USA > Maine > Maine; a history, Volume II > Part 21
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The First Maine Cavalry took a very active part in the final cam- paign, having one-third of its men and one-half of its officers killed or wounded. It greatly distinguished itself by delaying a superior force at Cat Tail Run, the day before the battle of Five Forks. At Appomattox the brigade of which it was a part held the road by which Lee was attempt- ing to escape, and when it gave way and was on the point of breaking, there
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appeared the Fifth and the Twenty-fourth Corps, and the regiment and the brigade might scatter as they pleased, their work was done, and well done. At the sight of infantry across their line of retreat, "the rebel host stag- gered back, and their whole line wavered as if each particular man was terror struck. The curtain fell on four years of fighting.""
Two of the flags of truce when Lee asked for terms came into General Chamberlain's lines and to him was assigned the honor of commanding the troops before whom the Confederate army filed and laid down its arms. In respect for the bravery shown by the vanquished, General Chamberlain ordered his men to give the marching salute, a courtesy deeply appreciated by the Confederates.
Something should be said of the officers whom Maine gave to the service, but to describe the careers of even the most deserving would occupy more space than could well be spared and individual sketches will be given of only Generals Howard and Chamberlain, who were perhaps the most widely known of the Maine officers, and of Generals Williams and Ingalls, two regular army officers, whose fame, at least among civilians, bears no proportion to the services which they rendered.
Oliver Otis Howard was born at Leeds, Maine, November 8, 1830. He studied at various schools and academies, entered Bowdoin before he was sixteen with the class of 1850, and completed his course, but was not present to graduate with his class. His uncle, Hon. John Otis, was then a member of Congress and it fell to him to nominate a cadet for West Point. Mr. Otis evidently believed that he who will not provide for his own house is worse than a heathen, and nominated his son, but the young man failed to pass the physical examination. He then nominated his nephew, Oliver, who was accepted. While at the Academy, Cadet Howard showed his manliness by frequently visiting another cadet who for no serious reason was being "cut" by nearly every student in the Academy. On the breaking out of the Civil War, Lieutenant Howard resigned his position in the regu- lar army to accept the colonelcy of the Third Maine Infantry. He soon after was made commander of a brigade which did reasonably good work at Bull Run. In 1863 he was given another brigade and commissioned a brigadier-general. At Fair Oaks his right elbow was shattered by a rifle shot, and it was necessary to amputate. He was engaged at Antietam and Fredericksburg, and in 1863 was assigned to the command of the Eleventh Corps. His misfortune at Chancellorsville has been mentioned on another page. At Gettysburg his corps was again driven back in confusion by a superior force of the enemy; Howard did good work in rallying them and occupying Cemetery Hill. He claimed and brought considerable evidence to prove that he selected the position, but the friends of General Reynolds, Howard's superior officer, who was killed early in the battle, are of the opinion that he sent an order to Howard to occupy the ridge, and Hancock
"Speech of Colonel Cilley, quoted in Tobie, "First Maine Cavalry," 437.
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GEN. OLIVER O. HOWARD
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and his staff claimed that he was in command when the First and Eleventh Corps were reformed on the Ridge, and that the chief credit of saving it belonged to him. On the third day of the battle, Howard and his corps took an honorable part in the repulse of Pickett's charge. Livermore, in his careful study of the campaigns of 1863, says that Howard committed a grave error in not withdrawing the Union forces to Cemetery Ridge earlier in the battle, and the Comte de Paris is of the same opinion. Gen- eral Schurz, however, presents strong arguments on the other side.
In the autumn, the Eleventh Corps was sent west and took an active and honorable part in the operations under Grant and Sherman. After McPherson was killed at Atlanta, Sherman assigned Howard to the com- mand of the Army of the Tennessee, and he did efficient work in the March to the Sea and the march through the Carolinas.
