USA > Rhode Island > History of the Ninth and Tenth Regiments Rhode Island Volunteers, and the Tenth Rhode Island Battery, in the Union Army in 1862 > Part 2
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But the Rebellion was not yet subdued. Brighter days were looked for with the opening of '62, but the situation seemed
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full of peril to the nation. As with men all over the land, so with the students of the High School, the condition of the country was the all absorbing topic of discussion. The following essay by "a corporal," and a member of the class of '62, illustrates the spirit of the school on
"THE COMING CRISIS."
"Our country is on the eve of a great crisis. From every ap- pearance that we can discern, Liberty and Loyalty, and Rebellion and Slavery are about to grapple for the decisive struggle. The work of preparation, which has been energetically pushed forward during the past six months, is nearly completed. Our young general-in-chief has been employed with untiring energy in gath- ering his armies around the rebel capital, and hemming in the enemy on every side, and the command for the final advance seems almost now to echo along the whole line.
" We all know what a terrible shock must ensue, and can all estimate something of the magnitude of its results. Of course we expect our army to be victorious. It would seem as though the fruit of so much noble sacrifice, and of such gigantic preparation, must be victory. The people have given their money and treas- ure free as water, their lives even, as of little value in comparison with the great principles at stake. For these they have permitted their most sacred liberties to be invaded that success may be rendered more certain. We claim, too, and justly, the larger and better disciplined battalions ; and military skill has been exhausted in placing in their hands the most destructive weapons of modern warfare. We suppose, therefore, our army to be invincible. But
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OF PROVIDENCE.
our confidence of victory lies not alone, or principally, in our physi- cal strength, but in the moral strength of our cause. Best of all, we have ' God and the Right' upon our side. Truth and Justice are with us. The prayers of the millions of the enslaved through- out the world are with us. We are fighting to preserve the glo- rious Union for which our fathers fought and suffered so much. We are fighting for Freedom and Humanity everywhere.
"Truly it seems that with such a cause, and with such soldiers and generals, victory must rest upon our banners.
" Yet we must not be too sanguine of success. Although we know that the right must eventually triumph, yet our country may be called upon to pass through sterner trials, before it shall come forth from the flames of war purified and regenerated. We may again be destined to learn the terrible lesson of defeat. It seems now almost impossible, but we cannot tell.
" When our army was before Manassas last July, we supposed that victory would certainly be ours, and when the intelligence came of the panic and retreat to Washington, it fell upon the nation with a sudden shock that bowed it to the earth, and it has not recovered from the effect to-day.
"The tide of battle is so often turned by unforeseen and unex- pected circumstances, that we can only hope and wait for the issue.
" While there is time, let us prepare for defeat as well as vic- tory. For let the worst indeed come, we must never yield. Our most cherished principles, perhaps the national existence, are at stake. If we fail in this struggle for liberty and union, it will carry despair to the hearts of the oppressed and enslaved, and sound the death-knell of free institutions everywhere.
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" Whatever sacrifice we may be called upon to make, let us stand ready to meet it. We are not too young to possess the spirit of true patriotism, the spirit of the gallant ' Ellsworth,' whose name we have chosen. Let us stand ready, therefore, so that if the safety of the country should demand it, we may rally with full ' Phalanx' in her defence, and give our aid, little though it may be, to the good cause."
The time was at hand. May 1862 came, and with it fresh news . of disaster to the Union cause. Stonewall Jackson with 20,000 men, had sent Banks's little army whirling down the Shenandoah Valley, to the Potomac, and, at midnight, on the 25th, a dispatch came to Providence announcing the disaster, with an urgent ap- peal for troops for the protection of the capital. Just an hour later, the governor issued an order to immediately organize two new regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers, and the Tenth Light Battery, for three months' service. The response was prompt, and among other military organizations, the " Ellsworth Phalanx" of the High School furnished a liberal quota. The call found the boys "volens et paratus," now our motto. At the head of Company B, Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers, recruited principally from the ranks of the High School and University companies, marched Capt. Elisha Dyer, formerly the governor of the state. The men are few who at his age (over fifty) would have left the comforts of home for the arduous position of captain in a volunteer regiment. And those High School boys, whose fortunate lot it was to belong to Captain Dyer's company, will hardly again find in life a day of such strange excitement, as that on which they first put on uniform and started for camp.
