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Chapter One
A County Divided
At the time John Brown led his abortive raid on the 'Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, residents of Pennsylvania's Cambria County enjoyed the attentions of at least four newspapers. These papers shared an identical typeface and design and contained like mixes of fiction, poetry, farming advice, and local news. Yet each had its own brand of politics, and readers of any one paper could find editorials critiquingsometimes bludgeoninga competitor's views.
This local war of words echoed one going on at a national level in the eighteen or so months preceding the Civil War. Similar situations could be found in many western Pennsylvania communities. A look at contemporary Cambria County, which produced the unit destined to become Company A of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserves, offers a glimpse into what was taking place across the state.
Cambria Countylike much of western Pennsylvaniawas in its infancy as an organized region. Nestled against the Allegheny Mountains, it was first settled near the end of the eighteenth century. Early inhabitants included Catholics moving from Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania; German Dunkers and Amish; and Welsh emigrants. The latter named their settlement using the medieval Latin name for their homeland. The title was given to the county as a whole in 1804.
Ebensburg, the centrally located county seat, was an up-and-coming borough in 1859. Its growth came, wrote a contemporary observer, despite a location "such as to preclude the possibility of its ever becoming aplace of extended business or large population. Situated upon high ground, without any water power, its increase must be owing entirely to the enterprise of its people, and the necessities of the neighborhood." With a thousand inhabitants, it was big enough to host three weekly newspapers, though "whether they all find it profitable might be a grave subject of inquiry."
Each weekly was partisan, listing party committee members and candidate endorsements below its second-page masthead. The two Democratic organs favored different wings of the party, which had split after the emergence of Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas as a national figure. The Democrat & Sentinel was conservative on slavery and supported President (and Pennsylvanian) James Buchanan's laissez-faire handling of the issue. The Douglas-aligned Mountaineer, on the other hand, often criticized the Washington administration, attacking Buchanan's perceptible weakness in dealing with the national crisis. Across town, the Alleghanian was Republican and abolitionist, as was the county's most established paper, the Cambria Tribune, published in Johnstown, seventeen and a half miles to the southwest.
The banter between the three Ebensburg papers varied in tone and taste. The Mountaineer had no trouble breaking party ranks over issues, referring at one point to "the muddy brain of the Dem. & Sent." The real rivalry was between the Alleghanian and the Democrat & Sentinel. As the latter once wrote of the former: "A Jack-ass, if we may credit the story, once undertook to criticize and find fault with the song of a Nightingale. Why then should we feel offended at the editor of the Alleghanian for pointing out the typographical errors he happens to discover in the columns of the Democrat & Sentinel? We are old enough to know the difference between the braying of an Ass, and the roaring of a Lion."
The same paper charged, just before the 1860 election, that Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln believed in equality between the black and white races, a bold position at the time even among slavery's opponents. The Alleghanian denounced the statement as a lie. In its hot-tempered rebuttal, replete with an excerpt from a Lincoln speech, the Alleghanian seemingly lost its composure: "There, Mr. Dem. & Sent., are his [Lincoln's] views. What do you think of them? And ain't you a reliable family newspaper, going about with such a brazen-faced and cast-iron-countenanced falsehood on your unprepossessing exterior, endeavoring to diddle voters in the support of your candidates? Now ain't you?"
Though abolitionist, the Alleghanian employed the stereotypes of the day. Consider its attack on "the defunct, irresponsible editor of the Democrat & Sentinel"Charles D. Murraypresented in the form of a black preacher's "sarmint."
A sarmint delibbered on de occasion ob de clef of Mister Charley Dizzard Murray, de frend ob Slavery and de villifire of de nigger. By de Reverend Mister Sambo Saffron. Before de cullud peeple of Hard Scrabble.
BELUBBED BREDDERN:It fords me much pleasure to form you dat de individooal you see layin yander is deal agin; an it am my dooty as your much respectable pasture, to say a few words on dis melancholic occasion.
How much real bitterness existed between the two papers can today be only a matter of conjecture. When Murray actually did dieeight months after the "sarmint" was publishedthe Alleghanian eloquently eulogized him, acknowledging his talents and closing its obituary with "We ne'er shall look upon his like again."