When the war closed, Howard was made head of the Freedmen's Bureau. He also took a chief part in founding and became president of an institution at Washington for the education of colored people, Howard University. From 1874 to 1880 he was commander of the Department of the Columbia. For two years he was commander at West Point, which was then a military department. He remained in the army, holding various commands, until November 8, 1894, when, having reached the age of sixty- four years, he was retired, as required by law. In 1896, with other promi- nent Union officers he toured the country speaking for Mckinley, and in 1900 again took the stump for him. He performed a similar service for Roosevelt in 1904, and took an active part at the inauguration parades of 1897, 1901 and 1905, commanding the division of veterans. General How- ard died at his home in Burlington, Vermont, on October 26, 1909.
Oliver O. Howard was a very religious man, of the old-school "evan- gelical" type. In public and in private he proclaimed his faith, and pro- moted the cause of Christ as he understood it, in a manner suggesting a clergyman rather than a general. This gave him the name of "the Have- lock of the Army," and won him great popularity with the church people of the country, but rather injured him with many of his brother officers whose daily walk, and still more whose language, were by no means pious. General Howard was deeply interested in the cause of education, and did much both for Howard University and Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee. He was a kindly man, utterly opposed to the rigid demerit system at West Point, and himself free from the stiff martinet notions too often characteristic of the regular officers. In business it might have been wished that he had been a little more of a formalist. Rhodes says of his appointment as head of the Freedmen's Bureau, that "Howard, the choice of Lincoln, was by virtue of his amiability and philanthropy an excellent man for the place, but his conduct of financial affairs was loose, and he needed the supervision of a systematic and critical President and Secretary of War." His conduct of the bureau was severely criticised, and he was
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twice investigated, once by a committee of the House and once by a special court of high officers with General Sherman at its head. In both cases he was acquitted with high honor. The committee and the House, however, divided on partisan lines, and General Howard appears to have done some things which though not evilly meant would be of evil example.
General Howard has also been accused of injustice to troops under his command. Many of the Eleventh Corps felt bitterly his silence when the country rang with denunciations of them after Chancellorsville. He is also said to have reported to Meade, on reaching Gettysburg, that the First Corps fled at the first contact with the enemy. If so, he grossly wronged troops who fought with the greatest heroism, suffering terrible loss. The Sixteenth Maine was a part of the First Corps, and its historian, Major Small, declares that the members of the corps will never forgive Howard.
Joshua L. Chamberlain was born in Brewer, Maine, September 8, 1828. On his father's side he was descended from a member of the Plymouth colony, on his mother's from a Huguenot who came to Boston in 1685. "His grandparents were among the substantial and enterprising families which came from Massachusetts and New Hampshire at the close of the War of the Revolution to apply their energies to ship-building, milling and farming in the rich region about the head of tide-water on the Penobscot river. His parents were typical characters. English strength and French grace made a good combination for a home." In his own nature there was a remarkable blending of the active and the contemplative. As a boy he worked hard on his father's hundred-acre farm and also spent much time in solitary meditation in the woods. He attended school at a "military academy" in Ellsworth, entered Bowdoin College with advanced standing, and graduated in 1852. He then entered Bangor Theological Seminary and graduated in 1855. A master's oration on "Law and Liberty," delivered at Bowdoin that year, had been received with great favor, and he was offered and accepted an instructorship at Bowdoin in Natural and Revealed Religion. He was later given other titles and duties, and taught Rhetoric and Oratory, French and German. In 1862 he entered the Union army and, declining the command of a regiment, was made lieutenant-colonel of the Twentieth Maine. He distinguished himself at Antietam and Fredericks- burg, and took an honorable part at Gettysburg. He did excellent work at Topopotamy and the North Anna, and at Bethseda Church and Cold Har- bor. He was then made commander of a newly organized brigade of choice troops. In the attack on Petersburg, on July 18, he conducted a desperate charge with marked skill and courage, was shot through the body, and received the extraordinary honor of promotion on the field. General Grant says in his Memoirs: "Col. J. L. Chamberlain, of the Twentieth Maine, was wounded on the 18th. He was gallantly leading his brigade at the time, as he had been in the habit of doing in all the engagements in which he had previously been. He had several times been recommended
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for a brigadier-generalcy for gallant and meritorious conduct. On this occasion, however, I promoted him on the spot, and forwarded a copy of my order to the War Department, asking that my act be confirmed and Chamberlain's name be sent to the Senate for confirmation without delay. This was done; and at last a gallant and meritorious officer received partial justice at the hands of his government, which he had served so faithfully and so well."