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Many of the boys after completing their first term of service, re-enlisted, and as commissioned officers served through the war. Two hundred and twenty-five of the students of the High School served in the army and navy during the Rebellion. Seventeen died in the service .*
Let us pause for a moment, to honor the memory of one of our youngest comrades of Company A, Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers.
WILLIAM FREDERICK ATWOOD, class of 1862, son of William and Emeline P. Atwood, was born in Sing Sing, N. Y., in Jan- uary, 1845. His father was engaged in the foundry business at that time, but soon after removed to Providence, R. I., where his grandfather, John Atwood, had been for many years a well- known resident and real estate proprietor. " Fred," as he was familiarly called at home, was educated in the public schools, and in 1859 entered the High School. He was possessed of a genial temperament and generous disposition, which drew around him a circle of personal friends. The opening of the war, in 1861, aroused and excited the High School boys, and when the urgent call for volunteers came in May, 1862, young Atwood (although but seventeen) enlisted, with many of his classmates, in Com- pany A, Capt. William E. Taber, Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers.
As at home he had been a loving son and brother, so now he became an honored comrade, faithful in all his relations, as Cap- tain Taber bears cheerful testimony. He was taken suddenly ill at Camp Frieze, in the latter part of June, and growing rapidly worse he was removed to Seminary Hospital, Georgetown, D. C.,
* See page 19, " In Memoriam."
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THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS.
where he died'June 29, 1862, leaving the example of a brave and spotless manhood.
The career of young Atwood is one of the briefest recorded in the history of the war. But thirty days elapsed from the day of his departure from home to the day of his funeral. But those days, few as they were, signally illustrated his modest fidelity to every trust, and his cheerful surrender of the bright hopes of youth, to die in his country's service. In a retired and beautiful spot near the Soldiers' Home, overlooking the capital which his youthful footsteps had hastened to defend, he sleeps the sleep which no morning drum-beat shall break.
Strangely also, his father, who enlisted a few months later in the Eleventh Rhode Island Volunteers, sickened and died, and was buried at Arlington, only a few miles from his son's grave.
And we would not omit to mention, with honor, the name of our youthful and lamented comrade, Frederick Metcalf (son of Col. Edwin Metcalf), who, although but fifteen years old, enlisted with his other classmates in Company B. But Captain Dyer was unwilling to assume the responsibility of accepting so young a volunteer in the absence of his father (then in active service with his regiment at Hilton Head, S. C.) But this did not dampen the ardor of young Metcalf, and we find him in October of the following year, a second lieutenant in his father's regiment (the Third Rhode Island Heavy Artillery). He also creditably served as post adjutant at Fort Pulaski, Georgia, till May 27, 1864, when he was promoted to a first lieutenancy. But in the following August he was seized with the typhoid malaria, and died on the 28th, in the seventeenth year of his age.
In Memoriam.
ROLL OF STUDENTS OF THE PROVIDENCE HIGH SCHOOL
WHO
Died in the Service of their Country during the Rebellion.
MUNRO H. GLADDING,
Class of 1846.
FRANCIS B. FERRIS,
1848.
WILLIAM WARE HALL,
1848.
JOHN P. SHAW,
1850.
GEORGE W. FIELD,
1852.
JAMES H. EARLE,
1853.
HOWARD GREENE,
1855.
GEORGE WHEATON COLE,
1856.
SAMUEL FOSTER, 2D,
1856.
JESSE COMSTOCK,
1858.
J. NELSON BOGMAN,
1861.
PETER HUNT,
1861.
WILLIAM F. ATWOOD,
1 862.
BENJAMIN E. KELLY,
1862.
CHARLES M. LATHAM,
1 862.
FREDERICK METCALF,
1864.
EUGENE F. GRANGER,
I 866.
NOTE. - The year given is in all cases, that of graduating.
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BROWN UNIVERSITY IN 1862.
THE COLLEGE BOYS OF "BROWN."
" For each of them considered that not for his father and mother only was he born, but also for his fatherland."-Demosthenes De Corona.
