Vermont Part 19

The 2d Vermont, its ten companies selected from over 5,600 men who offered themselves, went to the front in time to take part in the first great battle of the war at Bull Run. Thenceforth till the close of the war this splendid regiment took part in almost every battle in which the Army of the Potomac was engaged. Its ratio of killed and mortally wounded was eight times greater than was the average in the Union army.

The 3d regiment followed in July, the 4th and 5th were rapidly filled and sent forward in September, the 6th in October. These five regiments formed the First Brigade of the Sixth Corps. The heroic service[112] of this brigade is interwoven with the history of the Army of the Potomac.

The estimation in which it was held is shown by the responsible and dangerous positions to which it was so often a.s.signed, and in the praise bestowed upon it by distinguished generals under which it served. When the Sixth Corps was to be hurried with all speed to the imperiled field of Gettysburg, Sedgwick's order was, "Put the Vermonters in front, and keep the column well closed up." "No body of troops in or out of the Army of the Potomac made their record more gallantly, sustained it more heroically, or wore their honors more modestly."[113]

At the time of the draft riots in New York, in July, 1863, the First Vermont Brigade, with other most reliable troops to the number of twelve thousand, were sent thither to preserve order during the continuance of the draft. It was a strange turn of time that brought Vermont regiments to protect the city whose colonial rulers had set the ban of outlawry upon the leaders of the old Green Mountain Boys. These later bearers of the name performed their duty faithfully and without arrogance, and received warm praise of all good citizens for their orderly behavior during what was holiday service to such veterans.

Vermont horses had won a national reputation as well as Vermont men, and it seemed desirable that the government should avail itself of the services of both. Accordingly, in the fall of 1861, a regiment of cavalry was recruited under direct authority of the Secretary of War; and in forty-two days after the order was issued, the men and their horses were in "Camp Ethan Allen" at Burlington. But one larger regiment, the 11th, went from the State, and none saw more constant or harder service. It brought home its flag inscribed with the names of seventy-five battles and skirmishes.

The 7th and 8th regiments of infantry and two companies of light artillery were raised early in 1862, and were a.s.signed to service in the Gulf States, in the department commanded by General Butler. Arrived at Ship Island, much to their gratification, they were placed under the immediate command of their own general, Phelps. Faithful to the spirit of his State and his own convictions of justice, he had issued[114] a proclamation to the loyal citizens of the Southwest, declaring that slavery was incompatible with free government, and the aim of the government to be its overthrow. Fugitive slaves found a safe refuge in his camp here, as in Virginia, and in May, 1862, he began drilling and organizing three regiments of blacks. But upon his requisition for muskets to arm them, he was peremptorily ordered by General Butler to desist from organizing colored troops, and he resigned his commission.

"The government," says Benedict in "Vermont in the Civil War," "which before the war closed had 175,000 colored men under arms, thus lost the services of as brave, faithful, and patriotic an officer as it had in its army, one whose only fault as a soldier was that he was a little in advance of his superiors in willingness to accept the aid of all loyal citizens, white or black, in the overthrow of rebellion."

In July, 1862, the 9th regiment, commanded by Colonel Stannard, went to the front, being the first under the recent call for three hundred thousand men. Its initial service was at Harper's Ferry, where it presently suffered the humiliation of surrender with the rest of Miles's force. In the little fighting that occurred, the raw regiment bore itself bravely. Colonel Stannard begged Miles to let him storm London Heights with his command alone, and then to cut his way out of the beleaguered post, but both requests were refused. The 9th pa.s.sed several months under parole at Chicago, was exchanged, and at length took its place in the Army of the Potomac. A portion of this regiment was the first of the Union infantry to carry the national flag into the rebel capital.

The 10th and 11th regiments were speedily forwarded in the fall of 1862.

The former joined the army in Virginia. The latter, recruited as heavy artillery, spent two years in garrison duty in the defenses of Washington. When Grant began the campaign of the Wilderness, it joined the First Vermont Brigade as an infantry regiment, and its fifteen hundred men outnumbered the five other thinned regiments of the brigade that had so often been winnowed in the blasts of war, which soon swept its own ranks with deadly effect.