General Chamberlain took an active part in the final campaign, was brevetted major-general "for conspicuous gallantry" at the battle of the Quaker Road, and General Grant assigned to him the honor of command- ing the troops before whom the Confederate army filed and laid down their arms.
During his service, General Chamberlain was engaged in over twenty battles and several times that number of lesser fights; he had five horses shot under him, and received six wounds. After leaving the army the general resumed his professorial work, but in 1866 he was elected Governor of Maine and served until 1871. He was then chosen president of Bowdoin and held that position until 1883. A considerable part of this period he was professor of mental and moral philosophy, he also lectured on political science and public law. His health requiring change of occupation and a southern residence, he spent some years in the South as president of a railroad construction company. In 1900 he was made surveyor of cus- toms at Portland, and was continued in office until his death in 1914.
General Seth Williams was born in Augusta, on March 24, 1822, and was a member of the well-known Williams family, being a nephew of Governor and Senator Reuel Williams. At the age of sixteen he entered West Point, and graduated four years later with the class of 1842. He served with honor in the Mexican War, and was presented with a sword by his fellow-citizens of Augusta. Soon after the close of the war he was appointed adjutant at West Point, and served until 1853, when he became assistant adjutant-general and was transferred to Washington. In 1860 he was sent to the West. After the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed adjutant-general on the staff of General McClellan, then com- manding in West Virginia. After the close of the campaign he was engaged in office work in Washington until 1862, when he was made adjutant-gen- eral of the Army of the Potomac, which position he filled with the highest credit until November, 1864. Then, as his health was failing, he was appointed inspector-general and sent on a southern tour. He returned to headquarters in time for the final campaign and was present at the sur- render. Williams had been Lee's adjutant at West Point and he was the only Union officer to whom Lee spoke with any cordiality.
Although naturally of a strong constitution, General Williams' intense labor had. undermined his health. In February, 1866, brain trouble devel- oped and he died on March 23.
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General Williams had some of what a civilian is apt to consider as the prejudices of a West Pointer, but he was a man of the highest character, and was loved by all who knew him. Over forty years after his death, Morris Schaff, who had served as a young lieutenant on the headquarters staff of the Army of the Potomac, wrote: "There was never a sweeter temper or a kindlier heart than Williams' . . his face [was] full, open and generous, and always lit up as if there were a harp playing in his breast."" The press of the country paid high tributes to him on his death. The New York Evening Post said :
"General Williams was the style of man that the army and country can ill-afford to spare. He was a professional soldier in the best and most honorable spirit of his profession; and having no ends or aims but as a servant of the country, he was as true to duty as if nothing else but duty was possible. He had no politician's talk of patriotism, no boasting of services and dangers; but quietly noble, wherever duty was, there he was to do with rare efficiency his whole task. Of his distinguished merits as an officer there is but one judgment.
"But our remembrance of the public character of General Williams is almost lost at this moment in our sense of the man-of his beautiful nature, and of the personal and irreparable loss of those who knew him as the war left him. They saw how years spent among scenes of turbulence and blood seemed but to quiet and refine him; and that as to his honors and services he was the only person who did not seem to be informed of them. So modest was he, of such a delicate and gentlemanly spirit, and while so able and unwearied, unrelaxing in his own duties, so generous in his judg- ment as to the duties and services of others, that to know him made it a necessity to love him. No one could name him, at least to any army officer, without meeting the warm answer, and even exclamation of attachment and respect, as if this one man were the common and beloved property of all."
The Nation said : "The name of no man attaining equal rank came less before the public during the war than that of Major-General Seth Williams, but the memory of none who have yet to die will be held more sacred by soldiers than his. Painfully diffident of his own merits, shrinking from note, modest as a girl, in all duty he was great, comprehensive, resolute and untiring."