A LARGE number of the students of "Brown " left the "campus " for the camp, some at the very outbreak of the War of the Rebellion. During the winter of 1860, the politi- cal affairs of the nation assumed an aspect which no lover of his country could regard with indifference. The distant mutterings of the approaching storm were heard in Hope College and Uni- versity Hall. The literary societies in their meetings discussed the questions of the day. These questions also furnished the chief topics in social intercourse, and studies correspondingly languished.
* In the spring of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln came to Rhode Island, he found no more attentive listeners to the two addresses that he delivered,-one in Providence and one in Woonsocket- than the students of " Brown," who flocked to hear him. One of them, William Ide Brown, the beloved class president of '62,-who gallantly served in the army from August 10, 1862, to March 29, 1865, when he was killed before Petersburg,-wrote March 8, 1860,
* This sketch is principally from the pen of Maj. S. L. Burrage, class of '62.
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THE COLLEGE BOYS
" Lincoln, of Illinois, speaks this evening at Woonsocket. There is to be an extra train, and pays the expenses of eighty or ninety students." This occasion was one which few of the men who were in college can forget, so long as life shall last. Soon in the rapid march of events, the western orator became the President of the United States, and Brown saw him next in 1862, as in company with McClellan and Burnside the President passed along the lines in review of the army after the battle of Antietam.
Threatened violence at length appeared armed, and in April, 1861, the peal of hostile cannon filled the land. But the sound of the first gun which was fired at Fort Sumter did not die away when it reached the walls of the college. It would be impossible to set forth in words the state of feeling which was at once mani- fested throughout the university. The senior class procured a flag, and on the afternoon of April 17th, in the presence of the Faculty, the students, and a throng of the friends of the college, it was raised over University Hall. After the flag had been un- furled, and the band had played " The Star Spangled Banner," President Sears, standing on the steps of Manning Hall, delivered a brief address. He said he deprecated civil war. He regretted the necessity which it imposed on us as a people. But, he con- tinued, the time for deliberation is past. Every man is now called upon to show himself worthy of the country of his birth. It is fitting, then, that to-day, the young men who have come to this university to learn-to learn to be patriots he would hope- and who have everything at stake in this crisis, should show that they appreciate the inestimable blessings which they have inher- ited from a brave and noble ancestry.
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Bishop Clark said that eighty years ago the old Revolutionary flag waved over University Hall. It meant that our fathers were striving to establish the sacred institutions of a free government. The flag we raise to-day means that we intend to preserve those institutions. We deprecate war, he continued, especially civil war. All our interests, all our feelings are against it. But ene- mies have arisen among us. They have commenced the most wicked contest ever . waged. We do not hate them, yet we can- not sit tamely by while they are endeavoring to destroy the very foundations of our political fabric.
Bishop Clark was followed by the Rev. Dr. Hall, who said it was not a time when any one should be silent who loves his country and his God. We are all men of peace, he added, but here is a thing inevitable. It is government or no government. The South does not wish to go peaceably. If we have erred at all we have erred on the side of forbearance, but the past is gone. Let us show by our action that we continue to love our whole country.
The hymn "My country, 'tis of thee," was then sung by the students.
The Rev. Dr. Caldwell said that on the previous Sabbath he could not but feel it was a time for praying rather than for preach- ing. The time for words was now past, the time for deeds had come. Be assured, he added, that what we see going on around us is going on everywhere, from Mason and Dixon's line to the lakes. A conflict is impending, but we go into it, not in passion ; we simply seek to vindicate the honor of our country in restoring its rightful authority.
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Ex-Governor Dyer delivered the last address. He commenced by saying that in the whole course of his experience he had never been subject to such conflicting emotions as were passing through his heart at that moment. Yonder is our country's flag, and the chimes of our city are ringing out the national anthems ; but is it possible, he asked, that that flag and that music are needed to re- mind us that we are the citizens of one of the noblest nations of the earth ? We are called to contend with traitors, the victims of delusion ; all party distinctions, therefore, should be laid aside, and each man should be ready to make whatever sacrifices the honor of the country may demand.
