Meet Your Local Civil War Draft Board!

November 10, 2023November 14, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ 2 Comments

“The Civil War in America: Claiming Exemption from the Draft in New York,” Illustrated London News (1863): After the draft lottery, enrollment boards had to deal with huge crowds of draftees who needed to undergo a physical examination and whose claims to exemption had to be checked. Moreover, large numbers of substitutes had to undergo a physical as well.

Introduction

I recently read the two most important works on the Northern draft during the Civil War: Eugene C. Murdock’s One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (1971) and James W. Geary’s We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (1991). These books taught me a great deal about the forces that shaped the Enrollment Act of 1863 (and subsequent amendatory legislation) as well as how the machinery of conscription was supposed to work. At some point, I will attempt to trace how substitutes and draftees were processed by this machinery in New Hampshire, but that will have to await a trip to the National Archives in Boston (which is actually in Waltham—how does that work?). For now, I thought it would make sense to look into the lives of the men responsible for overseeing conscription in the Granite State. Who served on New Hampshire’s draft boards (more properly referred to as “enrollment boards”) during the conflict? By looking at this question, I hope to figure two things out. First, I want to understand the spirit in which the draft was carried out. Second, I hope to chart the personal relationships in New Hampshire that influenced the war effort in this state.

Geary and especially Murdock express much sympathy for those who served on enrollment boards. Murdock represents them as “good, responsible, public servants,” but scholars have not always looked at matters in this light. Geary points out that historians have variously described members of these boards as “insensitive, corrupt, and inefficient” as well as “political hacks” consisting of “Republican favorites and narrow-minded partisans totally lacking tack or judgment.”[i] Were the inadequacies of the Enrollment Act compounded by shabby, mean-spirited execution? Perhaps there is no better way of getting to the bottom of this question than investigating the backgrounds of the men responsible for supervising conscription.

I won’t claim the following is “groundbreaking” research. But I do know that nobody has ever looked at the men who served on New Hampshire’s enrollment boards.

Enrollment Boards

Before diving into the heart of the question, it makes sense to describe who did what on the enrollment board. Each congressional district obtained such a board consisting of three members: a district provost marshal (who held the rank of captain), a commissioner, and a surgeon. The district provost marshal carried the heaviest load. According to regulations:

he was required to preside over the enrollment board, enforce its orders, and keep a record of its proceedings; conduct the enrollment of all able-bodied males between twenty and forty-five, and prepare consolidated lists of such persons; conduct the draft, and notify draftees of their selection; muster draftees, substitutes, and volunteers into service; provide for the housing, feeding, clothing, and transporting to the general rendezvous of all draftees, substitutes, and volunteers; search out and arrest all deserters in the district and ship them to the nearest military post; arrest and deliver to civil authorities all who might resist or counsel resistance to the draft; and keep complete records, financial and otherwise, of all business transacted.[ii]

Each district was divided into subdistricts whose boundaries typically coincided with those of towns (in larger settlements, they accorded with the borders of wards). Every subdistrict had an enrolling officer who registered the men between the ages of 20 and 45 living in his territory (a very difficult job when many people sought to evade the draft and American society was highly mobile). A list of these men generated in each subdistrict was consolidated into a district-wide enrollment list. While the district provost marshal was ultimately responsible for keeping the enrollment list current, it was usually the commissioner who oversaw this task directly.

Every time the president called for troops—and he did so on four occasions while the Enrollment Act was in effect (summer 1863, spring 1864, fall 1864, and spring 1865)—the district provost marshal announced the manpower quota each district had to meet. This quota was based on the size of the enrollment list. If the district and the subdistricts met their quotas through volunteers, all well and good. If they fell short, a draft was required to make up the difference. The regulations foresaw that many drafted men would obtain exemptions so, initially, 50% more men were drafted by lot from the enrollment list than what was required. Since the number of exemptions proved much higher than anticipated, starting in June 1864, twice as many men as necessary were drafted. After the lottery, the district provost marshal, often accompanied by the commissioner, heard the cases made by draftees for exemption.[iii] At the same time, draftees so inclined presented a receipt for the $300 in commutation money they had already paid to the Internal Revenue office (the ancestor of today’s IRS) or a substitute. By this point, the surgeon had already started giving all draftees, substitutes, and volunteers a physical. The size of this task was gargantuan; over the course of the war each enrollment board did just under 10,000 physical examinations. Although they had assistants, conscientious surgeons insisted on doing most of their own exams and attending the ones they did not perform themselves. Once the results of examinations and exemption cases were determined, the district provost marshal held onto the draftees, substitutes, and volunteers until it was time to ship them off under guard to the draft rendezvous (in New Hampshire, this rendezvous was a large stockade located in what was then the southern part of downtown Concord). There, they were eventually distributed randomly to various Granite State regiments like the 5^th New Hampshire.[iv]

New Hampshire’s House Delegation after the March 1863 Elections: From left to right: Daniel Marcy (1st District, Democrat); Edward H. Rollins (2nd District, Republican); and James W. Patterson (3rd District, Republican).

Districts and Personnel

I’m afraid the following section will consists of lists that are nonetheless important for understanding the rest of the post.

In 1863, New Hampshire had three congressional districts. There was no question of gerrymandering here because all three grouped together entire counties in a commonsensical way. The first district included the four southeastern counties of Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap, and Carroll. The second district consisted of the two populous and industrial south-central counties of Merrimack and Hillsborough. The third district comprised the four western counties that sat alongside the Connecticut River (Cheshire, Sullivan, Grafton, and Coos). Each of the three districts possessed a population of just over 100,000 people.

FIRST DISTRICT (Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap, and Carroll Counties)

Congressmen

Gilman Marston (March 1859-March 1863) Republican from Exeter, NH
Daniel Marcy (March 1863-March 1865) Democrat from Portsmouth, NH
Gilman Marston (March 1865-March 1867)

Enrollment Board (headquartered in Portsmouth, NH)

John F. Godfrey, Provost Marshal, appointed April 30, 1863, relieved by special order, Adjutant-General’s Office, December 18, 1863
Nathaniel Wiggin, Provost Marshal, appointed December 29, 1863, resigned July 23, 1864
Daniel Hall, Provost Marshal, appointed July 30, 1864, honorably discharged October 10, 1865

Jeremiah C. Tilton, Commissioner, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged, May 8, 1865

Jeremiah F. Hall, Surgeon, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged June 15, 1865

SECOND DISTRICT (Merrimack and Hillsborough Counties)

Congressman

Edward H. Rollins (March 1861-March 1867) Republican from Concord, NH

Enrollment Board (headquartered in Concord, NH)

Anthony Colby, Provost Marshal, appointed April 30 1863, resigned June 16, 1864
Hosea Eaton, Provost Marshal, appointed July 1, 1864, honorably discharged September 30, 1865

Henry F. Richmond, Commissioner, appointed April 30, 1863, appointment revoked November 21, 1863.
Samuel Upton, Commissioner, appointed November 25, 1863, honorably discharged May 8, 1865.

R. B. Carswell Surgeon, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged June 15, 1865

THIRD DISTRICT (Cheshire, Sullivan, Grafton, and Coos Counties)

Congressmen

Thomas M. Edwards (March 1859-March 1863) Republican from Keene, NH
James W. Patterson (March 1863-March 1867) Republican from Hanover, NH

Enrollment Board (headquartered in West Lebanon, NH)

Chester Pike, Provost Marshal, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged, October 10, 1865

Francis A. Faulkner, Commissioner, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged, May 8, 1865

Dixi Crosby, Surgeon, appointed April 30, 1863, honorably discharged June 15, 1865

Because it will play some role in our story, it bears mentioning that the two senators for New Hampshire during the Civil War were John P. Hale (July 1855-March 1865), Republican from Dover, NH and Daniel Clark (June 1857-July 1866), Republican from Manchester, NH.[v]

New Hampshire’s Delegation to the Senate in 1863: From left to right: Daniel Clark and John P. Hale.

Appointments

Provost Marshal General James B. Fry appointed members of the enrollment board based on recommendations from the congressmen and leading citizens of the district (no small task since the loyal states had 185 congressional districts).[vi] Positions on enrollment boards, then, resembled patronage jobs—except the pay was much worse. One thing we can say for sure is that since Daniel Marcy, like many Democrats, was an out-and-out opponent of the draft, he was probably not consulted.[vii]

Anthony Colby (1792-1873)

The reason for some appointments is obvious. For instance, Anthony Colby (Provost Marshal, 2^nd District) was a former Whig governor and conservative Republican stalwart with extensive militia experience who had overseen New Hampshire’s military mobilization as state adjutant general between 1861 and 1863. He was a natural for provost marshal. To name another example, Daniel Hall (Provost Marshal, 1^st District) clearly obtained his position through the good offices of Senator John P. Hale. Hall read law in Dover (where Hale practiced) and was admitted to the bar there in 1860. In the fall of 1861, Hall was appointed secretary of the special US Senate committee that investigated the surrender of the Norfolk Navy Yard. Hale chaired this committee that also included Andrew Johnson (Tennessee), and James W. Grimes (a senator from Iowa born in Deering, NH, who, like Hall, had attended Dartmouth). Shortly thereafter, Hall was appointed clerk to the Senate Naval Affairs Committee which Hale also chaired. Hall went off to war in early 1862, serving on both Amiel W. Whipple (3^rd Division, III Corps) and O. O. Howard’s staffs (XI Corps) before ill-health brought him back to New Hampshire in November 1863. Apparently, Hale found Hall a position on an enrollment board that would provide an outlet for his patriotism without taxing his health too much.