Before these two regiments were organized came the President's call for three hundred thousand militia to serve nine months, under which Vermont's quota was nearly five thousand. The five regiments were quickly raised and sent forward, and to three of them, just before their term of enlistment expired, fell a full share of the glories of Gettysburg, under the intrepid leader, General Stannard. The charge of his Vermont Brigade beat back Pickett's furious a.s.sault, and decided the fate of the day.[115] Once more the brave little commonwealth was called on to furnish a regiment, and the 17th was sent to the front with ranks yet unfilled. Its third battalion drill was held on the battlefield of the Wilderness. The untried troops were hurled at once into the thick of the fight and suffered fearful loss, and henceforth were almost continually engaged with the enemy till the fall of Richmond.

Besides these seventeen regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, the State furnished for the defense of the Union three light batteries and three companies of sharpshooters, who well sustained the ancient renown of the marksmen whom Stark and Warner led, and at the close of the war Vermont stood credited with nearly thirty-four thousand men. Thus unstintingly did she devote her strength to the preservation of the Union to which she had been so reluctantly admitted. What manner of men they were, Sheridan testified when, two years after the war, standing beneath their tattered banners in Representatives' Hall at Montpelier, he said: "I have never commanded troops in whom I had more confidence than I had in the Vermont troops, and I do not know but I can say that I never commanded troops in whom I had as much confidence as those of this gallant State," and the torn and faded battle-flags under which he stood told more eloquently than words how bravely they had been borne through the peril of many battles, and honorably returned to the State that gave them.

When, after four weary years, the war came to its successful close, the decimated regiments of Green Mountain Boys returned to their State, received a joyful but sad welcome, and then, with all the embattled host of Union volunteers, dissolved into the even, uneventful flow of ordinary life. Notwithstanding the remoteness of the State from the arena of war, Vermont suffered a rebel raid from a quarter whence of old her enemies had often come, though of right none should come now. A majority of the people of Canada were in warm sympathy with the rebellion, their government was indifferent, and the Dominion swarmed with disloyal Americans, who were continually plotting to aid their brethren at the front by covert attacks in the rear. The federal government was on its guard, but a blow fell suddenly at an unexpected point.

On the 19th of October, 1864, while Vermont troops under Sheridan were routing the rebels at Cedar Creek, a rather unusual number of strangers appeared in the village of St. Albans, a few miles from the Canadian border. Moving about singly or in small groups, and clad in citizen's dress, they attracted no particular attention, till, at a preconcerted signal, three small parties of them entered the banks, and with c.o.c.ked and leveled pistols forced the officials to deliver up all the moneys in their keeping. Other armed men in the streets at once seized and placed under guard every citizen found astir, while some attempted to fire the town by throwing vials of so-called Greek fire into some of the princ.i.p.al buildings. Having possessed themselves of the treasure in the banks, amounting to two hundred thousand dollars, in specie, bills, and bonds, the party took horses from the livery stables, and rode out of town, firing as they went a wanton fusillade which wounded several persons, but happily killed only a recreant New Englander who was in sympathy with their cause. They proved to be a band of rebel soldiers, commanded by a Lieutenant Young, who held a commission in the Confederate army. They beat a hurried retreat with their booty beyond the line, whither they were pursued by a hastily gathered party of mounted men under the lead of Captain Conger, who had served in the Union army. None of the raiders were taken, but later fourteen were captured in Canada, with $87,000 of the booty, by Captain Conger's men, acting under orders of General Dix, and aided by Canadian officials.

During their brief imprisonment they were entertained as honored guests in the Montreal jail, and, after undergoing the farce of a trial in a Canadian court of justice, they were set at liberty amid cheers, which evinced the warm sympathy of the neutral Canadians. It appeared in the testimony of a detective that Colonel Armitinger, second in command of the Montreal militia, was aware of the contemplated raid, but took no measures to prevent it. "Let them go on," he said, "and have a fight on the frontier; it is none of our business; we can lose nothing by it."