Another Maine officer of the staff, a man of a different type from General Williams, but one who, like him, rendered great service now half- forgotten, was Rufus Ingalls, the quartermaster-general of the Army of the Potomac. General Ingalls was born in Denmark, Maine, August 23, 1820. He was educated at West Point, graduating in 1843 in the same class as Ulysses S. Grant. He served with credit in the Mexican War, but missed most of the battles, as he was with that part of the army which occupied New Mexico. He was then made a captain in the quartermaster's depart- ment and served for some years in California. On the outbreak of the Civil War he was sent to Fort Pickens, was soon made chief quarter-
""Schaff, "The Battle of the Wilderness," 44.
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master on the south side of the Potomac, and then aide to General Mc- Clellan. In 1862 he was given the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers, and later became chief-quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac. Schaff, after describing Williams, and Hunt, the chief of artillery, says:
"There is a great temptation to dwell on other members of the staff. On Ingalls, the chief quartermaster, a classmate of Grant's: a chunky, oracular-looking man, who carried sedulously a wisp of long hair up over his otherwise balding pate, and who, besides being the best quartermaster the war produced, could hold his own very well with the best poker players in the army or Congress, and in those days there were some very good ones in both Senate and House.""
All the serious fighting of the war occurred far beyond the boundaries of Maine. She was not, however, exempt from alarms and from depreda- tions off her coast. At the outbreak of the war, numerous companies of Home Guards were formed; on April 30, 1861, the Kittery company of artillery was stationed at Fort McClary, near the Navy Yard, and remained there until July 9, when it was relieved by a Biddeford company under command of Captain Andrews. At Portland, Captain Staples' company was ordered to Fort Scammel in the harbor. The latter companies were mus- tered into the national service. The government also ordered a body of forty men to be raised as a garrison for Fort Sullivan, Eastport.
In October, 1861, Governor Washburn appointed Vice-President Ham- lin, Reuel Williams and John A. Poor commissioners to urge upon the United States government the fortification of the Maine coast. The gentle- men accepted the task, and promises were made. Later a number of bat- teries were erected on the coast, but it has been said that they would have been of little use in case of need.
Maine commerce suffered from the depredations of the Confederate cruisers, and there was much feeling over what was regarded as the totally unjustifiable negligence of the authorities at Washington. The Whig in an editorial of July 13, 1861, said :
"The boldness of the Arago in capturing a number of our vessels almost in sight of our New England coast, should admonish our Govern- ment of the imperious necessity of establishing an extensive and efficient coast defense for the large sea-ports, and putting afloat enough armed ves- sels to make the pathless courses of the sea as safe as our rural highways. We have urged this before. What is there to prevent a Southern privateer from laying Portland under contribution and burning the fleet that is anchored in its harbor, or performing the same costly operation, some pleasant morning, upon any of our towns which sit unarmed in the very salt spray of the sea? Maine has an immense property interested in navi- gation. The keels of her thousands of ships vex the waters of all the seas around the globe. It is all-important that they should be protected and our numerous but unprotected harbors into which they bow their welcome returns should be so fortified that at least a little privateer with half a
"Schaff, "Battle of the Wilderness," 45.
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dozen guns and a hundred men would not dare to approach them. No mat- ter what the cost may be, our property must be protected from the ravages of pirates."1
In 1863 the Whig called for the issuing of letters of marque to private persons to catch the "privateers";" the danger of causing a war with Eng- land was admitted, but the Whig declared that it were better to run that risk than to submit to a total destruction of commerce. "It has already become hazardous for a vessel even to make a coastwise trip, because a rebel sailing craft with a single gun is prowling along shore. It would seem that a few guns could be thrown aboard any one of our passenger steamers, and this pirate captured in twenty-four hours.""