In other cases, we can detect connections that possibly explain a variety of appointments. Samuel Upton (Commissioner, 2^nd District) had read law in Senator Daniel Clark’s Manchester office back in the mid-1850s. Nathaniel Wiggin’s (Provost Marshal, 1^st District) qualifications for appointment as a district provost marshal were minimal, until one sees that the Wiggin family dominated Stratham, NH, where Clark was born—to a mother who was a Wiggin. Or, to use another example, Francis Faulkner (Commissioner, 3^rd District) probably knew Representative Thomas M. Edwards since both had been born in Keene, NH, and practiced law there. Dixi Crosby (Surgeon, 3rd District) was widely known throughout the state as a capable surgeon, but it seems likely that he ended up on the enrollment board because he was acquainted with James W. Patterson, the congressman representing New Hampshire’s 3rd District, a fellow professor at Dartmouth who taught mathematics and astronomy.

Samuel Upton (1824-1902)

In some instances, at this great remove in time and with the sources available to me, the reasons for several appointments are utterly obscure. Indeed, Henry Richmond (Commissioner, 2^nd District), a civil engineer who spent most of his life in Nashua, himself was obscure. He appears to have left no trace in New Hampshire aside from census records. And then there’s the case of John F. Godfrey (Provost Marshal, 1^st District), a colorful character. Son of a prominent Bangor, ME, lawyer, Godfrey ran away to sea at the age of 15, only returning home when the war broke out. He served as a lieutenant with the 1^st Maine Light Artillery and as a captain in a locally raised company of the 1^st Louisiana Cavalry (US) before his appointment to the enrollment board. A survey of his military service shows no New Hampshire connections (although the First District was the one closest to Maine).

John F. Godfrey (1838-1885)

Turnover

In his report after the war, Provost Marshal General Fry referred to the “sizable turnover in personnel” on enrollment boards and in the same breath claimed they experienced a “fair degree of stability.”[viii] We see both in New Hampshire. The First District experienced some difficulty in finding a suitable provost marshal while the Second District saw turnover in the provost marshal and commissioner positions. In the Third District, however, the same personnel served throughout the enrollment board’s existence.

We can speculate as to why some men gave up their positions on the enrollment board—or were compelled to do so. Richmond (Commissioner, 2^nd District) had his appointment revoked right after the first draft lottery was completed which suggests he was guilty of some shortcoming in its conduct. Godfrey (Provost Marshal, 1^st District) appears to have left of his own volition because he managed to secure a lieutenant colonelcy in the 2^nd Maine Cavalry in the Department of the Gulf (XIX Corps). It’s possible that regulations, enrollment lists, and such were not to Godfrey’s liking. Fighting and adventure were more his line. (After the war, he participated in an army expedition against the Sioux in Montana and later moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1870s where he became city attorney.) [ix] Wiggin (Provost Marshal, 1^st District), who replaced Godfrey, only lasted for one draft which indicates he was not up to the job. We can probably attribute Colby’s resignation (Provost Marshal, 2^nd District) to exhaustion due to old age (he was 71). Much of this, though, is speculation.

Occupations and Service

Murdock thoughtfully observes that

A draft board was a totally novel institution in American life. No one could be expected to know either how it would function or what type of qualifications would suit a man for service on such a board. . . . Appointments were made for political reasons in most cases, but some account was also taken of business talent and general standing in the community. However, since the need for speed in setting the draft machinery into operation was so great in the spring of 1863, not every man’s credentials could be fully checked. Many of the appointees, it turned out, simply lacked the ability to do the job.[x]

Murdock is correct, but after the fact, we can see clearly which qualifications and talents fitted a man for service on an enrollment board (aside from the surgeons whom we’ll discuss later). Successful members of an enrollment board tended to possess a head for business, a capacity to understand regulations (and how to apply them), a measure of social intelligence, a fair amount of shrewdness, and, at times, some physical courage.

Jeremiah C. Tilton (1818-1872)

Not surprisingly, then, those who served out their terms on enrollment boards tended to be extremely active men of many parts. For example, while Anthony Colby (Provost Marshal, 2^nd District) was always listed in the census as a farmer, he had built a grist mill and proved instrumental in starting stage line between Lowell, MA, to Hanover, NH. He also made a substantial investment in a large New London scythe manufacturing firm—Phillips, Messer, & Colby Company. To this he added his experiences as a politician, an administrator, a militia officer, and a social reformer with a special interest in temperance and education.[xi] Or take Jeremiah Tilton (Commissioner, 2^nd District). Aside from running a small factory (J. & J. C. Tilton) that manufactured woolens or hosiery (accounts differ) in Northfield, NH, he attained high rank in the state militia and was involved in local politics during the antebellum era. That he served as a captain of the commissary of subsistence for part of the war (some of that time being spent with General Darius Couch’s 1^st division, VI Corps during the Peninsula campaign) speaks, perhaps, to his administrative acumen.[xii] Chester Pike (Provost Marshal, 3^rd District) is yet another example of someone who had his finger in many pies. Inheriting a horse-breeding and –trading business in Cornish, NH, from his father, Pike became a farmer on a very large scale who developed substantial interests in the wool business. A partner in Dudley & Pike, which sold meat and dairy products to Boston, Pike was one of those capitalists who took full advantage of the new market economy emerging in northern New England at the time. Not surprisingly, Pike became an enthusiastic booster of farming in New Hampshire, serving as the President of the Connecticut River Agricultural Society for a number of years. What’s more, he made a substantial investment in his community as a selectman, county commissioner, state legislator, town moderator, and school board member in a political career that stretched all the way into the late 1890s.[xiii]

Chester Pike (1829-1897)

It is also striking—but perhaps entirely predictable—that a number of those who served out their terms on the enrollment board were attorneys. Daniel Hall (Provost Marshal, 1^st District), Samuel Upton (Commissioner, 2^nd District), and Francis Faulkner (Commissioner, 3^rd District) all were—or soon became—lawyers of some note. And like Colby, Tilton, and Pike, they, too, were “joiners” deeply invested in civic life on a state and national scale. After the war, Hall became a pillar of the Dover bar, the Republican Party, and the Grand Army of the Republic. Among other commitments, he served as a trustee and secretary of the Soldier’s Home in Tilton, NH, a trustee of Berwick Academy, and a member and president of the New Hampshire Historical Society.[xiv] Upton was the justice of the police court in Manchester from 1857 to 1874 (at which point he moved to Iowa), became a Republican Party stalwart, assumed a large role in the New Hampshire temperance movement, and, as an enthusiastic Congregationalist, threw his support behind the erection of Sunday schools.[xv] Although Faulkner was a busy and formidable lawyer, he also served as county solicitor, town moderator, and representative to the state legislature. Like Hall and Upton, he was a very active Republican (one of his biographers claimed Faulkner “was deeply interested in political affairs, and no man in his section wielded more influence”). He was later appointed justice of the state supreme court in 1874 (he declined to serve) and became a member of the state constitutional convention in 1876. Faulkner was also something of a man of business; he found time to act as a director of the Ashuelot and Cheshire National Banks, and at the time of his death, he had become president of the Cheshire Provident Institution for Savings.[xvi]

And, lest we forget, three of those who served on New Hampshire’s enrollment boards had seen army service during the war: Godfrey (Provost Marshal, 1^st District), Tilton (Commissioner, 2^nd District), and Hall (Provost Marshal, 1^st District).

It is in this context of extensive commitments to business and public service that one must view these men’s membership on enrollment boards.

Surgeons

The qualities demanded of a surgeon on an enrollment board were somewhat different; surgeons brought to the board professional knowledge that could only be obtained through a specialized education and long experience. It is significant that in all three districts the surgeon initially selected to serve on the enrollment board remained until the end of the war. That either suggests surgeons were very well equipped for the tasks associated with this service—or that there was enormous difficulty in finding surgeons willing to serve. Or both.

