USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Concord > History of Concord, New Hampshire, from the original grant in seventeen hundred and twenty-five to the opening of the twentieth century, Volume I > Part 53
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At a little past seven o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 5th of August, the First regiment, whose three months' term of service had expired three days before, arrived in Concord for payment and formal discharge. It was received at the railroad station by Gov-
492
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
ernor Berry, and notwithstanding the early hour, by a large assem- blage of citizens. Under escort of Company A of the Governor's Horse Guards, it marched to the state house, and stacked its guns in the park upon the State street side. There the officers and men, in nearly full numbers, having been welcomed by the governor in words of congratulation, partook of a collation furnished by the state. The regiment remained in Concord four days, and was then paid and dis- charged.1
On the 6th of August, the day after the return of the First regi- ment, the tents of the Third began to be pitched at Camp Berry, on the interval, in Concord, upon the east side of the Merrimack, half- way between the Free and Concord bridges, and near the river's bend. The Third regiment was the first raised in New Hampshire under the act of congress of July 22, 1861, authorizing the presi- dent to call for volunteers, not to exceed five hundred thousand in all. Thirty recruiting officers had been successfully at work for fif- teen or twenty days-the one for the Concord district being Captain Hiram C. Tuttle. Governor Berry proclaimed a state bounty of ten dollars for each man mustered in. By the 22d of August, thirteen hundred volunteers were in rendezvous at Camp Berry, and between that date and the 26th, a regiment was mustered in, consisting of ten hundred forty-seven officers and men, including a band of twenty-four pieces under the leadership of Gustavus W. Ingalls, of Concord.2 The colonel of the Third was Enoch Q. Fellows, of Sand- wich, who had been adjutant of the First. Concord was well repre- sented in the ranks; and supplied as surgeon, Albert A. Moulton ; as hospital steward, Moody Sawyer-succeeded, a year later, by Perry Kittredge; as first lieutenants, Henry H. Ayer, of Fisherville, and Richard Ela-both early promoted to captains.
Early on Tuesday morning, the 3d of September, the tents of the regiment were struck, and the twenty-five wagons and ninety horses of the transportation train, with camp, garrison, and hospital equipage, were placed upon thirty-one railroad cars. The regiment, well uniformed, thoroughly equipped, and effectively provided with Enfield rifles, marched from the camp-ground, under escort of the new company of Concord Zouaves, and to the music of the Regi- mental and Serenade bands, through the streets of the city to the station, with thousands of spectators to watch its procession and departure ; its immediate destination being a temporary rendezvous on Long Island.
Thenceforward, the autumn and early winter of the first year of 1 See, in note at close of chapter: Destruction of a Newspaper Office; A Regiment Paid in Gold.
2 Waite's " New Hampshire in the Rebellion," 169.
493
THE "FIGHTING FIFTH."
the war saw the almost simultaneous raising of five regiments, and their despatch in rapid succession to the front. To all of them Con- cord contributed men and officers in larger or smaller numbers ; to some, the means of transportation ; and to one, the rendezvous of organization. Four companies of cavalry and three companies of sharpshooters were also raised, during this time, to which Concord furnished a mustering place, and, to some of them, recruits.
Two hundred enlisted men, who had gathered at Camp Berry, in excess of the number required to fill the Third regiment, were ordered into camp at Manchester. There, through rapid aecessions of volun- teers, the two hundred speedily became the thousand of a new regi- ment-the Fourth. This was mustered into service by the 18th of September, and left the state on the 27th. It was in command of Thomas J. Whipple, of Laconia, who had been lieutenant-colonel of the First. Its adjutant, Henry W. Fuller, and two of its company lieutenants, Fred A. Kendall and Hiram C. Tuttle, were of Con- cord.
