Romance and Reality, Dissension and Dollars: The War News Trickles In

By Gary Far­row, Mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

 

Sep­tem­ber of 1861, the Civ­il War was page two. It wasn’t all that unusu­al for the North Star to have no Civ­il War head­lines on the front page.

There was one item with polit­i­cal reper­cus­sions nation­al­ly. A Union Gen­er­al had tak­en it upon him­self to issue a procla­ma­tion about slav­ery. There was also a let­ter by a Ver­mont POW and a report about the Danville Com­pa­ny. That month, the read­er could also learn about what vol­un­teers were get­ting for pay.

North Star Sep­tem­ber 7, 1861

The Vermont Prisoners at Richmond

Let­ter from Cap­tain Drew

Rich­mond, VA Aug 19, 1861

 Edi­tors of the Free Press:

I am per­mit­ted by Gen­er­al Winders, the humane and oblig­ing com­man­der of this post to write you, giv­ing a list of Vt boys con­fined here, and some infor­ma­tion as to our cap­ture. For sev­er­al days before the bat­tle, I had been sick and on “Sun­day the 21st” [A ref­er­ence to the Bat­tle of Bull Run and its date July 21] was hard­ly able to move.

But anx­i­ety to be with my men on the bat­tle­field to set out against the urgent advice of many. I endured about eight miles of rapid march­ing and then was oblig­ed to lie down by the way. I was soon after picked up by an offi­cer of the 4th Maine Reg­i­ment who placed me on his horse. Thus I made my way to with­in two miles of the bat­tle­ground, when I was put in an ambulance.

I was car­ried to the hos­pi­tal and had again for the field when our troops came rush­ing back. In the over­whelm­ing crowd that rolled pell mell down the hill, I was near­ly crushed… three Ver­mont boys came to me and helped me out of the crowd and down the road… I can nev­er for­get the noble­ness of their con­duct in delay­ing their own flight to help me when the ene­my is in close pur­suit… They were as cool as vet­er­ans. I was placed in an ambu­lance at last, though not until all our troops had passed along towards Cen­ter­ville. Some ten min­utes after we were attacked by Cav­al­ry and taken.

From all the offi­cers, I have received the most cour­te­ous and kind treat­ment. Indeed I owe my life to Dr Kennedy of New Orleans, Major Pra­dos of the Louisiana and Gen. Winders of Rich­mond… who took me to a hotel instead of the hard floor of the prison.

I am get­ting smart very fast and am anx­ious to get back to my com­pa­ny. There are over 50 offi­cers and 1200 pris­on­ers. Why does not our Gov­ern­ment do some­thing to have us exchanged? Unless Pres­i­dent Lin­coln wish­es to sac­ri­fice us, he had bet­ter exchange us and that before long. All news I omit for suf­fi­cient reasons.

Yours Tru­ly,

T. J. Drew

(Capt. Drew gives a list of some 20 pris­on­ers from Vermont…)

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Cap­tain Drew’s grat­i­tude is well found­ed, giv­en that he was in such dire cir­cum­stances and met so many Samar­i­tans in such rapid fire succession.

The account has the air of romance; gal­lantry rings through­out the let­ter. It paint­ed a world where men did their duty with hon­or and always retained their human­i­ty. The war years would grind this roman­ti­cism into dust and reveal a far dif­fer­ent side of human nature, insti­tu­tion­al­ized at places such as Ander­son­ville Prison in Geor­gia where over 12,000 Fed­er­al inmates would make death’s acquaintance.

North Star, Sept 14, 1861

Fremont’s Proclamation

Fremont’s procla­ma­tion of mar­i­tal law through­out the State of Mis­souri and the clause that “real and per­son­al prop­er­ty of those who had tak­en up arms against the Unit­ed States or who shall be direct­ly proven to have tak­en an active part with those in the field is declared con­fis­cat­ed to pub­lic use and their slaves, if any they have, are here­by declared free men” are cre­at­ing a sen­sa­tion North and South.

