the flowers a gesture for his wife Sarah before he departed for war? If so, it was a prescient choice: Sarah died at the end of September.
For some, training camp had its perks. Connecticut’s 19th Regiment, largely composed of Litchfield County residents, trained at Camp Dutton, about a mile from the town of Litchfield—close enough to the soldiers’ homes that they often had visitors. “Camp Dutton was a beautiful spot,” joked the adjutant, Theodore Vaill, “but no place for a regiment to learn its hard and ugly trade. Fond mothers and aunts raked the position with a galling and incessant fire of doughnuts, apples, butter, pies, cheese, honey, and other dainties not conducive to the suppression of the rebellion.”19
Before their regiments left the state, many soldiers opted to have their likenesses taken. “The Moore Bro’s, photographers, always first in the field, are building a large wooden house on the grounds of the 16th Regiment for the purpose of taking soldiers’ pictures,” reported the Hartford Daily Courant. “Now the girls will have a chance to have their lovers taken before they go to war.”20
The Moore Brothers cranked out hundreds of portraits for the new soldiers. In fact, Nelson Augustus Moore, a Kensington native, had begun as a painter, known for his Hudson River landscapes. But in 1854, he and his brother Roswell had adopted the new medium, photography. Nelson’s artistry was apparent in the backdrops of many of their images.
The Moore Brothers photographed this unidentified soldier of the 16th Connecticut standing stiffly before a backdrop of a camp scene, as if on guard duty. A cast iron headstand (its base visible beside this soldier’s shoes) held the head stationary over a long exposure time, making the subject’s posture look unnaturally rigid.
Using the same backdrop but a different pose, the Moore Brothers produced a soldier portrait radically different from the one on the left. Here it’s easy to see a connection between the old art form—painting—and the new one—photography. With shading and hand coloring, the Moores’ backdrop took on depth and perspective. Though this picture is only a few inches high, it manages to evoke the formal painted portraits of earlier decades.
Before the final departure, some soldiers made a last visit home to say goodbye. “I shall never forget the scene of my parting with mother and the girls,” recalled Jim Sawyer. “About the last words I heard her say were, ‘O, Jimmie, how can I let you go?’ Father took me to the depot. A great crowd was there for most soldiers had friends with them who came to see them off … There were many affecting scenes. Father shook my hand with tears running down his face, and I know they were running down mine.”21
The final ceremony before leaving the state was the presentation of the colors. Each regiment would carry an American flag and a state flag, usually painted with the seal of Connecticut, then customized with the name of the regiment. At the presentations, speakers urged the troops to protect their flags with their lives. “Bear it bravely up above the storm of war,” said Hartford mayor Henry C. Deming, “follow it to the death in the crisis of battle, and return it to our midst emblazoned with triumphs nobly won, or leave it behind in a soldier’s honorable grave.”22
The flags would become sacred to the men. In battle, color-bearers carried the two silk banners, each over six feet by six feet, waving from staffs that stood nearly ten feet high. Their large size made them visible in the chaos and smoke of combat when the soldiers most needed them. A regiment’s flag didn’t just mark battle position for the troops; it became a physical symbol that actually inspired the men’s courage and recharged their passion.
Before the 25th Regiment left Hartford for the South, privates Lucien Royce (left) and Aaron Cook visited Wilson Brothers Photographers on Main Street. The new soldiers displayed all their military gear: at center stage was a black canvas knapsack painted with “25 CV” (for 25th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers). Royce wore a four-button blouse while Cook had a nine-button frock coat, both common to Union infantrymen. Cook also wore his Union overcoat. They slung their canteens over their shoulders, and rested their forage caps atop the knapsack, while Cook prominently displayed a piece of cloth in his left hand. Was it a handkerchief made by an admirer?
In the center of Litchfield, surrounded by well-wishers, the men of Connecticut’s 19th Regiment stood at attention to receive their colors on September 10, 1862.
The colors were a special target for the enemy, so color-bearers were often the first to fall. Then the next man in the supporting color guard would snatch up the flag and continue until he was hit. “All but one of the color guards were shot & the colors were down several times but up they would go again,” wrote Capt. Charles M. Coit of the 8th Connecticut after his regiment saw battle.23
But in these early days, the new soldiers didn’t yet know what the flag would come to mean to them. For most, the flag presentation was just part of the excitement of departure day. An officer of the 14th Connecticut remembered departing from Hartford, “which was all alive with flags and the waving of handkerchiefs in the hands of her fair daughters, whose eyes filled with tears as our magnificent band … played ‘The girl I left behind me,’ leading us to sob, some, for the girls we had left, others, because we hadn’t any girls to leave behind.”24
The 14th’s steamboat headed from Hartford down the Connecticut River, pausing at Middletown where many of the regiment lived. Their assistant surgeon, Levi Jewett, wrote:
“When we reached Middletown it seemed as if the whole city had turned out to meet us. The dock and all the space about was black with people. Many came to the boats with baskets of fruit and food, which were greatly appreciated by ‘the boys.’ At Cobalt a great gun on the hill gave us a roaring ‘God-speed’…”25
Many soldiers—especially officers—brought along small flasks as they went to war. Few could equal the fine style of the flask owned by Charles Upham of Meriden.
This soldier of Connecticut’s 1st Light Battery went south by steamboat, along with his regiment’s soldiers, horses, and artillery. It wasn’t an easy voyage, as one of the men recalled: “The most of my time was taken up in throwing dead horses and the contents of my stomach overboard.” (Herbert W. Beecher, History of the First Light Battery Connecticut Volunteers, 1861–1865, vol. 1, p. 78.)
Lt. Henry P. Goddard recalled, “As we passed out of the Connecticut that night, I remember standing with Johnny Broatch on the after deck of the boat, for a last look at the dear old state, whose good health we drank, emptying a half pint flask that a worthy relative had filled, telling me that unless I was badly wounded it ought to last me through the war.”26
But the trip south was definitely not all hope and glory. “Our boys on their way to the field slept on the dirty decks of a steamer, lying together as thick as rows of pins on a paper,” wrote Samuel Fiske of the 14th Regiment. Later they “were packed in dirty, close [railroad] cars like sheep in a pen.”27
And while citizens had showered the troops with cakes, fruit, and other tidbits along the way, soldiers found a slightly different diet awaited