On the 5th of September, two days after the departure of the Third regiment, Captain Edward E. Sturtevant, who had returned from the three months' campaign of the First with intensified pur- pose to continue his military service, pitched his recruiting tent in front of the state house to enroll volunteers for the Fifth. This spread of canvas was not the temporary expedient of April, but afforded a permanent enlisting station, where the enthusiastic captain remained night and day in true campaign style. In course of a week, however, he had enlisted almost the entire company which he was to command, composed of men from Concord and Merrimack county, and called Company A of the new regiment. By the 26th of September, the day before the departure of the Fourth regiment, the Fifth, with its ranks four-fifths full, was at Camp Jackson, in eligible location on Glover's hill, east of the river across the lower or Concord bridge. There, though soon recruited to the requisite num- ber, it remained a month, profitably employed in preparation for effective service, under the skilful discipline of Edward E. Cross, its brave and inspiring colonel. Having broken camp on Monday, the 28th of October, and rested over night in the city, the "Fighting Fifth " left Concord the next morning. With a goodly number of men to handle the Minie rifles in the ranks of the regiment, Concord had upon the non-commissioned staff, Commissary Sergeant Isaac W. Hammond, and of company officers, Senior Captain Edward E. Stur- tevant and First Lieutenant James E. Larkin, both of Company A, and both early promoted-the former to be major; the latter to be captain, and later to succeed the former, killed at Fredericksburg.
494
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
The Sixth regiment was mostly enlisted in the months of October and November, and had rendezvous at Camp Brooks, in Keene. Its Company I was enlisted mainly in Concord, Canterbury, and the vicinity ; and was organized with Robert L. Ela, captain ; Thomas T. Moore, first lieutenant ; Hubbard T. Dudley, second lieutenant, all of Concord. At its organization, the regiment had for colonel, Nelson Converse, of Marlborough; Simon G. Griffin, recently of the Goodwin Rifles of the New Hampshire Second, lieutenant-colonel, and Phin P. Bixby, also of Concord, adjutant. A few months later, Griffin succeeded Converse as colonel. The regiment was mustered into service by the 30th of November, and, on the 25th of December, started upon its three years' journey through Dixie.
In September, Joseph C. Abbott, recently adjutant-general of the state, received authority directly from the war department at Wash- ington, to raise a regiment of infantry in New Hampshire, and to uniform, arm, equip, and make it ready for the field. The state authorities encouraged the undertaking by offering the usual bounty of ten dollars, and in other ways. The rendezvous of the new, or Seventh, regiment was established at Manchester. Consisting of ten hundred and four officers and men, it was raised with no expense to the state save the bounty paid, for from the outset every dollar expended for recruiting, transportation, rations, and outfit, was paid directly by the United States government.1 Haldimand S. Putnam, of Cornish, a graduate of West Point, and first licutenant of the United States Topographical Engineers, was, upon General Abbott's designation, appointed colonel, the latter accepting the lieutenant- colonelcy. Concord (including Fisherville) supplied the regiment with a considerable body of men, and some officers. Joseph C. Emerson was chaplain, and William H. Smart, Jr., assistant surgeon of the regiment; Jeremiah S. Durgin was captain, and Timothy Dow, first lieutenant, of Company E. The organization and muster- ing in of the Seventh New Hampshire were completed by the 14th of December ; but Colonel Putnam, who had assumed command on the 26th of October, continued to drill and instruct its officers and men till the 14th of January, 1862, the day of its departure from the state.
The Eighth regiment, which had been in process of formation simultaneously with the Sixth and Seventh, also had rendezvous at Manchester, and was mustered in on the 23d of December with . Hawkes Fearing, of Manchester, as its colonel. Concord gave fewer men to it than to any of the preceding regiments, but it supplied its major, Morrill B. Smith, and, of its company officers, a captain, Aaron G. Estabrook, and the second lieutenants, John K. Stokes and
1 Adjutant-General's Report (1866), Vol. 2, p. 608.
495
CAVALRY AND SHARPSHOOTERS.
James H. Landers,-the former subsequently promoted to major, the latter, to captain. The regiment left the state on the 25th of Janu- ary, 1862, destined to join General Benjamin F. Butler's expedition for the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi.
While these regiments were forming, mustering, and departing, a battalion of cavalry was raised composed of four companies, or troops, and commanded by Major David B. Nelson, of Manchester. Its ren- dezvous was in Concord, on the site of Camp Union, where the spa- cious fair ground was found well adapted to cavalry drill, in which the men, armed with Burnside carbines and sabres and mounted upon tractable horses of the small Morgan and Canadian breed, engaged with great interest. The battalion remained there for weeks, and until the 22d of December, when it was ordered to Pawtucket to join its four companies to the eight stationed there; the twelve to consti- tute the regiment called at that time the First New England cavalry, but later the First Rhode Island cavalry.
Along through the autumn sharpshooters were enlisting and organ- izing until three companies, numbering ninety-five men and three offi- cers, had been mustered in at Concord, and thence despatched to Colonel Berdan's Camp of Instruction at Washington. In all of these companies were Concord marksmen whose rifle shots could hit the bull's-eye at one hundred yards, off-hand, or two hundred at a rest ; in two were officers from Concord-William D. McPherson, a captain, and Edward Dow and Edward T. Rowell, second lieutenants -the last named subsequently becoming by successive promotions a captain and a major.