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Major Gen­er­al John Charles Fre­mont was sent to Mis­souri to assert the Fed­er­al claim to the Bor­der State and pro­tect Union inter­ests. There were Con­fed­er­ate sym­pa­thiz­ers of all sorts tak­ing guer­ril­la action. He respond­ed with his procla­ma­tion about slav­ery which went well beyond what the Pres­i­dent and Con­gress had autho­rized. The Fre­mont Procla­ma­tion caused polit­i­cal fire­works. The abo­li­tion­ists loved it while the fiat put the con­ser­v­a­tive bor­der states like Ken­tucky, at risk of secession.

In his patient way Lin­coln first tried to get Fre­mont to mod­i­fy his procla­ma­tion, which he refused to do. In the end, Lin­coln mod­i­fied the procla­ma­tion him­self so that it agreed with what Con­gress had recent­ly direct­ed. The abo­li­tion­ists gnashed their teeth, but at least Lin­coln had the polit­i­cal cov­er of Con­gress. The amend­ed procla­ma­tion mol­li­fied the con­ser­v­a­tives and kept the bor­der states in the Union.

A year lat­er, Lin­coln announced that he would free all slaves in the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca. If a state had decid­ed to return to the union pri­or to the end of the year, they would not be sub­ject to the procla­ma­tion. None did. On Jan­u­ary 1, 1863, he freed only those slaves in Con­fed­er­ate States leav­ing those in the bor­der states in bondage; his polit­i­cal cal­cu­lus was that he did not want to weak­en the ties of those states to the Union.

Capt. Laird’s Danville Company

Dur­ing the last three or four weeks, Capt. R. W. Laird of West Danville, has been busy and very suc­cess­ful in recruit­ing a com­pa­ny of vol­un­teers for the 5th Ver­mont Reg­i­ment. He has enlist­ed between 80 and 90 men [ 100 in a com­pa­ny] who for the time being are quar­tered in our vil­lage. Some thir­ty or more men are res­i­dents of Danville — the remain­der belong­ing to sur­round­ing towns.

Last Tues­day, the com­pa­ny was inspect­ed and on Wednes­day morn­ing made choice of the fol­low­ing com­mis­sioned officers -

Cap­tain R. W. Laird, West Danville

1st Lieut — Abel W. Fish­er, Danville

2nd Lieut — J.H. Brooks, Bradford

Last Thurs­day morn­ing at an ear­ly hour, the whole com­pa­ny of men belong­ing to Danville and this sec­tion took up their march for St Johns­bury and there took cars to con­vey them to Brat­tle­boro. They left in good spir­its, and with the best wish­es and part­ing grat­u­la­tions of our citizens.

****

Sol­diers roomed in people’s homes; women made uni­forms for the men. There is noth­ing nos­tal­gic about war; how­ev­er, there was a sense of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and shared sac­ri­fice. In this 85th year of inde­pen­dence, peo­ple felt they were mak­ing history.

Next week’s North Star con­tained infor­ma­tion about how much the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was pay­ing its soldiers.

North Star, Sep­tem­ber 21, 1861

Pay of Vol­un­teers and Bounties

…1. By acts of the late Con­gress, all boun­ties for enlist­ment were abol­ished, as well as the two dol­lar fee for bring­ing recruits to the ren­dezvous for enlistment.

2. For the first reen­list­ment in the reg­u­lar army, the sol­dier is to receive two dol­lars per month in addi­tion to his for­mer pay and to his for­mer pay and one dol­lar for each sub­se­quent enlistment.

3. Sol­diers who now enter the service…”for the war” and serve out their enlist­ments shall, with dis­charge, receive $100 boun­ty, or that amount will be paid to the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of such as die or killed in the service.

4. After the 5th of August 1861, pri­vates who receive eleven dol­lars will receive four­teen and those who for­mer­ly received twelve dol­lars will also receive thir­teen: pri­vates and cor­po­rals receive the same pay.

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For a 21st cen­tu­ry read­er, who is used to the fevered pitch of a 24-hour news cycle, it is aston­ish­ing to see the dearth of news about the War. There will be more about 19th cen­tu­ry news report­ing in future articles.