The County Regiment Part 1

The County Regiment.

by Dudley Landon Vaill.

PREFATORY

For those who dwell within its borders, or whose ancestral roots are bedded among its hills, the claims of Litchfield County to distinction are many and of many kinds. In these latter days it has become notable as the home of certain organizations of unique character and high purpose, which flourish under circ.u.mstances highly exceptional, and certainly no less highly appreciated.

It is as part of the work of one of these that there is commemorated in this volume an organization of an earlier day, one distinctively of the county, in no way unique in its time, but of the highest purpose--the regiment gathered here for the national defence in the Civil War.

The county's partic.i.p.ation in that defence was by no means restricted to the raising of a single regiment. Quite as many, perhaps more, of its sons were enrolled in other commands as made up what was known originally as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry; but in that body its organized effort as a county found expression, and it was proud to let the splendid record of that body stand as typical of its sacrifices for the preservation of the Union.

Though the history of that regiment's career has been written in full detail, the purpose of this slight repet.i.tion of the story needs no apology. There is sufficient justification in its intrinsic interest, to say nothing of a personal interest in its members, men who gave such proofs of their quality, and whose survivors are still our neighbors in probably every town in the county.

There is also something more than mere interest to be gained, in considering historical matters of such immensity as the Civil War, in giving the attention to some minute section of the whole, such as the account of individual experiences, or of the career of a particular regiment such as this; it is of great value as bringing an adequate realization of the actual bearing of the great events of that time upon the people of the time. The story of a body of Litchfield County men, such men as we see every day, drawn from such homes as we know all about us, is a potent help to understanding in what way and with what aspects these great historical movements bore upon the people of the country, for the experience of this group of towns and their sons furnished but one small instance of what was borne, infinitely magnified, throughout the nation.

It will readily appear that the subject might furnish material for a notable volume. In the present case nothing is possible save a brief sketch of the matter, made up chiefly, as will be seen, of citations from the published history of the regiment, and from such other sources of information as were easily accessible. Among the latter must be noted the records of the Regimental a.s.sociation, to which access was had through the courtesy of its secretary, D. C. Kilbourn, Esq., of Litchfield, and his a.s.sistance, as well as that of H. W.

Wessells, Esq., of Litchfield, to both of whom the securing of most of the ill.u.s.trations used is due, is gratefully acknowledged.

THE COUNTY REGIMENT

In spite of the labors of unnumbered chroniclers, it is not easy, if indeed it is possible, for us of this later generation to realize adequately the great patriotic uprising of the war times.

It began in the early days of 1861 with the a.s.sault on Fort Sumter, which, following a long and trying season of uncertainty, furnished the sudden shock that resolved the doubts of the wavering and changed the opinions of the incredulous. Immediately there swept over all the northern states a wave of intense national feeling, attended by scenes of patriotic and confident enthusiasm more noisy than far-sighted, and there was a resulting host of volunteers, who went forth for the service of ninety days with the largest hopes, and proportionate ignorance of the crisis which had come to the nation. Of these Connecticut furnished more than her allotted share, and Litchfield County a due proportion.

The climax of this excited period was supplied by the battle of Bull Run. There was surprise, and almost consternation, at the first news of this salutary event, but quickly following, a renewed rally of patriotic feeling, less excited but more determined, and with a clearer apprehension of the actual situation. The enlistment of volunteers for a longer term had been begun, and now went forward briskly for many months; regiment after regiment was enrolled, equipped, and sent southward, until, in the spring of 1862, the force of this movement began to spend itself. The national arms had met with some important successes during the winter, and a feeling of confidence had arisen in the invincibility of the Grand Army of the Potomac, which had been gathering and organizing under General McClellan for what the impatient country was disposed to think an interminable time. A War Department order in April, 1862, putting a stop to recruiting for the armies, added to the confidence, since an easy inference could be drawn from it, and the North settled down to await with high hopes the results of McClellan's long expected advance.

Then came the campaign on the Peninsula. At first there was but meagre news and a mult.i.tude of conflicting rumors about its fierce battles and famous retreat, but in the end the realization of the failure of this mighty effort. To the country it was a disappointment literally stunning in its proportions; but now at length there was revealed the magnitude of the task confronting the nation, and again there sprang up the determination, grim and intense, to strain every nerve for the restoration of the Union.