Such is a brief outline of the addresses which were delivered on this interesting occasion. They did not float away on the soft winds, then laden with the freshness of returning spring. There were those grouped upon the chapel steps, who then, as never be- fore, were " stirred with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots ;" and to whom the words at that time spoken were an inspiration for good, as in the years which followed, when, weary from long marching, watching, fighting, they recurred to · them for added strength in entering upon fresh trials of endurance.
Burnside had arrived in the city the day previous, and was already organizing the "First Rhode Island." While engaged in the business of his office in New York, he had received the fol- lowing dispatch : "A regiment of Rhode Island troops will go to Washington this week. How soon can you come on and take command ? William Sprague, Governor of Rhode Island." Both the answer and the answerer were ready. "At once," was the reply. Not a few from the several classes in the college en-
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tered its ranks. Brown, writing to his father that evening said, "To-night, as I see the streets thick with uniforms, it begins to seem like war. The excitement here is intense."
About the middle of May, a military company, the University Cadets, was organized at the college, and consisted of seventy- eight men, rank and file. It is a fact worthy of notice, that dur- ing the Rebellion eight of its fourteen officers served with distinction in the Union armies. The campus in rear of the uni- versity afforded a suitable drill-ground, and such was the proficiency to which the company soon attained, that the tri-weekly drill of the Cadets attracted not a little public attention.
Class-day occurred on June 13th. The class president, Mr. William W. Hoppin, was absent serving as a private in the First Rhode Island Volunteers. The president of the day, William W. Douglas, the class orator, Sumner U. Shearman, and the class poet, all afterwards entered the military service, and were mus- tered out with the same rank. In the afternoon of class-day, the University Cadets had their first public parade. The line was formed on the campus at three o'clock. Then preceded by Gil-' more's (Pawtucket) full band, the company marched through the principal streets of the city, eliciting the praises of all for their soldierly bearing. Late in the afternoon, the Cadets visited the camp of the Second Rhode Island Volunteers, on Dexter Train- ing Ground, where in the presence of Colonel Slocum (who was killed at the battle of Bull Run in July following), they went through the form for dress parade. After receiving the con- gratulations of Colonel Slocum and of his officers, among whom were two sons of President Sears, the company marched down
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Westminster street " in four ranks open order," and returned to the college. Still later in the day, the Cadets escorted the senior class to the Aldrich House, where the class supper was served.
The year 1861 gradually wore away. Few expected that the Rebellion would long continue. But the disasters which in the months of May and June (1862) befell our army before Richmond, dissolved the dream of peace, and the question of duty became still more urgent to the students. Late in the month of May, 1862, almost as stirring scenes as those of April, 1861, were witnessed in Providence. Let us go back to May 25th, when, at midnight, a dis- patch from the secretary of war was received by the governor of Rhode Island, announcing the defeat of General Banks and calling for troops. At one o'clock A. M., May 26th, an order was issued for the organization of the National Guards for active service, and the next day the regiment henceforth known as the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers, left Providence for Washington under the command of Lieut .- Col. James Shaw, Jr. Company B, commanded by Ex-Gov. Elisha Dyer, was recruited almost entirely from the ranks of the several classes of the University and High School. Governor Dyer says, " The students could brook no restraint, and almost en masse came to our recruiting rendezvous for enrollment. It was a source of the deepest solicitude on the part of President Sears to know how far he was justified in resisting these resolute expressions on the part of the young men who had been placed under his protec- tion and instruction. The offering would not have been too large had he consulted his own feelings alone. But it was the widow's son, and the orphan's brother, who desired release. He came to me in the conflict of duty and enthusiastic patriotism, and telling me of
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his embarrassment said, 'If you yourself will take these young men to the field, I can no longer refuse them.' I gave the pledge. The young men came, were enrolled, and without leaving the armory, entered upon the duties of soldiers. They all proved themselves worthy of their alma mater, and the sacred cause for which they enlisted. Always prompt, obedient and efficient, they won for themselves an honorable record. For no delinquency or misdemeanor did any name of theirs ever find a place on the morning report. On the muster out of the regiment, Sept. I, 1862, many of these young men immediately reentered the ser- vice, and as commissioned officers extended a record of which the University may well be proud."