Such politeness may have been forced. If Pennsylvania as a whole was divided on slavery, Cambria County had active abolitionists willing to back opinion with action. They had made the town a stop on a branch of the Underground Railroad, the path escaping slaves used to flee northward. In Johnstown in 1837, slave catchers succeeded in wounding and capturing two runaways. Townsfolk delayed the captives' immediate return, arguing that they needed nursing, then whisked them farther north. When the pursuers tried to follow, a troop of rock-throwing boys slowed them down. The hunters gave up the chase, unaware that adults were arming themselves to put up more lethal resistance. Similar antislavery sentiments existed in varying levels in nearby regions. Brown's raiding party included Albert Hazlett, a resident of neighboring Indiana County, who was captured at Harpers Ferry and later executed by the Virginia authorities.
Brown's raid, his capture, trial, and hanging, and the issues the episode aroused gave each Cambria County paper a chance to stake out political turf. The Democrat & Sentinel celebrated the "even handed justice meted out to John Brown, the punishment justly due to the double crime of Treason and Murder.... Will not all sensible, unionloving patriotic and conservative American citizens, whether Democrats or Republicans, agree with us in saying that the world is well rid of such a monster?"
The Mountaineer of the same date was more cautious in its assessment. Brown's conviction and hanging were judicial triumphs, but "let not human malignity follow him beyond the grave." More important, the South needed to be aware that Northern Democrats could not long overlook threats to the Union, nor guarantee political support should secessionist talk continue. "Let them ... be just to the conservative men of the North, who have so earnestly sustained them of late, by being true to the constitution," the Mountaineer observed. "Let them be just; then can they with confidence look forward to the earnest assistance of the North in their tribulation, should it come."
On the Republican side, the Alleghanian coupled attacks on slavery with assaults on the Democrats. Its first take on the Harpers Ferry episode cited the "wild insanity" of the raid to point out the folly of the Douglas-supported Kansas-Nebraska Act, which held that local elections would determine if those incoming states would allow slavery or prohibit it. This platform had sparked a migration of pro- and antislavery zealots to the territories, leading to violence and opening up a "Pandora's box of evils." The tragedies that followed unhinged men like Brown, reported the Alleghanian. "Those who suffered in person, in the sanctity of their houses, became, like Brown of Osawatomie, frenzied with the scenes of diabolical horror thro' which they had passed. Reason fled her throne, and the idea of resistance to the supposed cause of all the tumult and outrage became a religious fanaticism." The Cambria Tribune echoed the Alleghanian's point of view.
Within a few weeks, both Republican papers shifted tack and began to focus on the raid as a necessary assault on slavery. In Johnstown, the Tribune reprinted a piece that painted the hanging as meant to send a larger message: "Attempt to disguise it as you may, ... John Brown was executed not as a traitor, not as a murderer, but that his death might be a terror to the Abolitionists of the North." The Alleghanian meanwhile reprinted an opinion piece that foresaw the end of "the bold hypocrisy of our boast of being the freest government on earth, whilst the notorious denier of fundamental rights to millions on our own soil.... Will any one ... be found in the North ready to exult in the final doom of a man whose only crime was the desire of realizing to the oppressed the initial truths of the immortal Declaration? We believe, sincerely, that the death of Brown will do more for the final overthrow of the system of Southern slavery than any single fact of the century. It has already done far more than even Brown and his followers ever dared to hope."
The prediction proved right. And when Cambria County went for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860, the Alleghanian saw it as vindication. "Republicans of Pennsylvania! There is a good time coming. The Augean stables are to be cleansed all over the country.Peace and prosperity are again to shine upon our nation, and the people will again enjoy a season of repose from the storms of slavery agitation which have been thrust upon us by the Slave Oligarchy."
The Democrat & Sentinel, which had backed John C. Breckenridge for president, blamed its party's defeat on mavericks like Douglas who had fissured the organization. If they "and their followers had stood by the administration, the Black Republican Party would not have attained its present strength" the paper observed in late 1860, just after South Carolina seceded.