Of the three, Robert Carswell (Surgeon, 2^nd District) was the least prominent. For one thing, unlike the other two, he had not gone to Dartmouth (instead attending the less prestigious Worcester Medical School which closed in 1859). Moreover, having attended medical school in his early 30s, he was a late bloomer. Although one biography claims Carswell “met with excellent success as a physician” in Weare, NH, the Census of 1860 indicates his total estate was worth $2800—far less than what Hall and Crosby had amassed. His practice did not take off until he moved to Salisbury, MA after the war. There is some evidence that he may have used opportunities presented by the war to drum up business. In 1862, he became an examining surgeon for army recruits in central and western Hillsborough County. The next year, he received an appointment as an examining surgeon for the pension department. Even so, Carswell, in his limited way, was also a “joiner.” He was elected several times to the state legislature and for many years served as a justice of the peace in Weare.[xvii]

Jeremiah Hall (1816-1888)

Jeremiah F. Hall (Surgeon, 1st District) fits the profile of those men who engaged in a great variety of activities. Although he was active in the medical community (he belonged to the New Hampshire State Medical Society, the Carroll County Medical Society, and the Strafford County Medical Society), he also dabbled in politics (state senate and Portsmouth alderman), business (director of the Lake National Bank of Wolfeborough, trustee of the Five Cent Savings Bank, and eventual president of the Portsmouth Trust and Guarantee Company), and what we would call today the non-profit sector (trustee of Wolfeborough Academy and the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane). In whatever spare time he possessed, Hall also wrote several medical papers, including one enitled “Hay Fever” (from which he suffered), and occasionally cranked out a poem or two (which he sometimes read at the meetings of the medical societies to which he belonged).[xviii]

I’ve already written a fair bit elsewhere about Dixi Crosby (Surgeon, 3^rd District), so I won’t go into extensive detail about his work. It suffices to say that while he was a temperance man who briefly served in the state legislature, his life revolved around his professional interests. He taught at Dartmouth for decades and mentored an entire generation of surgeons and physicians in the state. In his prime, he was widely considered one of the best surgeons in New Hampshire, and he enjoyed a thriving practice. He was also a central figure in the New Hampshire Medical Society.

The surgeons’ reports that appear in Statistics Medical and Anthropological of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau (1875) reveal as much about the men themselves as they do about their work. Yes, they are characterized by various idiosyncrasies. Crosby was very much disturbed by the frequency of first-cousin marriage in parts of his district, and Hall excoriated the “fearfully prevalent habit of masturbation” which he believed was “a common cause of feebleness in many young men.” But in their similarities, these reports show that all three men belonged to the same professional tribe that took its tasks seriously. All describe the difficulties faced by surgeons in dealing with shamming among draftees (who played up their ailments) and frauds among substitutes (who downplayed their disabilities). Crosby was perhaps the cleverest in detecting attempts to fool him, but none of the others had any illusions about what he was up against. All sought to make the best of a difficult job.[xix]

Wealth and Education

As the foregoing might imply, most of the enrollment board members were well educated. After all, it’s hard to think of anybody who underwent more formal schooling in mid-19^th-century America than surgeons and attorneys. The surgeons, of course, had gone to medical school—two of them (Dixi Crosby and Jeremiah Hall) to Dartmouth. Daniel Hall also graduated from Dartmouth. Faulkner went to Phillips Exeter Academy before heading to Harvard. Even those who did not attend college went to excellent schools. Samuel Upton, who came from humble origins, and Chester Pike, who did not, both attended Kimball Union Academy which, then, as now, was considered a path to an elite college.

Daniel Hall (1832-1920)

In this context, it also makes sense to point out that almost all the men who served on New Hampshire’s enrollment boards were either very well off or belonged to families with a great deal of money. Dixi Crosby and Anthony Colby headed the list with estates of around $15,000 (at a time when the median estate in New Hampshire was $1100). Even Hosea Eaton, whom the Census of 1860 identified as a carpenter, possessed property amounting to $2100. Almost everyone else fell somewhere between $3000 and $8000. Jeremiah Tilton, who was nominally the poorest member of any enrollment board (estate of $1600), had nothing to fear. He was both the first cousin and brother-in-law of the fabulously wealthy Charles E. Tilton (of Tilton, NH fame) whose fortune ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.[xx] Even the mysterious Henry Richmond, who, according to the Census of 1860, had no occupation, lived with his mother who possessed an estate of $10,000. Clearly, the men who served on New Hampshire’s enrollment boards did not do it for the money.[xxi]

Party Affiliation

Of the 13 men who served on New Hampshire’s enrollment boards, I found the party affiliations of seven—all of whom were Republicans. I suspect that if I looked harder, I could find the party affiliations of the remainder, but I suspect almost all of them were in some way associated with the Republican Party. After all, much of the state Democratic Party was hostile to the draft.

The older generation—and here, I think primarily of Anthony Colby (Provost Marshal, 2^nd District)—came to the Republicans via the Whigs. There was something old-fashioned about Colby’s attitude toward politics as evidenced by this story regarding Daniel Webster’s efforts to drum up New Hampshire Whig support for the Compromise of 1850:

[Colby’s] party favored the passage of the Fugitive Slave bill, and Daniel Webster, as its advocate, wrote Governor Colby, asking that he would stand by him. Privately, the governor considered the whole business, as he quaintly expressed it, ‘like stuffing a hot potato down a man’s throat and then asking him to sing “Old Hundred,”’ but loyal to his party and life-long friend, he wrote Mr. Webster that although the bill was odious to him personally, he would do all he could; and the time came when he nobly fulfilled his promise.[xxii]

One can view Colby’s attitude as either gentlemanly or repulsive. It is possible this anecdote is apocryphal, but knowing what we know about Webster and Colby, it does sound plausible.[xxiii]

Whatever the case, the younger generation came to their party affiliation through a hard path—or at least that was the way their contemporaries remembered it. For instance, Daniel Hall (Provost Marshal, 1^st District) started adulthood as a Democrat, but he began to second-guess his loyalties with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Once he expressed his disgust with the Lecompton Constitution in 1858, he lost his patronage job at the New York Customs House (the intimation being that since the Democrats no longer considered him loyal, they turfed him out of the position). The next year, he declared himself a Republican.[xxiv] Or take the example of Samuel Upton (Commissioner, 2^nd District). A contemporary remembered that Upton began his political life as a member of the Liberty Party and an abolitionist when such opinions “even in New England subjected one to vile taunts and social ostracism.”[xxv] Faulkner (Commissioner, 3^rd District) was remembered as “a staunch and consistent Republican, and a leader in his party. To his sagacity and firmness, especially during the Rebellion, the party owed much.”[xxvi] This evidence intimates is that the Republicans who came of age a generation after Colby were more militant, principled, and willing to face the slings and arrows of fortune.

Francis Faulkner (1825-1879)

Conclusion

The proof of the pudding is not in its looks but in the eating. Likewise, we should judge these men not by appearances but by what they did while serving on the enrollment boards, and that will require more research in the National Archives, especially in RG 110. At first glance, however, the provost marshals, commissioners, and surgeons who oversaw the draft in New Hampshire make a favorable impression. Several resigned or had their appointments revoked, and there may be stories there that cast a poor light on the boards involved. But it is interesting that the men who left the boards in this way were the least prominent of the group.

A sizable proportion of the enrollment boards consisted of lawyers and physicians. Although several came from humble backgrounds, almost all were wealthy or on their way to becoming so. Not surprisingly, there was a high standard of education among this group.

They generally appeared to be well connected, and in several cases, it must be conceded that they were selected for flimsy reasons. Many were joiners who mixed personal ambition with public service. Because of who they were, it made sense that they were politically active. And circumstances being what they were, if they were politically active, they had to be Republicans.

In other words, they lived a world away from the draftees and substitutes they dealt with since the former were poor, and the latter were poor and foreign-born. And perhaps that meant these enrollment boards were not as empathetic as they could have been in carrying out their duties.

But in imagining the kind of job they might have done, we ought to remember the way their stints on enrollment boards were framed in the various town and county histories that recounted their life stories. Invariably, that service was described as an honorable public trust that was of a piece with their careers in public and private service to the community. These histories tend to be hagiographic, but many members of New Hampshire’s enrollment boards had long habituated themselves to serving their localities. The war provided them with an outlet for their patriotism and a chance to serve their nation according to their lights as Republicans. And that service was carried out with characteristic rectitude, or so the stories go. One account relates that a substitute broker said of Daniel Hall (Provost Marshal, 1^st District), “He was one of the men that no man dared approach with a crooked proposition, no matter how much was in it.”[xxvii] The story sounds suspect (where did the author find a substitute broker willing to incriminate himself in such a way?), but also has an air of verisimilitude.

Dixi Crosby (1800-1873)

With the exception of Robert Carswell (Surgeon, 2^nd District), no one appeared to have profited (or sought to profit) from this line of work. Indeed, men worth thousands of dollars agreed to serve in a position that paid slightly more than $100 per month. And we cannot forget the service was arduous. In his final report, Crosby stated that although he had examined eighty men in one day, “no surgeon can do himself or the Government justice if he attempts to examine more than fifty men per day.” Indeed, he pointed out that during every examination, he had to go through a number of different motions to make recruits understand exactly what he wanted them to do. With foreign-born substitutes whose command of English was imperfect, the job was doubly difficult: “I am obliged to make my meaning clear by jumping, running, &c., and, as may be well imagined, fifty repetitions of this active course of calisthenics are about as many as can be endured by any man, however vigorous and strong.” At the same time, Crosby mentioned the frequency with which former patients counted on him to exempt them from service. As he put it, “Under the most favorable circumstances, the surgeon cannot avoid giving great offense to many who fancy they have a claim upon him, based on long years of professional patronage. The surgeon must submit to considerable abuse and to receive letters more pointed than polite from those of his neighbors whom his decision has rendered ‘fit food for powder.’”[xxviii] The man writing these words was a 65-year-old physician with an estate of $15,000 and an excellent local reputation. Like the other members of New Hampshire’s enrollment boards, Crosby had everything to lose and nothing to gain from his service—except the sense of having done his duty. Surely this situation must incline us to form a favorable impression of most enrollment board members who served in New Hampshire—until further research indicates otherwise.