The President's call for three hundred thousand men to serve "for three years or the war" was proclaimed to this state by Governor Buckingham on July 3rd (1862), and evidence was at once forthcoming that it was sternly heeded by the people. To fill Connecticut's quota under this call, it was proposed that regiments should be raised by counties. A convention was promptly called, which met in Litchfield on July 22nd; delegates from every town in the county were in attendance, representatives of all shades of political opinion and individual bias, but the conclusions of the meeting were unanimously reached. It was resolved that Litchfield County should furnish an entire regiment of volunteers, and that Leverett W. Wessells, at that time Sheriff, should be recommended as its commander.

Immediate steps were taken to render this determination effective; the Governor promptly accepted the recommendation as to the colonelcy, recruiting officers were designated to secure enlistments, bounties voted by the different towns as proposed by the county meeting, and the movement thoroughly organized. Although there was a clear appreciation of the present need, the dozen or more Connecticut regiments already in the field had drawn a large number of men from Litchfield County, and effort was necessary to gain the required enrollment. There had been many opportunities already for all to volunteer who had any wish to do so, but the call now came to men who a few weeks before had hardly dreamed of the need of their serving; men not to be attracted by the excitement of a novel adventure, but who recognized soberly the duty that was presenting itself in this emergency, and men of a very different stamp from those drawn into the ranks in the later years of the war by enormous bounties. It is reasonable to think that pride in the success of the county's effort was a factor in stimulating enlistments; announcement that a draft would be resorted to later was doubtless another. Just at this time, also, the return from a year's captivity in the South of the Rev.

Hiram Eddy of Winsted, who had been made prisoner at Bull Run, furnished a powerful advocate to the cause; night after night he spoke in different towns, urging the call to service fervently and with effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rev. Hiram Eddy]

It is to be noted that at the same time that this endeavor was being made to fill the ranks of a regiment for three years' service, recruiting was going on with almost equal vigor under the call for men to serve for nine months, and three full companies were contributed by Litchfield County to the Twenty-eighth Infantry, which bore a valiant part in the campaign against Port Hudson in the following summer. It is possible to gain some idea of how the great tides of war were felt throughout the whole land by imagining the stir and turmoil thus brought, in the summer of 1862, into this remote and peaceful quarter by the engrossing struggle.

In the last week in August, the necessary number of recruits having been secured, the different companies were brought together in Litchfield and marched to the hill overlooking the town which had been selected as the location of Camp Dutton, named in honor of Lieutenant Henry M. Dutton, who had fallen in battle at Cedar Mountain shortly before. Lieutenant Dutton, the son of Governor Henry Dutton, was a graduate of Yale in the cla.s.s of 1857, and was practising law in Litchfield when he volunteered for service on the organization of the Fifth Connecticut Infantry.

The interest and pride of the county in its own regiment was naturally of the strongest; the family that had no son or brother or cousin in its ranks seemed almost the exception, and Camp Dutton became at once the goal of a ceaseless stream of visitors from far and near, somewhat to the prejudice of those principles of military order and discipline which had now to be acquired. The preparation and drill which employed the scant two weeks spent here were supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg, fresh from McClellan's army in Virginia, and he was afterwards reported as delivering the opinion that if there were nine hundred men in the camp, there were certainly nine thousand women most of the time.

With all possible haste, preparations were made for an early departure, but there was opportunity for a formal mustering of the regiment in Litchfield, when a fine set of colors was presented by William Curtis Noyes, Esq., in behalf of his wife. A horse for the Colonel was given also, by the Hon. Robbins Battell, saddle and equipments by Judge Origen S. Seymour, and a sword by the deputies who had served under Sheriff Wessells.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Presentation of colors, September 10th, 1862]

On September 15th (1862), the eight hundred and eighty-nine officers and men now mustered as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry broke camp, made their first march to East Litchfield station, and started for the South, with the entire population for miles around gathered to witness, not as a holiday spectacle, but as a farewell, grave with significance, the departure of the county regiment.