In our admiration for President Sears and the young men of the University to whom reference is made in the words just quoted, let us not forget that other son of the University, whose pure, self- sacrificing patriotism appears in his tribute to the worth of others ; who having received the highest honors in the gift of the people of Rhode Island, and when of an age which might claim exemp- tion from military duty, cheerfully abandoned the quiet delights of home at the call of his country, and took upon himself the labors and responsibilities of a captain of infantry.
Class-day at Brown occurred June 12, 1862. Joshua M. Adde- man, the class orator, was at the time a private soldier in the com- pany and regiment to which we have just referred ; but obtaining a short furlough he returned to Providence and delivered his ora- tion on the appointed day. His theme was "The Alliance of Scholarship and Patriotism." He introduced his subject with the following earnest words :
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"On this day, around which cluster memories and associations of the past, and fond hopes and anxious forebodings of the future, one thought transcends all others in importance. As if embodied in some fair form beseeching us for aid, our country rises before us, and excludes all minor and selfish considerations. No theme seems more appropriate to the day and of more vital importance in its bearing upon the future than "The Alliance of Scholarship and Patriotism." The orator accordingly proceeded to discuss the duties of the scholar with reference to the State, and then closed his address with the following eloquent words :
" This is an age when events follow each other more rapidly than in the prophet's inspired visions ; when years are heaping up more for history than centuries of the past ; an age which con- verts a nation devoted to peace into a vast army bristling with bayonets, and marching with serried ranks to the field of battle ; which summons men of science and of letters from their experi- ments and their books, the lawyer from his brief, the instructor from his pupils, the preacher from his desk, and bids them gird on the sword, and hasten to the defence of the best, the freest, the hap- piest country on which the sun ever shone. Obedient to the call, classmates have hastened on before us to discharge the pa- triot's duty. In thunder tones their example speaks to us of courage, of manliness, of devotion to country. Let us see to it that we faithfully discharge our duties as ' ever in our great taskmaster's eye.' The benedictions of a grateful country will then rest upon our labors, and above all, the satisfaction of an approving con- science will be our exceeding 'great reward.'"
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The class poet, H. F. Colby, sang of the power that a na- tion possesses in the remembrance of a glorious past. The poem closed with these thrilling sentences :
" But these fond memories in the present hour Became the instruments of wondrous power. The guns of Sumter sent a startling thrill Through hearts still mindful of Bunker Hill; And April's tears wept o'er a war begun, As in the trying days of Lexington. An unseen spirit caught the flaming brand, And swept on lightning wings the startled land. ' Come from your homes, ye free!' its trumpet cried, ' Preserve the country of your father's pride.' And from the North, where sighing forests rise In state primeval to the bending skies, From granite hills, and battle-fields whose sod The feet of patriot heroes once have trod. From the bright shores of Narragansett's bay, Along the silvery Mohawk's wending way, Soft as the rippling tide on Erie's shore, Loud as the tumult of Niagara's roar, From lakes majestic, from the Western plains, Rich in the billows of their ripening grains,- From every city's street and rural home, Came up that single answer : ' Yes, we come.' And they did come. Potomac's wooded banks Gleamed with the bristling steel of serried ranks : The sentinel's strange voice was echoed there, And blazing camp-fires lit the evening air. From the foul dragon's teeth of civil strife A numerous army sprung to active life."
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"The patriotic history of Brown University during the War for the Union is one of which every student may well be proud, and in time to come her children will love her the more for what she was during the troublous times through which the nation has just passed."
We conclude this sketch of " Brown" with brief tributes to the memory of two of her loyal sons, who served in the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers in 1862.
MATTHEW MCARTHUR MEGGETT,* class of 1864, son of Alexander and Sarah Meggett, was born in Chicopee Falls, Mass., July 24, 1836. The story of his life is but a simple record of the struggles of a poor boy, who desired the benefits of a liberal education, not so much for the sake of learning as to make it the means by which good could be accomplished. He early evinced an interest in the subject of religion, and deep religious feelings marked his whole life. It is natural that a young lad thus constituted, should look to the ministry of the Gospel as the proper sphere for his efforts in life, and that a Christian mother should hope to see such a son consecrated to the duties of the ministerial office. His father's death occurred when Matthew was but eight years old, .
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