On the latter controversy, the editor added a warning: "We have been surprised several times recently, at hearing gentlemen who ought to know better assert that the South Carolinians are nothing but cowardly braggarts, and destitute of the courage necessary to sustain them in facing an enemy in the field of battle. Their history proves exactly the reverse of this." The paper cited examples of Carolinian heroism in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and in Mexico. "We do not wish to be understood as maintaining that the citizens of South Carolina are braver or better men than those of the other States," it carefully noted. "Our object is merely to show the absurdity of the charge of cowardice brought against them."
A few months later, those same South Carolina forces besieged Fort Sumter, which surrendered on 14 April 1861. The news arrived in western Pennsylvania by the next day, sparking rallies and flag-raisings across the region. In Ebensburg on Wednesday, 17 April, two hours' notice brought five hundred peopleabout half the town's populationto the courthouse for a mass meeting featuring patriotic speeches and songs. Two days later, Ebensburg's courthouse saw another impromptu gathering, held "to take into consideration the propriety of organizing a military company to be tendered to the Government for the suppression of Treason"' Thirty-three men put their names forward. The role of organizing and leading this emerging unit fell to two politically connected local businessmen, Robert Litzinger and Andrew Lewis. Both had military experience, having served together in the Mexican War in a unit raised in Cambria County.
Litzinger's life thus far had already touched upon each faction represented by the town's papers. Born 28 November 1830, his ancestors were German Catholics who originally settled in Adams County. In Ebensburg, he gained a certain status from Mexican War service in a locally raised military unit, the Cambria Guards. Drawn from the region's mix of Welsh, German, and Swiss stock, it served as Company D in the Second Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers during the Mexican War. Another Cambria County unit, the "Highlanders," formed Company C of the same regiment. (Although young, the county already had a military tradition, having furnished two four-month companies for the War of 1812.) Litzinger was only sixteen when he enlisted in January 1847 as a fifer, alongside his older brother John, who turned nineteen that month and served as a drummer. Dennis Litzinger, twenty-three at the time of enlistment and possibly a cousin of the others, signed on as a private. The unit started the long march south with eighty-five men. It left eighteen dead in Mexico, and three more died in New Orleans. John Litzinger did not make it back home, dying at San Angel, Mexico, in April 1848.
The campaign earned Robert Litzinger the reputation of "a brave and gallant soldier." He came home to Cambria County's Black Lick townshiphe later settled in Belsanoand married. By 1860, his wife Mary had given birth to four children. For work, Litzinger learned the printing trade and served briefly as the publisher of the Democrat & Sentinel when it emerged in 1853. His politics apparently led him to sever ties with that paper; in 1858 he became de facto publisher of the Mountaineer, though he did not formally assume the title until the middle of the following year. Up to that point, Litzinger seems to have put out the Mountaineer without salary, an arrangement that further indicates a political motivation. The paper's editorial slant hurt it financially; Buchanan loyalists shunned it when it came to advertising and printing work. Hence, the Mountaineer proclaimed that "on the people, and the people alone, we rely for our success in the future."
In early 1860, Litzinger left the Mountaineer to form a business partnership with Ebensburger Abraham A. Barker, Esq. The Mountaineer appears to have suspended publication at this time. Like his earlier shift from the Democrat & Sentinel to the Mountaineer, this move may have been politically motivated, and it may have reflected Litzinger's feelings on the role slavery was playing in national troubles. His new partner, Barker, born in 1816 in Lovell, Maine, had been a leading abolitionist in his native state, as well as a temperance advocate. Barker moved to Cambria County in 1855 and prospered in both the lumber and mercantile trades. Within a year he became a major figure among the state's Republicansknown in Pennsylvania at the time as the "People's party." By 1859, he held a seat on Ebensburg's board of school directors; the next year he led Lincoln's election campaign in western Pennsylvania. He would take over the Alleghanian in September 1861 and successfully run for Congress three years later.
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Excerpted from Three Years in the Bloody Eleventh by Joseph Gibbs. Copyright © 2002 by The Pennsylvania State University. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.