[i] James Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991) 71.

[ii] Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971), 92.

[iii] A man could claim exemption if he suffered from a physical or mental disability; if he was a person of foreign birth who had never declared his intention of becoming a naturalized citizen (an “alien” in the parlance of the day); if he was over- or under-age; or if his enlistment would cause financial hardship for his family. A man could only qualify as a substitute if he was ineligible for the draft which meant that a huge proportion of substitutes were foreign-born “aliens.”

[iv] Murdock, 8-11.

[v] Information on who served on which board comes from The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume V (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), 891

[vi] Murdock, 8.

[vii] William Marvel, “New Hampshire and the Draft, 1863” Historical New Hampshire, 36:1 (Spring 1981), 65.

[viii] Murdock, 93.

[ix] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Godfrey; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8721830/john-franklin-godfrey; https://archivesspace.williams.edu/repositories/4/resources/561

[x] Murdock, 94.

[xi] Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Merrimack and Belknap Counties, New Hampshire (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1885), 434-435; Myra Belle Horne, A History of the Town of New London, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, 1779-1899 (Concord, NH: The Rumford Press, 1899), 228-231.

[xii] Lucy Rogers Hill Cross, History of Northfield, New Hampshire, 1780-1905 (Concord, NH: Rumford Printing Co. 1905), 303-304

[xiii] Biographical Review; Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Merrimack and Sullivan Counties, N. H. (Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1897), 362-363.

[xiv] John Scales, History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Richmond-Arnold, 1914), 634-541; https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/153081853/daniel-hall

[xv] D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis, 1885), 34-35.

[xvi] Simon Goodell Griffin, A History of the Town of Keene from 1732, When the Township was Granted by Massachusetts, to 1874 When It Became a City (Keene, NH: Sentinel Print Col, 1904), 595-596; D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Cheshire and Sullivan Counties, New Hampshire (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis, 1886), 13-15.

[xvii] George Hiram Greeley, Genealogy of the Greely-Greeley Family (Boston: F. Wood, 1905), 480; William Little, The History of Weare, New Hampshire 1735-1888 (Lowell, MA: S. W. Huse & Co.), 757.

[xviii] Granville Priest Conn, History of New Hampshire Surgeons in the War of Rebellion (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, Co., 1906), 183-184; Lucy Rogers Hill Cross, History of Northfield, New Hampshire, 1780-1905 (Concord, NH: Rumford Printing Co., 1905), 151-152.

[xix] For excerpts from all three reports, please see Statistics, Medical and Anthropological, of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau (Washington, DC: Govt. Print. Off., 1875), 180-190.

[xx] Jeremiah was Charles’s first cousin, and Charles married Jeremiah’s sister (also Charles’s first cousin) in 1856. That’s how Jeremiah became Charles’s first cousin and brother-in-law. First-cousin marriage (which Dixi Crosby strenuously complained about in his report) was not outlawed in New Hampshire until 1869.

[xxi] I could not locate Colby in the Census of 1860. In the Census of 1850, he is listed as having real estate to the value of $15,000, and in the Census of 1870, he possesses a total estate worth $20,000. “United States Census, 1850”,FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MWZK-9CZ : Tue Oct 03 09:13:56 UTC 2023), Entry for Anthony Colby and Eliza A Colby, 1850. For the others, see: “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDC7-WJF : Fri Oct 06 11:32:44 UTC 2023), Entry for John E Godfrey and Elizabeth A Godfrey, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WV-DS1 : Thu Oct 05 04:59:43 UTC 2023), Entry for Nathaniel Wiggin and Nancy Wiggin, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-KR7 : Fri Oct 06 00:57:46 UTC 2023), Entry for Gilman Hall and Eliza Hall, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WL-Q53 : Thu Oct 05 04:15:31 UTC 2023), Entry for Jeremiah C Tilton and Emily Tilton, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WP-D52 : Wed Oct 04 10:27:23 UTC 2023), Entry for Jeremiah F Hall and Annette A Hall, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7W5-XM9 : Thu Oct 05 09:43:37 UTC 2023), Entry for Hosea Eaton and Mary W Eaton, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WJ-J1R : Wed Oct 04 03:45:40 UTC 2023), Entry for Lucy A Richmond and Henry F Richmond, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WB-3P8 : Fri Oct 06 04:13:47 UTC 2023), Entry for John Craig and Mary Craig, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WP-8G7 : Thu Oct 05 06:31:32 UTC 2023), Entry for Robt B Carswell and Alvan Hamilton, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WG-K72 : Fri Oct 06 16:42:40 UTC 2023), Entry for Chester Pike and Ebenezer Pike, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WB-ZT5 : Tue Oct 03 11:56:01 UTC 2023), Entry for Francis A Faulkner and Caroline H Faulkner, 1860; “United States Census, 1860”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-Z7T : Fri Oct 06 04:46:22 UTC 2023), Entry for Dixi Crosby and Mary J Crosby, 1860.

[xxii] Myra Bell Horne Lord, A History of the Town of New London, Merrimack County, New Hampshire, 1799-1899 (Concord, NH: The Rumford Press, 1899), 230.

[xxiii] Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 639-640.

[xxiv] John Scales, History of Strafford County, New Hampshire and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Richmond-Arnold, 1914), 637

[xxv] The same account recalled, “On the slavery question [Upton] had but one opinion,–that if human slavery was not wrong, nothing was wrong, and he lost no opportunity to wage warfare on the institution.” See D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis, 1885), 34-35.

[xxvi] Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Cheshire and Sullivan Counties, New Hampshire (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis. 1886), 14.

[xxvii] John Scales, History of Strafford County and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Richmond-Arnold, 1914), 639.

[xxviii] Statistics, Medical and Anthropological, of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau, 188-189.

The “Hermaphrodite” and the Enrollment Board Surgeon

September 5, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ 1 Comment

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIAL. ONE KEY PRIMARY SOURCE IN THIS POST ALSO USES TERMINOLOGY THAT IS CONSIDERED OUTDATED OR INAPPROPRIATE.

Dr. Dixi Crosby (1863)

If you were a surgeon on an enrollment board, charged with the physical examination of draftees, substitutes, and volunteers, how would you react to discovering an intersex person?[i] Such was the question facing Dr. Dixi Crosby, surgeon for the enrollment board in the Third District of New Hampshire in the summer of 1863.

At this point in the post, the reader may reasonably ask how I stumbled upon this encounter. Allow me to provide a circuitous answer. Having obtained a fairly good idea of how the 5^th New Hampshire obtained soldiers when voluntary enlistment predominated (fall 1861 to the late summer of 1862), I’ve recently turned my attention to the draft-bounty-substitute regime that became the primary means of raising of troops from the late summer of 1863 onward.

As some of you may know, once the Enrolment Act of 1863 was passed by Congress, all 185 congressional districts in the North obtained an enrollment board headed by a district provost marshal. The enrollment board was charged with the thankless task of compiling a list of all men in the congressional district between the ages of 20 and 45 who were eligible for the draft. This list became the basis for setting the quotas of each town within the district. Among other things, the enrollment board was also responsible for holding the draft, examining draftees and dealing with claims of exemption, disposing of those men who opted for commutation, and processing the huge wave of substitutes that arose in the aftermath of a draft,. The last of these tasks was mammoth since substitution became the primary means of filling the army with recruits. For example, of the 1330 men who entered the ranks of the 5^th New Hampshire after August 1863, 1170 were substitutes. What’s interesting about these figures is that they indicate more men joined the regiment under the draft-bounty-substitute regime that emerged under the Enrolment Act than through the voluntary enlistment that was typical of the regiment’s first year (which produced a little under 1200 soldiers).[ii]

A very important member of the enrollment board, second in usefulness only to the district provost marshal, was the surgeon who was responsible for examining the draftees, substitutes, and volunteers who passed through the office. I learned from reading Eugene Murdock’s One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (1971) (still one of the leading works on the subject–I’m now reading James W. Geary’s work on the same subject) that shortly after the war ended, Major Jedediah Hyde Baxter, the Chief Medical Officer of the Provost Marshal’s Bureau, sent a questionnaire to all 185 men who then occupied the post of enrollment board surgeon. He received 100 responses which he included in his Statistics, Medical and Anthropological of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau (2 vols.) (1875). I was beyond pleased not only to find this book online but also to discover that all three enrollment board surgeons from New Hampshire submitted reports.[iii]

That brings us to Dr. Dixi Crosby (1800-1873) who was the surgeon for the enrollment board in the state’s Third District (New Hampshire then had three congressmen). Since the position did not pay well, the work was arduous, and conscription was widely loathed, enrollment boards often experienced difficulty in attracting highly qualified doctors. The Third District was especially lucky, then, in obtaining Crosby who was one of the most prominent members of the medical community in the Granite State. The son of a doctor himself, Crosby received his degree from the medical school at Dartmouth College in 1824, practicing medicine in Gilmanton (with his father) and Laconia for a number of years before returning to Dartmouth to become the chair of surgery in 1838. Only three years later, he was appointed to the surgical professorship at Dartmouth. In additional to surgery, he developed an expertise in obstetrics as well as in diseases associated with women and children. All the while, he maintained a thriving practice in Hanover. The sources conflict, but it appears that as he got older, these duties all became a bit much for him, and he lectured less frequently on surgery.