It was thus that the manhood of the state and its capital was drawn upon for the military defense of the country within the year 1861, that year of preparation for the mighty struggle to follow. But after the Eighth regiment had been sent to the front, and the quota of the state had thus far been filled, the recruiting offices in New Hampshire and elsewhere were, by order of the war department, closed.
Meanwhile one hundred and fifty families of volunteers from Con- cord-exclusive of those in the First regiment-received aid, that year, from the city to the amount of nearly three thousand dollars, under a statute whereby the state was to reimburse the city for aid thus rendered. But the sum of nearly two hundred fifty dollars expended for such aid from the appropriation of ten thousand dollars made by the city council on the 27th of April, and before the enact- ment of the state law, was never reimbursed.
Moreover, those gone to war themselves received aid in clothing, hospital stores, and other things desirable for their health and com-
496
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
fort, but not supplied by the government. To do this, a ladies' society was formed in Concord within a month after the first call for troops. At its organization it had for officers-besides a board of directors consisting of two ladies from each religious society in the city-Mrs. Nathaniel G. Upham, president; Mrs. Onslow Stearns, vice-president ; Mrs. Moses H. Bradley, recording secretary ; Miss Eliza Whipple, treasurer ; Mrs. Ira Perley, corresponding secretary ; aided by a committee of eight gentlemen consisting of Henry A. Bel- lows, Onslow Stearns, James Peverly, John M. Hill, Nathaniel White, Henry H. Brown, Daniel Holden, and Cyrus Robinson. The society announced that it had arrangements with officers of New Hampshire troops for obtaining early and regular information of the soldiers' wants, and that it would have means to forward with despatch what- ever might be furnished. The Concord society became a Central Re- lief Association for combining the efforts of auxiliary societies and of individuals in all parts of the state, procuring and distributing the earliest information, and forwarding contributions to the troops with such directions as givers might designate.
Concord at this period rendered timely financial aid to the coun- try's cause through the considerable subscription of its citizens to the national popular loan, offered under the act of congress of July 14, 1861. This loan was represented by treasury notes varying from fifty to five thousand dollars, dated August 19, payable three years from date, and bearing interest at the rate of seven and three tenths per cent. per annum, payable semi-annually ; such interest being at the rate of two cents a day for each one hundred dollars. On the 30th of September Hall Roberts, agent for the loan, opened subscrip- tion books, at the State Capital bank, and within a week received subscriptions amounting to twenty thousand dollars, mainly from cit- izens of Concord. By the middle of November, the latter amount had been doubled,-an investment signifying patriotic motives and popular confidence in the government's stability.
To the Republican majority, in the election of 1862, Concord contributed four hundred twenty-nine votes; and eight members to the eighty Republican majority in the house of representatives. Prominent among the new members of the legislature from Concord were William E. Chandler, John Y. Mugridge, William L. Foster, and Charles P. Sanborn. In the municipal election Ward 2 alone, as usual, broke Republican unanimity in the result as to aldermen and common councilmen. For reasons of no historical significance, Moses Humphrey, Concord's first war mayor, failed of re-election at the first trial ; his plurality over his Democratic opponent having been prevented from becoming the requisite majority by one hundred
497
ENLISTING RENEWED.
twenty-five votes reckoned scattering, though all but ten of them were cast for Ex-Mayor Willard. At a second election, however, held twenty days later, Mr. Humphrey was chosen by a majority of five hundred thirty-nine over another scattering vote of one hundred fifty-seven.
In May, 1862, within a few weeks after the war department had ordered all recruiting offices to be closed, an additional regiment of infantry was called for from New Hampshire. But the work of raising this regiment-which was to be the Ninth-was at first slow ; for the diseontinuance of recruiting in April had tended to create an impression that the more than nine thousand troops already sent for- ward would suffice-an impression that naturally cooled the ardor of enlistment. The stimulus of a higher bounty was applied ; the ten
View of Concord from the South.
dollars hitherto allowed becoming fifty for enlisting into new regi- ments, and sixty for enlisting into regiments already in the field. During the last days of June volunteers for the Ninth regiment began to come into camp on the fair ground in Concord.
