sudden pull, and by some unaccountable cause the powder exploded, and the ramrod entered one side of his body, passing through it, and could not be removed from his body except by being filed in two.” (Statement of Scott Baker of Derby, Connecticut, October 30, 1872, in pension file of Evelyn Moulthrop, 20th Connecticut Volunteers, National Archives.)
Evelyn lived only until the next night. At war’s end, his father returned to Connecticut alone; “for ten years he was the worse for Liquor,” wrote his daughter Antoinette. (Statement of Mrs. R. Y. Stevenson of Ansonia, January 21, 1886, in pension file of Evelyn Moulthrop, 20th Connecticut Volunteers, National Archives.)
The majority of Connecticut soldiers were able to read and write, thanks to an 1838 state law that had improved public education. Their schooling ensured that most could write letters home, and record events in their diaries, preserving their thoughts and experiences.
College-educated men were not unusual, especially among the officers, some of whom were quite cultured and literary. Captain John Griswold, a Yale graduate, recited a Horace poem in ancient Greek as he lay dying from his wounds at Antietam.9
In the ranks, though, few men could claim such lofty scholarship. A small percentage of Connecticut soldiers (some of them immigrants, some native Nutmeggers) were actually illiterate, or nearly so. Still, the fact that a well digger couldn’t speak eloquently about duty and honor did not make his devotion to his country any less than Captain Griswold’s. “Some were scholars; some were farmers; some were artisans or laborers—plain men who had never heard of Thermopylae or Sempach, but in whose breasts burned the fire of Leonidas at the pass,” said Captain Henry Jones of his brothers-in-arms in the 8th Regiment.10
With America on its way to becoming a melting pot, the Union army reflected the country’s increasing ethnic diversity. Lt. William Cogswell,11 a Native American from Cornwall, fought in the 2nd Heavy Artillery, while a Hawaiian named Friday Kanaka enlisted in Connecticut’s 30th Regiment. Lt. Augustus Rodrigues of the 15th Connecticut came from Puerto Rico. A company of men in the 27th Regiment had names like Frederick Buchholz, Peter Schmidt, and Jacob Herman; nearly all of them born in Germany, or the children of German immigrants.
In fact, immigrants made up one-third of the Union army. In Connecticut’s 9th Regiment, which drew most of its soldiers from Irish families, the regimental flag bore an Irish harp beside the stars and stripes. Other regiments contained men born in a host of other nations—England, Poland, Italy, Spain—who risked, and often gave, their lives for their adopted country.
The 9th Connecticut, the “Irish Regiment,” served in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia. The 9th’s battle honors included the Battle of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, whose name was added to the colors proudly displayed by an unidentified sergeant. In addition to Rebel bullets, disease proved a grim enemy for the 9th. In one four-month period, 150 men died from sickness.
Born in China, Joseph Pierce came to Connecticut as a boy, brought by a ship captain from Berlin. Pierce lived with the captain’s family until 1862 when he enlisted in the 14th Connecticut. He earned his corporal’s stripes in the Fighting 14th, and survived the regiment’s many battles.
MOTIVATIONS
As the soldiers’ backgrounds varied, so did their reasons for fighting. At the beginning of the war, many men and boys enlisted in the wave of fervor sweeping the state. Joining the army in the Civil War—as now—also appealed to many young men who wanted to see something of the world beyond their hometown.
But thousands of men decided to fight out of true patriotism. Having endured nearly three years of war, Lt. Benjamin Wright of the 10th Regiment wrote to his wife in Greenwich: “there has got to be some hard fighting, a good many lives must be sacrificed, but I feel that the cause is worth all that it has or will cost. We shall be a better Nation for the ordeal through which we have passed. It will be settled so that we need have no fears that our children will have to settle it again. If we lay down our lives in such a cause we can have the satisfaction of knowing they were sacrificed in a good cause and for the good of the country.”12
Of course, among Connecticut’s thousands of soldiers, opinion varied hugely.
“We are all tired of the war the whole army we never shall whip them I believe,” wrote Henry Thompson, an East Haven oysterman in the 15th Regiment. “I look at it as a great slaughter of lives.”13
William VanDeursen of Middletown had the blood of patriots flowing in his veins, but he was clear about his own motivation: “Money was all I enlisted for, to get enough to pay of[f] some of our debts.”14
Besides his monthly pay, every man who enlisted received healthy enlistment bonuses from the state of Connecticut and the federal government. In addition, each city and town offered as high a bounty as possible in an effort to entice men to enlist from their town—and thus meet the quota of soldiers that the state had assigned it. Middletown began by offering $100 and increased it to $150 later in the war. Individual regiments and companies sometimes offered inducements as well.
While commissioned staff officers received much more than enlisted men, they had additional expenses; they had to buy their own food, and pay for their horses’ forage.
Union Army, White Soldiers’ Monthly Pay, 1862
William Walter VanDeursen’s father had been a captain in the War of 1812, and his grandfather had served in the Revolution. His forebears may have been patriots, but Willy joined the Union army for one reason: money.
The Hartford Daily Times, September 1, 1862
THE DRAFT
When bounties didn’t bring in enough men to win the war, the government moved to a draft. On March 3, 1863, Congress passed the Enrollment and Conscription Act, requiring males between the ages of twenty and forty-five to register for the draft. The act applied to both American citizens and immigrants who intended to become citizens. The threat of a draft brought plenty of opposition.
As the day of the draft approached, hundreds of men applied for medical exemptions. “The halt, the blind, the diseased, swelled to a fabulous number. Some surgeons seemed, from excessive good nature, or for the sake of popularity, or for the paltry twenty-five cents received for each certificate, inclined to grant almost every application.”16
In Middletown, a recruiting poster advised men to “Choose between the Large bounties or the chance of the draft!” Veteran soldiers—more valuable since they’d already been trained—could rake in $792 in bounties, while new recruits received $692 for enlisting.
Woodbury residents read an anonymous broadside posted in town that listed “certified cowards”: local men accused of faking medical conditions to avoid military service. Beside each man’s name was the disability he claimed.