Crosby certainly appears to have been a conscientious doctor. He developed several new noteworthy techniques, including one for dealing with metacarpophalangeal dislocation. He kept up on many of the latest developments in his specialties, traveling to Boston, for example, to learn the most current means of administering chloroform to patients undergoing surgery. He instructed and mentored countless doctors throughout the state, many of whom served as surgeons in New Hampshire regiments during the war (these included John Bucknam who mustered in as the 5^th New Hampshire’s first assistant surgeon before earning a promotion to surgeon in 1863). And Crosby was “the cynosure” at meetings of the New Hampshire Medical Society. What more can we say? Well, one of his former students remembered him as ““the commanding figure who dominated New Hampshire surgery for thirty years.”

But what of Crosby the man? The same student remembered Crosby as:

a short, compact, well-dressed man, firm on his feet and rather ponderous in his gait. He had a large head and wore a curly reddish beard, shaggy as if never a comb had touched it, and his hair reached his coat collar behind. His upper lip was clean shaven so that, as he said, no hair should obstruct his voice in his lectures in the medical school. His face had a winning expression and he liked to talk as he walked. The whole effect of his appearance was majestic and impressive.

He was a “straightforward” lecturer who counseled students to “see with your own eyes, feel with your own fingers, use your own judgment and be the disciple of no one man.” Although he had a reputation for having performed more surgeries than anyone else in New Hampshire, “he might be called a careful, rather than a brilliant operator.” The student summed up Crosby “as a genial man, a faithful adviser, and in his prime the leading surgeon in his state.” Even just a brief survey of Crosby’s career indicates he must have taken on the job of enrollment surgeon out of a sense of duty.

Crosby’s report in Statistics, Medical and Anthropological of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau provides a strong sense of his personality. Yes, there are some assertions that sound strange to our ears. He claimed that the prevalence of typhoid fever in the Connecticut River valley was associated with “very heavy river-fogs” (then again, the miasma theory prevailed in this period.) He also seems to have been particularly exercised by cousin marriage in certain parts of his district because they produced large numbers of “imbeciles” (we must concede here that first-cousin mating does indeed increase the risk that offspring will suffer from developmental disabilities.)[iv] These issues aside, though, one receives from the report the impression of a man with much experience in medicine—and much experience of the world. He appears to have been a man of strong commonsense opinions who had been endowed with much shrewdness.[v]

“The Civil War in America: Claiming Exemption from the Draft in New York,” Illustrated London News (1863): After the Enrolment Act was passed, there was some confusion about whether all men between 20 and 45 in every district should be enrolled for the draft or all able-bodied men between these ages. James B. Fry, the Provost-Marshal-General, eventually decided that all men within this age span should be enrolled. Such a decision made sense; instead of having enrollment officers determining who was able-bodied or not, the enrollment board’s surgeon, who was more properly qualified to assess the physical condition of prospective soldiers, would make the final decision. What this ruling meant in practice, though, was that the surgeon had to undertake a huge number of physical examinations each day to weed out unfit men after they had been drafted (in addition to the enormous burden of examining volunteers and substitutes). This image shows a typical scene at an enrollment board as men await physical examination by the surgeon. Note the huge crowd trying to force its way through the door at right. Men who sought exemption were especially anxious to have their examinations as soon as possible.

It is here that we must advert to the most interesting part of Crosby’s report in Statistics, Medical and Anthropological of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau. I will let him take it from here:

[In the summer of 1863 during the first draft], a conscript appeared in the office for examination who came as near being a genuine hermaphrodite as any reported case. The man was about thirty years of age, five feet four inches in height, with very little beard, but a luxuriant growth of hair about the pubes. The breasts were largely developed; the hips broad; the hands and feet small. The penis was small, but well developed, and occupying the place of the clitoris. The labia majora were well developed, and the commissure decidedly marked. At the lower portion of each labium a small testicle could be felt, and the cord could be traced to the ring. The vagina was a mere cul de sac of about one inch in depth. The history of the case was curious. Until the age of nineteen he wore the habiliments of the female, and associated only with females, conducting himself, according to his own account, precisely as did Achilles when introduced among the daughters of the Grecian king. At this age, his parents, becoming convinced of their mistake, changed his garments and the family residence at the same time. He has been twice married, but had no issue, notwithstanding both marriages were consummated.”vi]

As a doctor, Crosby treated this case primarily as a medical oddity. Indeed, he framed this incident as if it were somehow related to cousin marriage. The language is clinical and matter-of-fact. The case is not shocking, rather, it is “peculiar.” Although Crosby thought the “history of the case was curious,” his description of it was cursory when compared to his detailed depiction of the unnamed conscript’s genitalia.

Academics today, though, would be fascinated by the socio-cultural dimension of this story. Certainly, there are many unanswered questions here. Why was this intersex person initially clothed as a woman? Why did the parents suddenly realize their “mistake” when their one-time “daughter” turned 19? What did their intersex teenager think about skipping town, changing clothing, and assuming a new, male identity? To what degree did this conscript embrace his identity as a man? And what did this person’s two wives think when their marriages were “consummated”?

We don’t have much to go on. But it’s possible to engage in informed speculation based on what we know about the period. In the mid-nineteenth century, doctors—who reflected the general attitudes of society—believed there were only two sexes, and that everybody fit into one or the other. Indeed, it was in the nineteenth century that surgeons first attempted to perform surgeries on intersex people so that their genitals better matched their identity (an intervention that patients often resented or regretted). One important problem among many was that in these cases, the medical profession could not always agree on what made a man a man and a woman a woman. Sometimes intersex people had the space to decide on their own what to be—that is, if they were not flushed out in public, as some were, and forced to choose from one of two sexes against their will.

It seems significant that the parents concluded their daughter was really a son at 19. I would guess that at this point their teenager began to express a sexual interest in women (more on this point anon). The assumption among most 19^th-century Americans was that individuals naturally paired up with the opposite sex. If this ambiguous “girl” was interested in other girls, then she must be a “man,” or so the reasoning must have gone. The sudden change in residence and of “garments” indicates a kind of panic. The parents appear to have been taken by surprise. Perhaps there was some sort of incident.

Crosby appeared to agree with the parents because he refers to their “mistake” in identifying their child as female and because he persisted in describing the conscript as “he.” Crosby’s analogy to Achilles is revealing. It refers to the Greek myth that at the request of the goddess Thetis (who knew Achilles would die if he fought in the Trojan War), King Lycomedes hid the great warrior in his court and disguised him as a woman. Living among the monarch’s daughters in this fashion, Achilles would never be detected—or so the thinking went. When the Trojan War was in the offing, Odysseus and other Greek kings journeyed to Lycomedes’ court to obtain Achilles’ services in the upcoming conflict. They tricked Achilles into revealing himself in the following manner. Odysseus and the others came disguised as peddlers and placed women’s clothes, jewelry, and—significantly—a sword and shield before the various women at court. Achilles instinctively reached for the weapons, thus revealing his identity. In other words, our draftee was a man waiting to be revealed, just like Achilles. But the story is freighted in other ways as well. According to some versions of the myth, while living at Lycomedes’ court, Achilles began an affair with Deidamia, Lycomedes’ daughter, and she had two sons by him. In relating this story, did Crosby seek to indicate that our anonymous conscript, while still identifying as a female at 19, had been caught in a compromising position with a woman?

This is all speculation, of course. It would require a great deal of legwork to get to the bottom of this story and identify this conscript. Crosby’s district included Cheshire, Sullivan, Grafton, and Coos counties—a large area, at least by New Hampshire standards, with over 100,000 people at the time. A cursory Google search produced no hits concerning a publicly identified intersex person living in mid-nineteenth-century western New Hampshire.

If I’m not mistaken, the reason we know so little about this unnamed conscript is because Crosby chose discretion as the better part of valor. Yes, he could not pass up the chance to mention in his report that he had encountered a case of intersexuality, but it stopped there. We ought to contemplate for a moment what Crosby did not do. A different doctor—one who was more ambitious and less scrupulous—could have turned the anonymous draftee into a specimen who was subjected to repeated investigations by the medical community. Another surgeon could have engaged in the public “freakification” of the conscript.[vii] These are the kinds of things that happened to other intersex people in other places during this period. It’s possible, of course, that when I trawl through Record Group 110 (Records of the Provost Marshal’s Bureau) in the National Archives at Washington, DC (or the branch in Waltham, Massachusetts), I might find some documentation that indicates Crosby acted otherwise. But until then, it seems to me that we obtain no better measure of Crosby’s character than by stressing what he refrained from doing in this case.