On the 2d day of July, 1862, President Lincoln issued a call for three hundred thousand men for three years, and the war spirit of the people began to be re-kindled. Towns and cities held public meetings to discuss the situation, and to devise ways and means to raise their quotas for filling the new regiments, and for replenishing the ranks of the old, without a draft, a disagreeable alternative which now began to be suggested. Such a Union war meeting, large and enthusiastic, was held at the city hall on the evening of the 22d of July. In its organization party lines were ignored. Joseph B. Walker presided; the seven vice-presidents, one from each ward, were Henry HI. Brown, John L. Tallant, Daniel Holden, Matthew
33
498
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
Harvey, Angustine C. Pierce, Benjamin Grover, and Josiah Stevens ; the three secretaries were William E. Chandler, John F. Brown, and Francis A. Fiske. Lyman D. Stevens offered a resolution deelaring " it expedient that our city forthwith take active measures, by the offering of bounty and the organizing of ward committees, to encour- age and hasten enlistments to fill up our quota of soldiers ealled for by the requisition of the President of the United States." The res- olution, with an amendment proposed by Joseph A. Gilmore, asking the city government to offer to each volunteer from the city a bounty of fifty dollars in addition to the sums offered by the state and United States governments, was unanimously adopted. The oratory of the occasion was appropriately vigorous, direct, and practical. It was participated in by Joseph B. Walker, Lyman D. Stevens, Gover- nor Berry, Edward H. Rollins, William L. Foster, Joseph A. Gilmore, Anson S. Marshall, General Anthony Colby, Captains Tileston A. Barker and Joshua F. Littlefield, of the Second New Hampshire regiment. The meeting, in speech and action, signified Concord's full recognition of the demands of the crisis and her readiness to meet them. Forthwith, too, the eity council gave practical effeet to the recommendations of the meeting by voting the bounty of fifty dollars and appointing ward committees to hasten enlistments.
By the end of July seven hundred of the nine hundred seventy- five offieers and men finally constituting the Ninth regiment had been mustered in, while three hundred of the next regiment in order -the Tenth-had been enrolled. At last, on the 23d of August, the organization of the Ninth was completed, and two days later it left Concord for Arlington Heights, near Washington. As usual on such oeeasions the departure was witnessed by an interested and friendly assemblage of men, women, and children, as it marched through the streets to the station, whence it departed for the front. The regi- ment was in command of Colonel Enoeh Q. Fellows, recently of the Third. Concord furnished its adjutant, George II. Chandler; one captain, Samuel J. Alexander ; and one second lieutenant, William I. Brown (of Fisherville).
Rapidly now, for three months, regiments were to be raised and sent to the field. The Tenth, or "Irish Regiment," which had been filling eontemporaneously with the Ninth, was readily enlisted, largely through the efforts of Michael T. Donohoe, its colonel, and John Coughlin, its lieutenant-colonel, both of Manchester, where it had rendezvous. Its men began to arrive in eamp on the 20th of August, and by the 5th of September it was fully organized with nine hundred twenty-eight officers and men, and on the 22d of the same month went to join the Army of the Potomac. One of its few
499
NEW REGIMENTS FORMED.
Concord volunteers, was John C. Keenan, a second lieutenant, after- wards promoted to eaptain.
In August a commission as colonel of a regiment to be numbered the Eleventh was accepted by Walter Harriman, of Warner, long a popular leader of the Democratie party and its able and favorite orator ; but who, from the beginning of the war, had strongly sup- ported with voiee and pen, the government of his country as admin- istered by Abraham Lincoln. Colonel Harriman, in compliance with the request of the governor and council, took the stump to raise his own regiment and to stimulate enlisting generally. Within cight days he had enlistments many more than sufficient to fill his eommand. The Eleventh, thus speedily raised, went at once into camp on the fair ground in Concord, and by the 2d of September was mustered into the service of the United States. It numbered nearly the maximum of one thousand officers and men, and was armed with the Springfield rifle. It left for Washington on the morning of the 11th of September-eleven days ahead of the Tenth-with well- wishers thronging street and station, as never before in Concord, to honor the departure of a regiment.
On the 10th of August prominent citizens of Belknap and Carroll counties obtained authority from Governor Berry to raise and officer a regiment, provided it could be done in ten days. Within the allotted time ten full companies had been enlisted, organized, and made ready to be mustered into the United States service as the Twelfth regiment. On the 3d of September- eight days before the departure of the Eleventh-they came to Concord and encamped in quarters which they named Camp Belknap. Joseph H. Potter, a native of Concord, and a veteran in the regular service, became colo- nel. George L. Batchelder, a second lieutenant, and Ira C. Evans, a principal musician, were also of Concord. The Twelfth departed for Washington on the 27th of September.
