, I want you to remain at home and look after them. I have already enlisted. I joined a company this morning and we are going to be attached to Fletcher Webster's regiment."
It was a long time before I could summon the courage to tell him what I had done and what were my intentions, but when I did he seized my hand and, with tears streaming from his eyes, cried: "We'll do our duty together. God's hand is in this affair. If we love our home it is our duty to defend it. If we do our duty, God will in some way provide for those we leave behind." I mention this incident not because it was exceptional. It was having its counterpart all over our broad land. Yes, in the South, too, for the brave boys down there were striving to do their duty as they understood it. It is all history now.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Corporal's Story by George Kimball, Alan D. Gaff, Donald H. Gaff. Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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