It almost goes without saying—but I feel compelled to say it—that this incident is relevant to our contemporary debates about sexuality. I don’t have much appetite for engaging in the culture wars that plague public discussion these days, but it is important to recognize—as the medical profession does—that people are not easily divided into two distinct sexes. As Jessica Carducci, Allison Haste, Bryce Longenberger point out in their study of Karl Hohmann, when it comes to the gender and sex binary, “There is a range of difference between individuals in these categories, and there is a range of difference that exists outside them as well—a continuum of human difference that does not fit into two separate boxes.”[viii] And that is an important idea to contemplate as we recollect an enrollment board surgeon’s encounter with an unnamed draftee in the summer of 1863.

[i] According to the Cleveland Clinic, “People who are intersex have reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit into an exclusively male or female (binary) sex classification. Intersex traits might be apparent when a person’s born, but they might not appear until later (during puberty or even adulthood). You may never notice their intersex traits externally and you might only find out about them after a surgery or imaging test.” See https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex

[ii] Much of this information comes from Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (Madison, WI: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971) and Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, 1895).

[iii] J. H. Baxter, Statistics, Medical and Anthropological of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1875). Google Books has a copy of volume 1, which is where the surgeon’s reports appear, here: https://books.google.com/books?id=_cI_AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

[iv] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904202/#:~:text=Consanguinity%20is%20a%20well%2Dknown, and%20also%20other%20inherited%20disorders.

[v] For biographical information about Crosby, please consult the following sources: Granville Priest Conn, History of the New Hampshire Surgeons in the War of the Rebellion (Concord, NH: Ira C. Evans, 1906), 421, https://archive.org/details/historyofnewhamp00conn/page/420/mode/2up?q=Dixi+Crosby; Howard Atwood Kelly and Walter L. Burrage, A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography: Comprising the Lives of Eminent Deceased Physicians and Surgeons from 1610 to 1910, Volume 1 (Baltimore: The Norman, Remington Company, 1920), 261, https://books.google.com/books?id=GPssAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA261#v=onepage&q&f=false; James Grant Wilson, Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, Volume 2 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1900), 16, https://archive.org/details/appletonscyclopa02wils/page/16/mode/2up?view=theater.

[vi] https://books.google.com/books?id=_cI_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q&f=false

[vii] The key work on the treatment of intersexuality during this period is Alice Domurat Dreger’s Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Please see the following accessible sources for the ways in which prominent cases of intersex people were handled during this period: file:///H:/My%20Documents/DP5624/5th%20New%20Hampshire%20Research/Secondary%20Research/What%20am%20I%20Intersexuality%20Article%20on%20Karl%20Hohmann.pdf; https://timeline.com/the-tragic-story-of-the-hermaphrodite-who-puzzled-19th-century-france-702050cdd5b8; https://www.press.jhu.edu/newsroom/intersex-people-past-and-present-contemporary-advocacy-historical-context.

[viii] file:///H:/My%20Documents/DP5624/5th%20New%20Hampshire%20Research/Secondary%20Research/What %20am%20I%20Intersexuality%20Article%20on%20Karl%20Hohmann.pdf

Joseph Q. Roles: Human Trafficker or Democratic Party Stalwart?

August 11, 2023August 11, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ 4 Comments

Richard Caton Woodville, Sr., War News from Mexico (1848): Yes, I know the date and subject of this painting precede the Civil War by over a decade. But I’d like to imagine that such a scene took place in front of the Carroll House in Ossipee during the war when Joseph Q. Roles was its proprietor. Perhaps groups gathered to read the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, the states’s Democratic paper of record, and discuss the fate of McClellan’s campaign on the Peninsula, the Emancipation Proclamation, or some other such event. I can’t refrain from pointing out here that the American-born Woodville (1825-1855) was the father of the British-born Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. (1856-1927), Britain’s foremost artist of military subjects in the late 19th century.

I know the title of this post sounds like clickbait, but hear me out. The following piece is about substitute brokering during the Civil War—an occupation that often involved kidnapping, immigrant-running, grand larceny, assault, and murder.[i]

In the fall of 1863, the selectmen of Conway, NH, found themselves in a terrible predicament. In October, President Abraham Lincoln had called for another 300,000 soldiers to fill the ranks of the Union army. Conway’s contribution to this call was set by the state at 25 men. If the town could not draw enough volunteers—a likely prospect since folks had not shown much enthusiasm for enlisting during previous calls—the difference would have to be made up by conscription. Nobody relished such a prospect because the war had badly divided Conway. Although it had voted for Lincoln by a small majority in 1860, McClellan would go on to win the town by a similar small majority in 1864. In the summer of 1863, angry debates in town meetings over the war and how to meet previous presidential calls for troops had culminated in tit-for-tat incidents of arson between Republicans and Democrats.

In an attempt to gin up enlistment, a town meeting approved a municipal bounty of $300 for volunteers or draftees that would augment federal and state bounties ($100 each). By Christmas, however, only five men had stepped forward to enlist. The despairing selectmen appointed Hiram C. Abbott to make contact with substitute brokers in Concord to fill the town’s quota. The idea seemed to be that if the people of Conway were unwilling to serve, they should not be made to do so through the draft.

William Marvel has described substitute brokers as “totally unnecessary opportunists who materialized wherever things—or people—were being marketed.”[ii] It is true that volunteers were not legally required to enlist through a broker, but brokers facilitated the task of matching large numbers of substitutes with a) drafted men looking to wriggle out of service and b) desperate towns willing to pay top dollar to meet their quotas. Indeed, if I correctly understand the system as it stood in late 1863, there were important incentives for enrolling as a substitute (and therefore using a broker) rather than as a volunteer. A volunteer could enlist on his own and collect the town, state, and federal bounties. But a substitute could collect these bounties as well as the money owed to a substitute—typically $300 at this point (the same as the commutation fee)—minus, of course, the substitute broker’s cut. Not only that, but brokers usually had hot tips on which towns offered the largest bounties; big bounties, theoretically, meant more money for both the substitute and the broker.

I write “theoretically” because this unregulated trade was rife with swindling and fraud. Substitute brokers often did their level best to extract as much money as they could from their unfortunate charges. Brokers always had the upper hand because while they were familiar with all manner of sharp practices, most men who sought to become substitutes were not. Brokers frequently obtained substitutes under false pretenses and reneged on their financial promises. It was a nasty commerce, and substitute brokers were rightly likened to “body-snatchers” and “slavetraders.”

And so it must have been with some repugnance that Abbott made his way to the draft rendezvous in Concord to commence negotiations with the substitute brokers there. On January 5, 1864, Abbott reached an agreement with a “Mr. Lindsey” who provided seven substitutes at $275 each (saving Conway, which had alloted $300 per man for the task, $175). Since that day was the deadline by which the quota required fulfillment, subsequent negotiations with other brokers proved much more expensive as they tried to take advantage of Abbott’s desperation. On January 8, Abbott obtained 11 men from Joseph Q. Roles for $355 each. The price would have risen even higher if the deadline for meeting the quota had not been extended to February. In addition to the 18 substitutes he located, Abbott also found two volunteers. As they enlisted, all were credited to Conway. Abbott must have returned home much relieved, his mission accomplished if somewhat over-budget.[iii] The deal Roles had made with the substitutes, the extent to which he adhered to it, and how much they received of their bounties and substitute money all remain unknown.

What caught my eye when I first read about this transaction was the name Joseph Q. Roles. I first encountered Roles some time ago when I looked into who recruited the 5^th New Hampshire’s original volunteers during the fall of 1861. Residing in Ossipee, Roles brought in about 20 men to the regiment—mostly in the region north and west of Lake Winnipesaukee (i.e., Brookfield, Conway, Effingham, Moultonborough, Ossipee, Tamworth, and Wolfeboro). But who exactly was Roles? And how did he end up in such a disreputable business as substitute brokering?