The affair formed an important point of consideration in the Geneva arbitration, and Secretary Stanton declared it one of the important events of the war,--"not so much as transferring in part the scenes and horrors of war to a peaceful, loyal State, but as leading to serious and dangerous complications with Great Britain, through the desires and efforts of the Southern people to involve Canada, and through her Britain, in a war on behalf of their Southern friends."[116] The unfriendly att.i.tude which the Canadians held toward our government, throughout the struggle for its maintenance, might be profitably considered whenever the frequently arising project of annexation comes to the surface.

The Fenian irruptions of 1866 and 1870, abortive except for the panic which they created in Canada, with more than the ordinary certainty of poetic justice, formed their base of operations at St. Albans, the point of rebel attack in Vermont.

Impelled by the military spirit which the war had aroused, the legislature made provision for the organization of a uniformed volunteer militia, to which every township furnished its quota. Under the instruction of veterans of the war, the militia made commendable progress in drill and discipline. But after a few years it was disbanded, and the commonwealth has drifted back into almost the condition of unpreparation which existed at the beginning of the war.

For the most part, the young men who have become of military age since those troublous days are more unlearned than their mothers in the school of the soldier.

FOOTNOTES:

[111] G. G. Benedict, _Vermont in the Civil War_.

[112] The limits of this work preclude detailed account of the n.o.ble services of Vermont troops, which are fully and graphically related in G. G. Benedict's valuable work, _Vermont in the Civil War_. Of many n.o.ble examples of heroic self-devotion where Vermonters unflinchingly endured the storm of fire, the record of the 5th regiment at Savage's Station is memorable,--in the s.p.a.ce of twenty minutes, every other man in the line was killed or wounded. Company E went into the fight with 59 officers and privates, of whom only seven came out unhurt and 25 were killed or mortally wounded. Five brothers named c.u.mmings, a cousin of the same name, and a brother-in-law, all recruited on one street of the historic town of Manchester, were members of this company. All but one were killed or mortally wounded in this action, and he received a wound so severe that he was discharged by special order of the Secretary of War.

[113] Adjutant-General McMahon of the Sixth Corps.

[114] December, 1861.

[115] On this historic field Vermont has marked with monuments the position held by her troops. Where the war-worn First Brigade stood waiting but uncalled to stem the tide of battle, a crouching lion, alert for the onslaught, rears his majestic front, like the lion couchant of the Green Mountains. Another monument stands where the Second Brigade beat back the impetuous fury of the rebel charges; another where the Vermont cavalry dashed like a billow of fire and steel upon the foe; and two where, at the Hornet's Nest and the Peach Orchard, the unerring rifles of Vermont's three companies of sharpshooters rained their constant fire upon the enemy.

[116] _History of the St. Albans Raid_, p. 48, by E. A. Sowles.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE VERMONT PEOPLE.

In the years of peace that have pa.s.sed since the great national conflict, many changes have taken place in the commonwealth. The speculative spirit which arose from the inflation of values during that period in some degree affected almost every one, and still survives, when all values but that of labor have sunk to nearly their former level. Too great a proportion of the people sought to gain their living by their wits as speculators,--go-betweens of the producer and consumer, agents of every real or sham business and enterprise, largely increasing the useless cla.s.s who really do nothing, produce nothing, and add nothing to the wealth of a State. This cla.s.s is largely drawn from the greatly predominant agricultural population.

Farmers, who in the years before the war could only bring the year around by the strictest economy, suddenly became rich men, as farmers count wealth, by the doubled or trebled value of their land, and the same increase of price of all its products, and fell into ways of extravagance that left them poorer than before, when prices went down, and withal more discontented with their lot. Men bought land at the prevailing extravagant prices, and a few years later found themselves stranded, by the subsiding tidal wave, on the barren sh.o.r.es of hopeless debt, and many such became ready recruits for the insane army of Greenbackers.