There was special reason for the Whig's irritation. In May, 1863, Captain Moffit of the notorious Confederate cruiser Florida, detached the captured vessel Clarence, under Second Lieutenant Read, with orders to enter harbors, burn vessels, and destroy such as were building. Soon after Read set out for the New England coast. On June 12, a little east of Mount Desert, he captured the Taconey, and as she was a better boat than his own he transferred his men and arms to her and burned the Clarence. From June 12 to June 24 he captured nineteen vessels; some of these he burned, others he spared on written pledges of ransom. On June 25th he captured, off Southport, the fishing schooner Archer, transshipped his crew for the second time, and burned the Taconey. On the 26th Read captured two fishermen who consented to pilot him into Portland harbor, and told him that two gunboats were being built at Portland, that the revenue cut- ter Caleb Cushing was stationed there, and that the fine steamer Chesapeake, a staunch, swift propeller which ran between Portland and New York, would be in the harbor throughout the night. Read determined to conceal the arms of his men and slip into Portland. If hailed from the forts they would answer that they were fishermen coming to purchase bait. The Archer, however, passed the forts without challenge, and "came to anchor after sunset near Pomeroy's Rock, off Fish Point." The captured fishermen had seen no weapons and believed that their captors were out on a spree and had been playing a joke when they said that they belonged to the Con- federate Navy. Read had hoped to seize the Caleb Cushing and the Chesa- peake, and burn the unfinished gunboats and the rest of the shipping in the harbor. But the engineer feared that he could not get steam up on the Chesapeake without the aid of a second engineer, the nights were short, and Read decided to seize the Cushing, get from under the guns of the forts, and burn the shipping. The commander of the Cushing had recently died, his successor had not arrived, and the vessel was in charge of the first officer, Lieutenant Davenport. The lieutenant and about twenty
"Il'hig, June 26, 1863.
"In the North the Confederate vessels devoted to preying on commerce were 11str.l !-. termed privateers, but they were owned by the Confederate government and commanded by regularly commissioned officers.
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men were on board, the rest of the crew were ashore. About half-past one in the morning the Confederates, dressed as fishermen, boarded the cutter and seized the unwary crew before they could make resistance. Read said in his report: "As the cable could not be slipped, it was two o'clock before we could get under way. The wind was now very light, the tide was running in and, before we could get from under the guns of the fort, day dawned." Escape was now the one object of the Confederates. At 7:30 the departure of the Cushing was discovered from the Observatory. The mayor of Portland, Captain Mclellan, was a man of great energy, with little regard for formalities. He at once commandeered the Chesa- peake, and when the agent hesitated to allow her to proceed, he promptly offered the city's property and his own as security against loss of any kind. Judge Hale, in his paper, "The Capture of the Caleb Cushing," from which this account is taken, says: "Just as the steamer sailed, the captain fur- ther asked the mayor for his instructions. I have heard some of Captain Mclellan's old neighbors describe his reply, delivered in his sharp, staccato tones, 'Catch the damned scoundrels and hang every one of them.'"
The collector of the port, Mr. Jedidah Jewett, was also an energetic man, but possessed of more deference for authority and rules. In his report to the Secretary of the Treasury he respectfully explained:
"I at once came to the conclusion that this was an exigency when I ought not to wait for orders from you, but assume the responsibility of her recapture for the government.
"I at once chartered the Forest City, a 700-ton side-wheel steamer of the Boston line, and also the small steamer Casco as a transport to take the guns and men from Fort Preble wharf, the steamer Forest City drawing too much water to lie at it. I also chartered a steam tug propeller and sent her to the upper bridge in our harbor to take on board the men of the 7th," and as evidence of the prompt response to my calls I would state that in fifty minutes after I had learned of the capture of the cutter, three steamers had left the wharf to overhaul her.
"Finding that, at the suggestion of the mayor, the steamer Chesapeake, propeller, of the New York line, was getting up steam, I put Colonel Mason and the largest portion of his command on board of her, she having obtained two brass six-pounders from the State Arsenal. She also had about fifty volunteers of all ages and colors, who armed themselves and repaired on board.
"The wind was light, and the pursuing vessels began to overhaul the cutter, the latter fired several shots without effect, and Captain Read, deciding that escape was impossible, sent off his prisoners, fired the Cushing, and with his men took to the boats, which were picked up by the Forest City. As the Cushing had considerable powder on board, it was deemed too hazardous to attempt to save her, and she was allowed to blow up. Lieutenant Davenport and his men had refused to tell their captors where
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