"In order to raise it," says the regimental history, "Litchfield County had given up the flower of her youth, the hope and pride of hundreds of families, and they had by no means enlisted to fight for a superior cla.s.s of men at home. There was no superior cla.s.s at home. In moral qualities, in social worth, in every civil relation, they were the best that Connecticut had to give. More than fifty of the rank and file of the regiment subsequently found their way to commissions, and at least a hundred more proved themselves not a whit less competent or worthy to wear sash and saber if it had been their fortune."

The regimental officers were: Colonel, Leverett W. Wessells, Litchfield; lieutenant-colonel, Elisha S. Kellogg, Derby; major, Nathaniel Smith, Woodbury; adjutant, Charles J. Deming, Litchfield; quartermaster, Bradley D. Lee, Barkhamsted; chaplain, Jonathan A.

Wainwright, Torrington; surgeon, Henry Plumb, New Milford.

Colonel Wessells, a native of Litchfield, and a brother of General Henry W. Wessells of the regular army, had been prominent in public affairs before the war, and served for twelve years as Sheriff. Ill health interfered with his service with the regiment from the first, and finally compelled his resignation in September, 1863. Later he was appointed Provost Marshal for the Fourth District of Connecticut, and for many years after the war was active in civil affairs, being the candidate for State Treasurer on the Republican ticket in 1868, Quartermaster-General on Governor Andrews' staff, and member of the General a.s.sembly. He died at Dover, Delaware, April 4, 1895.

Washington in September, 1862, while relatively secure from the easy capture which would have been possible in the summer of the previous year, was not in a situation of such safety as to preclude anxiety, for Pope had just been beaten at Bull Run and Lee's army was north of the Potomac in the first of its memorable invasions of the loyal states. On the very day of his check at Antietam, September 17th, the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteers reached the capital, and the next day moved into the hostile state of Virginia, bivouacking near Alexandria.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The first encampment in Virginia]

In this vicinity the regiment was destined to remain for many months, and to learn, as far as was possible without the grim teachings of actual experience, the business for which it was gathered. At first there was a constant expectation of orders to join the army in active operations; the county newspapers for many weeks noted regularly that the regiment was still near Alexandria, "but orders to march are hourly expected." It was good fortune, however, that none came, for not a little of the credit of its later service was due to the proficiency in discipline and soldierly qualities gained in the long months now spent in preparation.

The task of giving the necessary military education to the thousand odd men fresh from the ordinary routine of rural Connecticut life, fell upon the shoulders of Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg, and by all the testimony available, most of all by the splendid proof they later gave, it is clear that it was entrusted to a master hand. Matters of organization and administration at first engrossed Colonel Wessells'

attention; ill health soon supervened, and later he was given the command of a brigade. The regiment from its beginning was Kellogg's, and he received in due course the commission vacated by its first commander in September, 1863.

A thorough and well-tried soldier himself, he quickly gained the respect of his command by his complete competency, and its strong and admiring affection was not slow in following. There are men among us to this day for whom no superlatives are adequate to give expression to their feelings in regard to him. As the regimental history records of their career "there is not a scene, a day, nor a memory from Camp Dutton to Grapevine Point that can be wholly divested of Kellogg. Like the ancient Eastern king who suddenly died on the eve of an engagement, and whose remains were bolstered up in warlike att.i.tude in his chariot, and followed by his enthusiastic soldiers to battle and to victory, so this mighty leader, although falling in the very first onset, yet went on through every succeeding march and fight, and won posthumous victories for the regiment which may be said to have been born of his loins. Battalion and company, officer and private, arms and quarters, camp and drill, command and obedience, honor and duty, esprit and excellence, every moral and material belonging of the regiment, bore the impress of his genius. In the eyes of civilians, Colonel Kellogg was nothing but a horrid, strutting, s.h.a.ggy monster.