The first company of the Thirteenth regiment came into eamp at Concord on the eleventh day of September, the day the Eleventh departed, and eight days after the Twelfth arrived. By the twenty- third of the same month its officers and men were all mustered in. Its colonel was Aaron F. Stevens, of Nashua, who had been major of the First. Concord supplied one company with a captain, Charles O. Bradley, and a second lieutenant, Rufus P. Staniels, afterwards promoted to captain. The regiment, on the 5th of October, received its colors with befitting speech and ceremony at the state house, and set out the next day for Washington.
Robert Wilson, of Keene, was, in August, commissioned as colonel of the Fourteenth regiment,-the last of the three years' regiments
500
HISTORY OF CONCORD.
from New Hampshire. It was raised without difficulty, and was inustered in on the 24th of September, at Concord, where it was quartered in barracks on the fair ground, near the Twelfth and. Thir- teenth, and departed for Washington towards the end of October.
The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth regiments were raised and placed in the field under the eall of the president for three years' troops. These, with nearly seven hundred reeruits to fill up regi- ments already in the service-all amounting to four thousand six hundred men-fully answered the calls for three years' men. But, on the 4th of August, 1862, the president had ealled for three hun- dred thousand nine months' troops. This eall having been made, the quotas of each town and city under both calls were estimated and published on the 28th of August. Concord's quota of three years' men was five hundred sixty-five ; of nine months' men, one hundred eighty-eight. Preparations were also early made for enforeing a draft, if necessary, by the appointment of superintendents and ex- amining surgeons furnished with detailed instructions. But many towns and cities had promptly raised, by voluntary enlistments, for three years, their full quotas, and some of them considerable num- bers in exeess, thus enabling the state authorities to organize the Thirteenth and Fourteenth regiments for three years instead of nine months ; being equivalent to eight regiments for nine months' serviee.
The city council of Concord, on the 30th of August, passed a res- olution granting a bounty of one hundred dollars to any resident of the eity who should, before the 15th of September, enlist for nine months ; and appointed as recruiting officers, Charles H. Her- bert, Amos C. Warren, James H. Morey, Albert H. Drown, Robert S. Davis, and Carr B. Haynes.
By the middle of October, and before the last of the three years' regiments had left for the front, the Fifteenth and Sixteenth regi- ments of nine months' men were in eamp at Coneord: the first, with full numbers ; the second, with five hundred men. On the 13th of November the Fifteenth regiment, organized with Colonel John W. Kingman of Durham at its head, left Concord for New York, where it was to join General Banks's expedition to Texas. The Sixteenth was filled, organized, and mustered in by the 1st of November, and, on the twenty-third of the same month, departed for New York ; having been assigned to the same branch of service as the Fifteenth. Its eolonel was James Pike, of Newmarket, a Methodist clergyman, who had served in congress; its lieutenant-colonel, Henry W. Fuller, of Coneord, reeently adjutant of the Fourth. Its commissary-sergeant, David D. Smith, was of Concord; as were also two of its company officers, Charles H. Herbert, first lieutenant (soon promoted to captain
501
RECORD OF THE REGIMENTS.
and commissary of subsistence, U. S. V.), and Robert S. Davis, second lieutenant.
The nine months' organization designated the Seventeenth regi- ment was, from causes not necessary to be treated here, never filled. Early in 1863 one hundred fifty men belonging to it were trans- ferred to the Second, and the regimental officers mustered out. At the close, then, of the year 1862, fifteen New Hampshire regiments of infantry were in the field-all there were to be until the forma- tion of the Eighteenth in 1864. Concord shared, more or less, in the membership of all, as shown by the rolls tabulated elsewhere ; and, as already partially seen, their history finds other points of connection with that of Concord. Voluntary enlistments had filled them all, with bounties increasing from the comparatively nominal one of 1861, to the larger ones of 1862-the latter fact denoting rather the growing scareity of fighting material in the population than a decrease of patriotic feeling in the hearts of the people. Towards the last the threatened draft somewhat hastened enlisting. But no draft came, and had it come Concord would have escaped it, for she had filled all her quotas, and had eighty men to her credit upon another call.
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