The extravagance of their employers infected the wage-earners, and led them to the same silly emulation of display beyond their means, rather than to the founding of comfortable homes,--the ambition for something not quite attainable, which brings inevitable unrest and discontent.

Sheep husbandry, the old and fostered industry of the State, with which it was so long identified, deserves more than a pa.s.sing mention. As has been said in a former chapter, early in the century Vermont flocks were greatly improved by the introduction of the Spanish merinos. During 1809 and 1810, William Jarvis, our consul at Lisbon, obtained about 4,000 merinos from the confiscated flocks of the Spanish n.o.bles, and imported them to this country. The flocks of pure blood bred on Mr. Jarvis's beautiful estate at Weathersfield "Bow," lying on the western bank of the Connecticut, and half inclosed by the river, were not excelled by any in this country. From the Jarvis importation, and from a small flock of the Infantado family imported about the same time by Colonel Humphreys, our minister to Spain, the most valued merinos are descended.

From various causes the value of sheep and wool has exhibited remarkable fluctuations. During the years 1809 and 1810, half-blood merino wool sold for seventy-five cents a pound, and full blood for two dollars, and during the war with England rose to the enormous price of two dollars and a half a pound; full-blood rams sold for sums as great as the price of thoroughbred stallions, even ram lambs bringing a thousand dollars each: but such a sudden downfall followed the peace that, before the end of 1815, full-blooded sheep sold for one dollar each.

During the next ten years the price of wool continued so low that nearly all the flocks of merinos were broken up, or deteriorated through careless breeding. At that time an increase in the duties on fine wool revived the prostrate industry, but unhappily led to the general introduction of the Saxon merinos, a strain bearing finer but lighter fleeces, and far less hardy than their Spanish cousins. The cross of the puny Saxon with these worked serious injury to the flocks, but was continued for twenty years, and then abandoned so completely that all traces of the breed have disappeared. The Spanish sheep again became the favorites, or rather their American descendants, for these, through careful breeding by a few far-sighted shepherds, now surpa.s.sed in size, form, and weight of fleece their long neglected European contemporaries, if not their progenitors from whom in their best days the importations had been drawn.

Sheep-husbandry became the leading industry of Vermont, so generally entered upon that even the dairyman's acres were shared by some number of sheep, till every hillside pasture and broad level of the great valleys, rank with clover and herdsgra.s.s, was cropped by its half hundred or hundreds of these unconscious inheritors of mixed or unadulterated blue blood of the royal Spanish flocks.

Along all thoroughfares, from the Ma.s.sachusetts border to the Canadian frontier, the traveler, as he journeyed by stage or in his own conveyance, saw flocks dotting the close-cropped pastures with white or umber flecks, or huddled in the comfort of the barnyard, and the quavering bleat of the sheep was continually in his ears; nor was the familiar sound left quite behind as he journeyed along the lonely woodland roads, for even there he was like to hear it, and, chiming with the thrush's song, the intermittent jangle of the tell-tale bell that marked the whereabouts of the midwood settler's half-wild flock.

The "merino fever" again raged, and fabulous prices were paid for full-bloods, while unscrupulous jockeys "stubble sheared" and umbered sheep of doubtful pedigree into a simulation of desired qualities that fooled many an unsuspecting purchaser. Breeders and growers went to the opposite extreme from that which had been reached during the Saxon craze, and now sacrificed everything to weight of fleece, and Vermont wool fell into ill-repute. Prices went down again, and again the descendants of the Paulars and Infantados went to the shambles at prices as low as were paid for plebeian natives.

The wool-growing industry of the East now began to find a most formidable rival in the West, the Southwest, and Australia, in whose milder climates and boundless ranges flocks can be kept at a cost far below that entailed by the long and rigorous winters of New England, and in numbers that her narrow pastures would scarcely hold. At the same time lighter duties increased the importation of foreign wools, so there was nothing apparently for Vermont shepherds to do but to give up the unequal contest, and most of them cast away their crooks and turned dairymen.

