saw a familiar face: Captain Joseph Hawley of the 1st Regiment.
I now determined to move along with Capt. Holley’s [Hawley’s] company. The men were not in line but they might be said to be in company as birds are in a flock. Capt. Holley took a gun from one of his men & requested me to take it & go to the rear & endeavor to keep the men in line. This I did for some time as well as I co’d but I have seen geece march in better order. Nevertheless I worked at my task, but all the men seemed safer near Capt. Holley, & I confess [I] myself did when I heard his calm voice & saw his steady steps.
But soon there came another sharp crash of musketry a short distance behind us, followed by a universal runing for the woods. I still hear the Capt.’s voice calm as ever ‘Steady, men. Steady, men. Steady.’ But all in vain. The men scattered like patridges in the woods & the Capt with the rest & your humble servant was among those who scaled the fence, after which every man was for himself. I ran again until my right lung gave out, & seeing a clump of bushes with a close curtaine of leaves on all sides, I determined to try my chances in it. I dropped in.29
Gus Dana, who marched on for miles with his exhausted comrades, finally approached the town of Centerville and noted with relief: “we found a line of troops, Blenkers Reserve, sent out from Washington … our tired and hungry army passed behind them and laid down supperless to sleep.”30
“As we lay down on the same ground that we had left about eighteen hours before,” Elnathan Tyler continued, “it seemed as if we had never been so tired, so disheartened, so thoroughly disgusted with everybody and every thing as we were then. But even the most weary soldier had hardly got asleep, when the order came again to fall in and continue our weary march to the rear. The officers concluded it was not safe to stay there, even through the night; we might all be prisoners by morning.”31
A correspondent of The New York World reported:
Though so wearied that one officer of the [3rd Connecticut] regiment says that $10,000 and a colonelcy at Vienna would not have induced him to march there for it, they were pushed right along by orders, and reached their old camp at Falls Church after daylight on Monday morning.
Here they found the Ohio camps, at which the First and Second Ohio had refused to pause in their retreat. Tents, stores and munitions were here all abandoned—property amounting in value to $200,000—and Col. Chatfield ordered his men to take hold and save it. Sending to Alexandria for a special train, they worked all day loading it with the deserted Ohio property, sent it off, and marched away themselves, just in time to escape the vanguard of the pursuing enemy.32
The New York Times added, “This service was performed in thirty-six hours, during which time they were entirely without food, and drenched in the tremendous rain that raged without intermission.”33
Word of the rout traveled north, reaching Connecticut before the soldiers did. Everywhere, shock greeted the news. “Our defeat at the battle of Bull Run corrected, as nothing else could have done, an extravagant estimate of our own strength … it swept away our ‘ninety days’ optimism, and showed us that what we had mistaken for an April shower was to be a long storm, and a hard one.”34
The dazed soldiers made their way back home. Elnathan Tyler described the 3rd Regiment’s homecoming: “as the good citizens of Connecticut had assembled only a few months before to bid us good bye and wish us success in our defence of the old flag, so now they assembled to bid us welcome home again. Although our success on the whole must have fallen far short of what they desired … they listened patiently to our stories of hardships in the camp and field; inquired just how we felt when we first came under fire on the battle-field; asked if all the rest of the Northern soldiers did as well as we did, if we didn’t think we would have won the battle, and finally if we were going again.”35
In fact, Private Tyler did go again, enlisting for three years in the state’s hardest-fighting regiment, the 14th Connecticut. Many of the “Three Month Men” did the same, joining the rapidly forming regiments that answered the Union’s call for troops.
But not everyone reenlisted. Some veterans had had enough; others had obligations to family or work. And some men didn’t return with their regiments after Bull Run: Chaplain Hiram Eddy, who had hidden in a clump of bushes during the rout, was captured by the Rebels some 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