The short answer to the first question is that he was a prominent businessman and a Democratic party stalwart. Born in 1828 in Ossipee, Roles was only 18 when his father Azor died, leaving the family in poverty. Contracting an early marriage in 1849 to 15-year-old Mary Wood (their first child arrived at the end of that year), it seemed the odds were stracked against Roles escaping penury. Yet as a “traveling merchant,” he managed to support his new family while contributing to the upkeep of his mother and four younger siblings. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was running the Carroll House, a hotel in the old village center of Ossipee (now referred to as Ossipee Corner), his total estate then amounting to almost $4000. His biography in the History of Carroll County, New Hampshire (1889) states Roles was “engaged in hotel keeping, also in staging [an important task before the arrival of railroad], dealing in cattle and real estate, lumber etc.” and that he “conducted for a time a wholesale and retail grocery at Union Village.”[iv] By around 1870, he had also taken over the Pine River House, described in accounts simply as a “house of entertainment.”[v] Certainly, Roles was a man on the make. According to the Census of 1870, he had amassed about $18,000 in property, an extremely large sum. Could it be that he saw in the traffic of substitutes an opportunity to make money that was no different from “hotel keeping, staging, dealing in cattle and real state, lumber, etc.”? One also wonders how much he owed his $18,000 to substitute brokering.[vi]

What is most striking about Roles is that he engaged in this business of substitute brokering while holding state office. He started his political career as a selectman in Ossipee (1856 and 1859) before becoming a Carroll County commissioner (1861-1862). The transaction with Abbott occurred while Roles represented Ossipee in the state house (1861 and 1863-1865). It’s true that the worst abuses associated with substitute brokering occurred with the connivance of authorities such as corrupt provost marshals and recruiting officers. But trafficking in substitutes while serving as a member of the state legislature seems, well, a bit bold. Many people must have known what he had been up to during the war; after all, Abbott could not have been the only agent who obtained substitutes from Roles in an attempt to fulfill a town quota. Yet, as Roles’ postwar political career indicates, no one seemed to hold his substitute brokering against him. He became a fixture in county and state politics, serving as county auditor (1869), county treasurer (1876, and 1878-1879), and a state representative (1871, 1874-1875, and 1878-1884).[vii]

How Roles justified his brokering to himself need not detain us. After all, any man can explain away his actions to himself if given the right circumstances and sufficient incentives. The truly intriguing question is how Roles vindicated himself to his colleagues in the Democratic party. In all likelihood, such a vindication must have been political.

By 1863, Roles’ fellow Democrats vigorously argued that Republicans had imposed an unconstitutional draft so as to prosecute an unconstitutional war whose object was the unconstitutional emancipation of slaves. Democrats resented the draft largely because it would compel white men to risk their lives to free Black men.[viii] That being the case, Roles may have framed his brokering as a kind of resistance to what Democrats saw as federal overreach. I do not know who his substitutes were and how he obtained them (this information may be in the report that Abbott submitted to Conway which remains in the town’s archives). But if they were recent immigrants—and there’s a very good chance they were—Roles could have posed as somebody who earned a few dollars while trying to protect New Hampshire’s young, white, native-born manhood from the maw of an iniquitous war that sought to free Black men from their shackles. That was certainly a position New Hampshire Democrats would have found acceptable.

Of course, the foregoing is speculation. Roles’ ruminations on his career as a substitute broker went to the grave with him. In December 1885, he committed suicide in Ossipee while suffering from “mental despondency.”[ix]

[i] Eugene C. Murdock, still the leading authority on the draft and substitution, uses these particular phrases to describe the various “devices” employed by brokers. See Eugene C. Murdock, “New York’s Civil War Bounty Brokers” The Journal of American History 53:2 (September 1966), 259.

[ii] William Marvel, “A Poor Man’s Fight: Civil War Enlistment in Conway, New Hampshire” Historical New Hampshire 43:1 (Spring 1988), 29.

[iii] The tale of Conway’s struggle to locate volunteers and substitutes in late 1863 and early 1864 comes from Marvel, “A Poor Man’s Fight,” 28-29.

[iv] This quote about Roles’ career appears in Georgia Drew Merrill, History of Carroll County, New Hampshire (Boston: W.A. Fergusson & Co., 1889), 631.

[v] Information about Roles and the Carroll House as well as the Pine River House appears in Merrill, History of Carroll County, 616. See also https://www.ossipee.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif3641/f/file/file/mp_7_history_11.1.pdf

[vi] Information about Roles’ wealth and family come from the following: “United States Census, 1850”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MWZZ-1NN : Mon Jul 17 22:12:04 UTC 2023), Entry for Joseph Q Roles and Mary E Roles, 1850; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7W5-3S8 : Mon Jul 17 21:22:53 UTC 2023), Entry for Joseph Q Rolls and Mary E Rolls, 1860.; “United States Census, 1870”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH55-277 : 29 May 2021), Joseph Q Roles in entry for Daniel A Hyde, 1870.; (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHR6-3DH : Thu Aug 03 02:43:20 UTC 2023), Entry for Joseph Q. Roles and Mary E. Roles, 1880.

[vii] One can find a list of Roles’ political offices in Merrill, History of Carroll County, 635-636.

[viii] See Lex Renda, Running on the Record: Civil War Era Politics in New Hampshire (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1997). See also Lex Renda, “Credit and Culpability: New Hampshire State Politics during the Civil War” Historical New Hampshire 48:1 (Spring 1993).

[ix] Information about Roles’ death comes from Merrill, History of Carroll County, 631; “New Hampshire Death Records, 1654-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FSLW-XJL : 23 February 2021), Joseph I Roles, 04 Dec 1885; citing Ossipee, Bureau Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,103.

Winslow Homer’s The Veteran in a New Field

June 19, 2023August 9, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ 2 Comments

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865)

Winslow Homer, Francis Barlow, and Two Degrees of Separation from the 5^th New Hampshire

Today, I thought I’d do something different by discussing what I find to be one of Winslow Homer’s most moving works. How shall I justify this choice of topic? In other words, what does this have to do with the 5^th New Hampshire? Homer was Francis Barlow’s cousin. Yes, that Barlow–the famous Union “boy general” who was the scourage of stragglers. Small world, isn’t it? Early in the war, Barlow was the colonel of the 61^st New York which was brigaded with the 5^th New Hampshire. Shortly after the Battle of Antietam, he left his regiment to assume command of a brigade which was the first step in his march to fame. Later, in 1864, he became commander of the 1^st division in II Corps which is where the brigade containing his old regiment and our Granite Staters fit in the Army of the Potomac’s order of battle.

Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front (1866)

Any of you familiar with the Civil War and Winslow Homer knows the artist placed his general-cousin in one of the most important paintings generated by the conflict, Prisoners from the Front (1866) (to which the movie Gettysburg paid an awkward homage). This should come as no surprise. When Homer visited the Army of the Potomac, sometimes, but not always, as an artist-correspondent for Harper’s Weekly, he would avail himself of Barlow’s hospitality and stay with the 61^st New York. If you look closely at the painting, you’ll see on the right margin a flag with the red trefoil of the 1^st division, II Corps–Barlow’s division starting in 1864. And the Union soldier guarding the prisoners also sports a red trefoil on his forage cap—along with a brass “61” denoting his membership in the 61^st New York.

Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front (1866) (details): The red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps is everywhere!

In Prisoners from the Front as well as contemporary photos, Barlow looks like a genteel, fresh-faced boy who could have studied law at Harvard alongside the scions of Boston Brahmins (which he did). In this case, though, appearances are completely deceiving. Barlow was painfully blunt and fearless to the point of utter recklessness. He was also an iron disciplinarian. He became one of the North’s great division commanders of the war and helped II Corps win its reputation as the anvil of the Army of the Potomac.

But enough about Barlow. What of Homer and his painting?

Leaders of the II Corps (1864): These were the men who pushed II Corps through the Overland Campaign that drove the Army of Northern Virginia back to Petersburg. The exhaustion of this task is evident from their faces. Standing from left to right are Brigadier General Francis Barlow (1st division), Major General David Birney (3rd division), and Major General John Gibbon (2nd division). Seated is Major General Winfield Hancock (commander of II Corps).

The Mixed Messages of The Veteran in a New Field

The Veteran in a New Field is a great work of art. If you don’t agree, I hope at least you’ll understand why I like it so much. At first glance, the painting seems awfully simple. It depicts the sky, some wheat, a man, and his scythe. If you search the canvas a little more, you’ll find a cast-off jacket atop which lies a canteen. The simplicity of the composition provides the painting with much of its power. Yet The Veteran in a New Field is also intriguing because of its nuance, ambiguity, and contrasts. Through various symbols, the painting conveys a number of subtle messages, some of which complement and contradict one another. Finally, we must consider context; it’s hard to measure the force of this work unless we imagine it as a product of the immediate post-war era (various sources date the work to somewhere between April and October 1865).

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

Scholars have often claimed this work presents a national narrative. That is, the painting is about Northern victory, American regeneration, and so on. But I prefer to focus on the idea of the veteran. The title of the painting suggests the veteran is not literally harvesting a new field but that he has embarked on a new type of endeavor. Instead of the battlefield, he has moved on to the wheat field which signifies his embrace of peaceful pursuits. In 1865, the majority of Americans still earned their living from the land, and wheat was replete with symbolism for them. For one thing, unlike cotton, which was tainted with slavery and secession, wheat was a good, honest Northern crop (although it must be conceded that at this point, corn was the predominant cereal crop in New England). Wheat had long been associated with regeneration and fertility, so the mowing here speaks to hope for the future. These associations were closely related to the Parable of the Grain of Wheat (John 12:24-26):

Verily, verily, I say unto you, еxcept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

The parable suggests that like wheat left on the stalk, we must die. And we must accept our death before we can be reborn a true servant of Christ. Only then can we attain the Kingdom of Heaven. As the Apostle Paul stated in Corinthians 15:42, “What is sown in the earth is subject to decay, what rises is incorruptible.” The parable was also a metaphor for Christ’s own death and resurrection. What Homer seemed to imply was that America had been reborn only because hundreds of thousands of the North’s sons had sacrificed themselves to purify the country. In contemplating the Parable of the Grain of Wheat, I’m reminded here that the 61^st New York, Barlow’s old unit, fought in the Wheatfield during the second day at Gettysburg. Bled white by two years of service, the regiment brought into action “only 90 muskets” of whom 65 were killed or wounded.