But gifted with a wise foresight, a few owners of fine flocks kept and bred them as carefully as ever, through all discouragements, and in time reaped their reward, for it presently became evident that the flocks of milder climates soon deteriorate, and frequent infusions of Eastern blood are necessary to obtain the desired weight of fleece, so that sheep-breeding is still a prosperous industry, though, as has been stated, wool-growing has become insignificant.

Dairy products have largely increased, so that now they are far more important than wool among the exports, and almost everywhere the broad foot of the Jersey, the Ayrshire, the Shorthorn, and the Holstein has usurped the place of the "golden hoof."

The b.u.t.ter and cheese of the State were in good repute even in the primitive days of the earthen milkpan, the slow and wearisome dash-churn, and the cheese-press that was only a rough bench and lever, as rude in construction as the plumping-mill, and when a summer store of ice was a luxury that the farmer never dreamed of possessing. The simplest utensils and means were in vogue, and modern devices and improved methods were unknown. The good, bad, and indifferent b.u.t.ter of a whole township went as barter to the village store, where with little a.s.sorting it was packed in large firkins, and by and by went its slow way to the city markets, in winter in sleighs, in the open seasons on lumbering wagons or creeping boats, with cargoes of cheese, pork, apples, dried and in cider sauce, maple sugar, potash, and all yields of farm and forest. Even after such long journeying, the mixed product of many dairies retained some flavor of the hills that commended it to the palates of city folk, and was in favor with them.

Cheeses were not packed, as now, each in its own neat box, but four or five together in a cask made especially for the purpose, whose manufacture kept the cooper busy many days in the year. His wayside shop, with its resonant clangor of driven hoops and heaps of fresh shavings piled about it, distilling the wholesome odor of fresh wood, was a frequent wayside landmark, now not often seen. Cheese was the chief product of the dairy, and was always home-made, while now it is almost entirely made in factories, to which the milk of neighboring dairies is brought, but by far the larger part of the milk goes to creameries for the making of b.u.t.ter.

As the carding, spinning, and cloth-making went from the household in the day of a former generation, and the t.i.tle of "spinster" became only the designation of unmarried women, so the final labor of the dairy is being withdrawn from the farm to the creamery and cheese factory, to make an even product, better than the worst, if never so good as the best, of that of the old system, and the buxom dairymaid will exist for coming generations only in song and story.

The enormous mineral wealth of the State lay for years hidden or unheeded, copper and copperas in the hills of Vershire and Strafford, granite in the bald peaks of Barre, slate in long lines of shelving ledges here and there, and marble cropping out in blotches of dull white among the mulleins and scrubby evergreens of barren sheep pastures. Some of these resources developed slowly to their present importance, others have flourished and languished and flourished again, and others sprang from respectable existence into sudden importance.

Copper ore was discovered in Orange County about 1820,[117] and was afterwards mined and smelted in Vershire, in a small way, by a company formed of residents of the neighborhood and styled the "Farmers'

Company." In 1853 the mine was purchased by residents of New York, who were granted a charter under the t.i.tle of "Vermont Copper Mining Company," and they began more extensive operations under the direction of a skilled Cornish miner. In the years which have elapsed since then, the work has at times been actively carried on with excellent results, and fifty tons or more of superior copper produced each month; at times it has languished, till the populous mining village was almost deserted, and neighboring hill and vale, scathed by the sulphurous breath of roast-bed and furnace, became more desolate than when the primeval forest clothed them; again it has seasons of prosperity, when the Vershire vale is as populous with Pols, Tres, and Pens as a Cornish mining town.[118] Granite, upheaved from the core of the world, is found in immense ma.s.ses in the central portions of the State. At Barre there are mountains of it; though there so overtopped by the lofty peaks of Mansfield and "Tah-be-de-wadso," they bear such humble names as Cobble Hill and Millstone Hill. The pioneer hunters who trapped beaver and otter in the wild streams,[119] and the settlers who here first brought sun and soil face to face, little dreamed that greater wealth than fertile acres bear was held in these barren hills. Yet something of it became known more than half a century ago, and the second State House was built of this Barre granite, hauled by teams nine miles over the hilly roads. For many years the working of the quarries increased only gradually, but within comparatively a few years it has become an immense business. The hills are noisy with the constant click of hammer and drill, the clang of machinery, and the sullen roar of blasts, and the quiet village has suddenly grown to be a busy town, with two railroads to bear away the crude or skillfully worked products of the quarries. In a single year a thousand Scotch families came to this place, bringing strong hands skilled in the working of Old World quarries to delve in those of the New, and a savor of the Scotch highlands to the highlands of the New World.