But request any one of the survivors of the Nineteenth Infantry or the Second Artillery to name the most perfect soldier he ever saw, and this will surely be the man. Or ask him to conjure up the ideal soldier of his imagination, still the same figure, complete in feature, gesture, gauntlet, saber, boot, spur, observant eye and commanding voice, will stalk with majestic port upon the mental vision. He seemed the superior of all superiors, and major-generals shrunk into pigmy corporals in comparison with him. In every faculty of body, mind, heart, and soul he was built after a large pattern. His virtues were large and his vices were not small. As Lincoln said of Seward, he could swear magnificently. His nature was versatile, and full of contradictions; sometimes exhibiting the tenderest sensibilities and sometimes none at all. Now he would be in the hospital tent bending with streaming eyes over the victims of fever, and kissing the dying Corporal Webster, and an hour later would find him down at the guard house, prying open the jaws of a refractory soldier with a bayonet in order to insert a gag; or in anger drilling a battalion, for the fault of a single man, to the last point of endurance; or shamefully abusing the most honorable and faithful officers in the regiment. 'In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.'

But notwithstanding his frequent ill treatment of officers and soldiers, he had a hold on their affections such as no other commander ever had, or could have. The men who were cursing him one day for the almost intolerable rigors of his discipline, would in twenty-four hours be throwing up their caps for him, or subscribing to buy him a new horse, or pet.i.tioning the Governor not to let him be jumped. The man who sat on a sharp-backed wooden horse in front of the guard house, would sometimes watch the motions of the Colonel on drill or parade, until he forgot the pain and disgrace of his punishment in admiration of the man who inflicted it."

It is not hard to understand the hold he gained, through a personality so striking and forceful, upon the men of his command; they were but boys for the most part, in point of fact, and open to the influence of just such strength, and perhaps also just such weaknesses, as they saw in this splendidly virile and genuine, and very human character.

Colonel Kellogg was a Litchfield County man, a native of New Hartford, and at this time about thirty-eight years of age. His education was not of the schools, but gained from years of adventurous life as sailor, gold-hunter, and wanderer. Shortly before the war he had settled in his native state, but he responded to the call for the national defence among the very first, and before the organization of the Nineteenth had served as Major of the First Connecticut Artillery. He lies buried in Winsted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fort Ellsworth, near Alexandria, May, 1863]

For more than a year and a half the regiment was numbered among the defenders of the capital, removing after a few months from the immediate neighborhood of Alexandria, and being stationed among the different forts and redoubts which formed the line of defence south of the Potomac.

Important as its service there was, and novel as it must have been to Litchfield County boys, it was not marked by incidents of any note, and furnished nothing to attract attention among the general and absorbing operations of the war. It was, still, of vast interest to the people of the home towns. The county newspapers had many letters to print in those days from the soldiers themselves, and from visitors from home, who in no inconsiderable numbers were journeying down to look in upon them constantly. There were of course matters of various nature which gave rise to complaints of different degrees of seriousness; there was not unnaturally much sickness among the men in the early part of their service; there were political campaigns at home, in which the volunteers had and showed a strong interest; there was a regrettable quarrel among the officers in which Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg was placed in an unfortunate light, and the termination of which gave the men an opportunity of showing their feeling for him. All these matters were well aired in type; meanwhile the regiment, doing well such duty as was laid upon it, grew in efficiency for hard and active service when it should be called for.

The possibility of a call to action at almost any minute was seen in April, 1863, when orders came that the regiment be held ready to march. Reinforcements were going forward to the Army of the Potomac, now under Hooker, in large numbers; but the Nineteenth was finally left in the Defences. Thus months were pa.s.sed in the routine of drill and parade, guard mounting and target practice, varied by brief and rare furloughs, while the lightnings of the mighty conflict raging so near left them untouched. "Yet," it is related, "a good many seemed to be in all sorts of affliction, and were constantly complaining because they could not go to the front. A year later, when the soldiers of the Nineteenth were staggering along the Pamunkey, with heavy loads and blistered feet, or throwing up breastworks with their coffee-pots all night under fire in front of Petersburg, they looked back to the Defences of Washington as to a lost Elysium."

It was in November, 1863, that the War Department orders were issued changing the Nineteenth Infantry to a regiment of heavy artillery, which Governor Buckingham denominated the Second Connecticut.

Artillery drill had for some time been part of its work, and the general efficiency and good record of the regiment in all particulars was responsible for the change, which was a welcome one, as the artillery was considered a very desirable branch of the service, and the increase in size gave prospects of speedier promotions.