camp in Hartford along with his brother, and wrote a hurried letter to their father in New Jersey. “I am going to war. I have enlisted in the U.S. Army and will fight till the last. The Regiment will leave in a week I think. Dear Father think not hard that I have not let you know before … I cannot come to Morristown. It is too late to think of that. We must save the Union!”2
This time, the soldiers were not three-months’ men. The day after Bull Run, Congress had authorized President Lincoln to call for 500,000 troops to enlist for three-year terms. Three days later, Lincoln called for an additional half million men.
(Hartford Daily Courant, August 20, 1861.)
Within a month, two Connecticut regiments had left for the south, another was nearly ready, and a fourth was training. When enlistments slackened in the summer of 1862, President Lincoln asked for 300,000 more men to enlist. Connecticut’s share was 7,145 soldiers. Governor Buckingham sent an impassioned entreaty to his people: “Close your manufactories and workshops—turn aside from your farms and your business—leave for a while your families and your homes—meet face to face the enemies of your liberties.”3
Rallies in almost every city and town spread “intense patriotic enthusiasm and fervor. The effect of the Governor’s appeal and the influence of these meetings were electrical. From one end of the state to the other, the stirring scenes of April, 1861, were reenacted. Young men flocked to the recruiting offices eager and earnest to enlist in the service of their country.”4
In Guilford, nearly 40 men enlisted in Connecticut’s 1st Light Battery. A local man described their departure from their hometown:
The whole population turned out to see them off. A drum corps, … acted as escort, and as the contingent marched out of the Music Hall, one hundred of the “Fathers of Guilford,” (old militiamen) were drawn up in line to join in the march … Grand old men were those “Fathers of Guilford”! They represented a century of patriotism. Closely allied to the veterans of the revolution, of the war of 1812, and the Mexican war, they again testified their devotion to their country by encouraging their sons and grandsons. Too old to volunteer, they could bid the younger ones do their duty, and though they kept a brave face as their sons and grandsons marched to the war, it could be seen that they inwardly realized that the parting with some would be until the Archangel’s trump shall sound …
One young Guilford man thought it his duty to enlist—in fact he heard the girls say that they would never speak to a boy who was afraid to go to the front—so he put down his name. His minister had told him it was his duty, but his father and mother urged him to stay at home. Enthusiasm won, and he marched with the boys to the camp. His parents cried; they knew he would never return; their lack of Spartan courage was demoralizing the crowd, every one of which had some relative in the army … A sturdy veteran, with not a tear in his eye, walked up to the agonized parents and exclaimed: “For God’s sake, dont send the boys away from us like that.”
“Now is your Time,” proclaimed a recruiting poster for the 21st Connecticut Regiment.
The small print listed multiple bounties for those who enlisted. A married man with two children landed a hefty $652, in addition to his army pay of $13 per month.
There was a loud cheer for the man, for they knew that all his sons had left him to go and fight.
In speaking of that march to the depot, Edward Griswold, thirty years after, wrote: “We can never forget those old patriots, their erect forms, firm step and patriotic spirit. How they marched, how we felt, the road lined with people, the flags waving, the ‘God bless you’ of the ladies, the way we were sent off made us feel that we could have whipped the whole rebel army that morning. We wondered if we were dreaming, if we were really going to war and to participate in such scenes of war as had been told us around the fireside by our patriotic grandsires.”5
When the New York Evening Post published a poem called, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More,” composer Stephen Foster set the words to a jaunty melody. By the end of the summer of 1862, it seemed no one in the North could stop singing it.
THE ENEMY AT HOME
Did all of Connecticut’s people back the Union? By no means.
When Confederate troops first attacked Fort Sumter, plenty of Democrats aligned themselves with the Union cause, but thousands of Connecticut residents remained strongly opposed to the war and the Union.
In July of 1861, when the telegraph carried to Connecticut the distressing news of the 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