Slate of excellent quality exists in Vermont in three extensive ranges, one in the eastern part of the State, another in the central, and another in the western. Each is quarried to some extent at several points, but the last named most extensively in Rutland County. Slabs taken from the weathered surface rock were long ago used for tombstones, and may be seen among the sumacs and goldenrods of many an old graveyard, still commemorating the spiritual and physical excellences of the pioneers who sleep beneath them. No quarries were opened until 1845, nor was much progress made for five years thereafter, when an immigration of intelligent Welshmen brought skilled hands to develop the new industry, and made St. David a popular saint in the shadow of the Taconic hills.

The existence of marble in Vermont was known long ago. On the Isle La Motte, a quarry of black marble was worked before the Revolution; and early in the present century, quarries were opened in West Rutland, and worked in rude and primitive fashion, the slabs so obtained being mostly used for headstones. A quarry was opened in Middlebury, and it is claimed that the device of sawing marble with sand and a toothless strip of iron was invented by a boy of that town, named Isaac Markham, though in fact it was known to the ancients and used by them centuries ago. But little more than fifty years ago, the site of the great quarries of West Rutland was a barren sheep-pasture, s.h.a.ggy with stunted evergreens, and the wealth it roofed was undreamed of, and so cheaply valued that the whole tract was exchanged for an old horse worth less than one of the huge blocks of marble that day after day are hoisted from its depths.

The working of these quarries was begun about 1836, and within ten years thereafter three companies were formed and in operation. But the growth of the business was slow, for there were no railroads, and all the marble quarried had to be hauled by teams twenty-five miles to Whitehall, the nearest shipping-point. Furthermore, its introduction to general use was difficult, for though its purity of color and firmness could not be denied, its durability was doubted. Fifty years of exposure in our variable and destructive climate have proved Vermont marble to exceed in this quality that of any foreign country. In 1852 a line of railroad running near at hand was completed, and the marble business of Rutland began to a.s.sume something of the proportions which now distinguish it as the most important of the kind on the continent.

One of the most remarkable changes in the commerce of Vermont has been in the lumber trade, which no longer flows with the current of Champlain and the Richelieu to Canada, but from the still immense forests of the Dominion up these waterways to supply the demands of a region long since shorn of its choicest timber. Of this great trade Burlington is the centre, and one of the busiest lumber marts in New England.

The pine-tree displayed on the escutcheon of Vermont is now no more significant of the products of the commonwealth than is the wheat sheaf it bears; for almost the last of the old pines are gone with the century that nursed their growth, and the ponderous rafts of spars and square timber that once made their frequent and unreturning voyages northward have not been seen for more than half a century. The havoc of deforesting is not stayed, nor like to be while forest tracts remain.

The devouring locomotive, spendthrift waste thoughtless of the future, the pulp-mill, and kindred wood consumers gnaw with relentless persistence upon every variety of tree growth that the ooze of the swamp or the thin soil of the mountain side yet nourishes.

In 1808, only a year after Fulton's successful experiment on the Hudson, a steamer was launched at Burlington on Lake Champlain, and astonished her spectators by her wonderful performance as she churned her way through the waters at the rate of five miles an hour. In 1815 a company was granted the exclusive right of the steam navigation of Lake Champlain, but the unjust monopoly was presently canceled. In later years the steamers of the lake were celebrated for the excellence of their appointments and superior management, a reputation which they still maintain, though the railroads that skirt their thoroughfare on either side have drawn from them the greater share of the patronage which they once enjoyed.