of what happened next:
Upon the arrival home of the Bridgeport party, with the white flag as a trophy, an excited concourse of people surrounded them … rending the air with shouts, and apparently ready for any desperate enterprise … when voices in the crowd shouted “To the Farmer office.”
A body of four or five hundred persons, followed by thousands of spectators, immediately moved down the street … Once within the walls [of the Bridgeport Advertiser and Farmer newspaper], a scene of destruction occurred that almost passes description … Type, job presses, ink, paper, books, all the paraphernalia of a printing establishment were thrown into the street, and two presses, too large to get through the windows, were broken in pieces by aid of a large and heavy lever. The crowd even ascended to the roof, and tore off such of the signs as they could reach. The appearance of the building on Sunday morning, windowless and rifled, was dreary in the extreme …11
A rare photograph taken soon after the riot at the Bridgeport Advertiser and Farmer showed the aftermath of the chaos.
The Peace Democrats, later known derisively as “Copperheads,” never gave up. Their voices were to rise again and again for the duration of the war, especially when Union morale was low.
TRAINING CAMP
Once a man had enlisted in a regiment, he was examined by a doctor. “We had to strip naked and be pounded in the back, punched in the ribs, lungs and heart sounded and we were put through certain motions and antics to show our strength and endurance,” said James Sawyer of Woodstock when he joined the 18th Connecticut.12
At training camp, the brand-new soldiers received their uniforms and equipment. Sawyer listed his new gear:
| 1 dark blue blouse | 2 pr drawers |
| 1 pr of pants, sky blue | 1 knapsack |
| 1 overcoat, sky blue | 1 canteen |
| 1 forage cap | 1 haversack |
| 1 pr coarse wide shoes | cartridge box with shoulder belt |
| 2 pr socks | waist belt with bayonet scabbard attached |
| 2 shirts |
“There was a good deal of changing about after we got our clothes,” Sawyer added; “they were handed out regardless of size so that but few received clothes that fitted. The long slim man got a short fat man’s suit and vice versa. I had lots of trouble in getting fitted in pants, and did not get suited till … mother cut the bottoms off.”13
Wearing their forage caps and blue uniforms, the men must have been pleased with their military appearances—but scarcely any of them were prepared for what came next. One soldier described the rude awakening they faced at training camp:
The enthusiasm awakened by public meetings and the enlistment fever … passes away; while the frequent call of the drum to various duties, the command of superior officers and the rigid regulations of the camp, combine to impress upon him the serious change that has come in to his hitherto peaceful experience …
Soon it dawns upon him that he is no longer his own master. The oath to support the Constitution of the United States is as yet a theoretical pledge in which he glories, but the obligation to obey the officers appointed over him he finds a practical thing and sometimes very difficult.14
While James Sawyer left a detailed list of his army gear, this unidentified soldier, his blanket rolled snugly atop his knapsack, had a photographer record his transformation from civilian to soldier.
It wasn’t always easy to make a man obey when a few days earlier he had been a private citizen who made his own decisions.
“Guard duty” at Camp Lyon when first established was something to be remembered … Capt. Smith was the first officer to mount a guard, and it is related that for the first few days it took all of his men to watch Capt. Bassett’s company, and vice versa. Only a few old State muskets were in use about headquarters and the “gate.” Corporal Griffin recounts how he paced the lonely rounds of his beat armed with only a fence picket. Many of the boys carried nothing whatever, but if a comrade sought to “run the guard” chased him and if able, collared and marched him back to headquarters.15
Many of the men were less concerned with learning military drills than with enjoying themselves before they left for the war. And whether they’d enlisted for patriotic or other reasons, they found their new regulations eye-opening. Michael Kelly described an incident in the 19th Connecticut’s early days in camp:
At about 11 AM we were all amazed at the sight of a tall and portly man equiped from his spurs to his shoulder straps. I[t] was our Lieutenant Colonel Elisha S. Kellogg … [We] were drilling quiet [quite] awhile when Lt. Col. Kellogg came along & shouts like a tiger at a soldier named Burns who was smoking. “Take that pipe out of your mouth, Sir, and attend to your drill.” Poor Burns trembled like a leaf. He [Col. Kellogg] caught the pipe & threw it with such [force] he never knew to this day where the pipe gone.16
Years later, soldiers looked back on their training with a laugh at how “green” they’d been. Jim Sawyer of the 18th Regiment allowed that at Camp Aiken in Norwich, “Our rations seemed pretty coarse, and of course there was a great deal of complaint about it. We hadn’t yet become very well educated in privation. We saw the time afterward when the rations we had in Camp Aiken would have seemed luxurious.”17
When a New Haven newspaper hyped the bulletproof vests made by Atwater Armor Company on Chapel Street, Connecticut soldiers rushed to acquire them. William G. Ely, colonel of the 18th Regiment,
found a man in the camp dispensing to the soldiers “bullet-proof vests.” To be “iron clad” when the bullets should fly as thick as hail! what more could a soldier ask? But Col. Ely, who had often smelt powder in dangerous proximity to bullets, was incredulous of the statement made by the dispenser of the steel vests. He took one of the garments from the dealer, and setting it up as a target for his revolver put several holes through it. He then ordered the arrest of the vender, made him refund to each soldier the amount which he had received in exchange for the worthless armor, and gave him opportunity for reflection in the regimental guard-house.18
The green soldiers of the 15th Regiment were not so lucky. They shelled out the money for the “iron-clad life preservers,” and struggled under the extra weight when they went off to war.
“It is said that at least fifty per cent of the regiment first wore away and then swore away this device. The track of the command from Washington to Arlington Heights was marked by these abandoned ‘armor plates,’ the largest quantity being hurled from Long Bridge into the Potomac … The balance of the lot, after being rudely perforated with bullets at ‘Camp Chase,’ was ignominiously kicked aside, and the skeletons probably repose there to this day.” (Sheldon Brainerd Thorpe, The History of the Fifteenth Connecticut Volunteers in the War for the Defense of the Union, 1861–1865, p. 15.)
In their new roles as conquering heroes, men often posed with muskets or swords, showing they meant business. Standing with the flag of his country or regiment also gave a soldier’s portrait a patriotic message. But occasionally a soldier’s choice of “props” leaves the viewer wondering.
George Parmelee, a farm laborer