61st New York Monument in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg National Military Park

And that bring us to the veteran’s farming implement. Our veteran swings what contemporaries would have considered an archaic scythe. This was not a mistake on Homer’s part; it was a deliberate choice. If you look closely at the painting, he originally included a grain cradle on the scythe that would have brought it up to date. That Homer painted over the grain cradle indicates he reached for associations with the grim reaper who mowed men down with a traditional scythe. This metaphor of mowing men came naturally to Civil War soldiers, a majority of whom were farmers or farm laborers. At close range, volleys had a tendency to knock entire ranks of soldiers down like “wheat before the scythe” as the saying goes. In The Veteran in a New Field, the titular character is mowing wheat instead of men, but does the metaphor occur to him at this moment?

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

What The Veteran in a New Field is Doing

What our veteran thinks as he mows his wheat is impossible to say. Because his back is turned to the viewer, he remains an enigmatic figure. Does he feel hopeful about a prosperous future? Is he traumatized and damaged by his wartime past? Who knows? The veteran’s back is turned to us, so we cannot read his expression. What accentuates the enigma here is that the veteran is also liminal. He is neither soldier nor civilian; he is a veteran. Unlike the soldier, he no longer serves in the army. Unlike the civilian, he knows what only a soldier who has seen combat can know. The veteran has taken off his old army jacket and canteen (which, by the way, bears the red trefoil of the 1^st division, II Corps). But they still remain in sight, and he wears his army-issued pants. Commentary from one art historian I read pointed out that mowing was communal work, but, here, the veteran swings his scythe alone. He stands, thus, for all veterans, a unique class of men set apart from others. It occurs to me that as he toils, he is working out his future.

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail): The veteran’s jacket lies on the ground in the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas. It appears to be the Union army’s standard-issue four-button sack coat. Atop this jacket lies an army canteen with the red trefoil of the 1st division, II Corps and the initials “W. H.”

These ruminations remind me of an important scene in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) one of the finest American films about veterans returning from war (in this case, it’s World War II). Toward the end of the movie, one of the main characters, Fred Derry (played by Dana Andrews), a former USAAF bombardier who suffers from PTSD and carries a chip on his shoulder the size of a Cadillac, has “a moment.” His marriage has collapsed, he’s lost his job as a soda jerk, and the woman he loves is unavailable. The contrast between his life as a bombardier, when he was a hero, and his failures as a civilian are too great for him to bear. He vows to leave his hometown of Boone City. While waiting for a flight to take him away from the scene of his failures, he walks, ironically enough, through an aircraft boneyard filled with B-17s of the type that he flew over Europe. He clambers into the nose cone of one of these bombers, goes into trance, relives his horrifying wartime experiences, and undergoes some sort of catharsis. When Derry emerges from his daze, he isn’t exactly a new man. The movie is too nuanced to do something like that. What is clear, though, is that he is now determined to do his best to put the war behind him and make the most of his situation.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (still)

I imagine the veteran in Homer’s painting is doing the same thing. While working in the field, he is also working out his future. Neither the civilian nor the soldier can help him determine his fate; that is why he is alone in the new field. Will memories of a red-sodden past prevent him from realizing a golden and bountiful future? In other words, will his experiences of a time when men were scythed like wheat make it impossible for him to scythe wheat like men? As the veteran weighs his options, all we can hear is the scratch of the scythe gliding through the wheat. But does the veteran hear the same thing? Or does he remember the weighty buzzing of Minié balls and the strange sound they made as these projectiles splattered upon meeting human flesh?

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field (1865) (detail)

What I appreciate about this painting is that it doesn’t possess the treacly sentimentality that characterized most contemporary representations of the soldier’s homecoming. It is ambiguous and even, perhaps, ambivalent. What I also find interesting is that many art critics at the time disapproved of Homer’s style, which they described as unfinished. This criticism reminds me of the way art connoisseurs reacted to Edouard Manet’s technique in his groundbreaking Olympia, which paved the way for the Impressionists. But Homer’s approach to painting (like Manet’s) was entirely appropriate. In 1865, veterans were incomplete and works in progress. Only time would tell what and who they would become.

Who was Charles McCully, and What Might He Tell Us about the “Other Half” of the 5th New Hampshire?

June 6, 2023June 6, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Charles McCully’s headstone at Westlawn Cemetery, Goffstown, NH

Shortly after Memorial Day, I walked through Goffstown’s Westlawn Cemetery. The cemetery forms part of a route I take through Goffstown Village that amounts to almost three miles. I noticed that a number of small American flags had been planted throughout the cemetery that strikingly indicated just how many of the dead had served in the armed forces throughout our nation’s history (Westlawn was opened around 1817, so it includes Revolutionary War veterans). While ambling along the main path through the cemetery, I thought I’d visit Joseph Caraway’s tombstone. I wrote a post about Caraway some time ago because I once believed he was the sole member of the 5^th New Hampshire who had a Goffstown connection.

I found Caraway’s gravesite without difficult, but there was no flag. It occurred to me that nothing indicated he was a veteran—no inscription on his stone and no GAR marker—so that may have explained the absence of a flag. As I walked about that section of the cemetery, though, I noticed several government-issued headstones for Civil War veterans had no flags either. Among these was a marker for someone who had served in the 3^rd New Hampshire and another for a veteran from a Vermont regiment. Between these two stones was an eroded marker that I could read only with difficulty. I don’t know why I tarried to decipher it but, eventually, to my delight, I realized it read:

Charles McCully

Co. G 5 REG. N.H.V.

1834-1903

The name didn’t ring a bell, so I looked him up as soon as I reached home. Sure enough, The Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866 had a record for “Charles McCulley.”[i]

Tracing this soldier’s story was somewhat difficult since “McCully” was an alternate spelling of “McCullough,” and many people, especially in the New York area, where our man was born, bore that last name. Another issue was that McCully’s life was somewhat checkered, and he sought to keep parts of his past a secret. I’m about 90% sure, though, that the following story is correct; in a number of cases, I’ve found ways in which the various documents I used confirm each other.

Charles McCully was born in New York, NY, in either 1833 or 1834. I could not locate him in the Census of 1850. However, I did find a likely candidate in the Census of 1860, a Charles McCully who was 26 years old, lived in Brooklyn, NY, and worked as a “Carman” (a driver of a horse-drawn delivery vehicle). He appears to have been married to an Ellen McCully, aged 22, but she makes no further appearance in any of the documents I found. McCully also lived with a pair of peddlers, Samuel Lockwood (50) and Charles William (22).[ii] So far, so good; nothing to see here.

Colonel William Wilson (seated, center) poses with two officers and members of his 6th New York. A very interesting biography of Wilson by Robert E. Cray, entitled, A Notable Bully: Colonel Billy Wilson, Masculinity, and the Pursuit of Violence in the Civil War Era appeared in 2021. In a review of this work, Lorien Foot quotes Cray to the effect that Wilson’s story is “worth knowing” if we want to understand the Northern public’s shifting attitudes toward bullying, masculinity, and violence. The problem is that “‘roughs’ did not leave diaries, letters, and papers for historians to examine their personal lives and private opinions.”

Only a couple of weeks after Fort Sumter was attacked, McCully enlisted in the 6^th New York Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as “Wilson’s Zouaves” after its colonel, William Wilson. I love the Wikipedia description of the unit: “It was made up primarily of gang members, ex-cons, and criminals from the Bowery section of New York City. Rumor had it that a man had to prove he’d served time in jail before he was allowed to join.” Is this true? I have no idea since no source for this information is provided. But I have read elsewhere that the regiment consisted of “rowdies” and that it was notoriously ill-disciplined. McCully enlisted on April 25, 1861 and was mustered in as a sergeant in Company D five days later. Only two months passed before McCully was busted down to private (on the 4^th of July, no less). In August 1862, he was promoted back to corporal, and this was the rank he held when the regiment reached the end of its two-year term.[iii] The 6^th New York appears to have done more posturing than fighting (unless one counts the fistfights in which it was involved with nearby Union units). It was initially stationed on Santa Rosa Island near Pensacola, FL, where it engaged in several small skirmishes with Confederate forces. The 6^th New York was later transferred to New Orleans, LA, and thence to Baton Rouge. After participating in operations against Port Hudson, it fought some minor actions in western Louisiana before mustering out in New York in June 1863.[iv]

This image from the May 18, 1861 edition of Harper’s Weekly shows Colonel Wilson and his staff. The accompanying article stated that the 6th New York “has been recruited from the roughs and b’hoys of New York city.”

What McCully did for the next five months remains unclear. All I know is that in December 1863, he enlisted in the 5^th New Hampshire and was mustered into Company G as a private. According to the muster roll, McCully was a “Drayman” with brown eyes, dark brown hair, and a ruddy complexion.[v] He stood 5’ 8 ¼”. Interestingly, every single man who appeared on the same page as he did was from out of state, and a very large proportion was foreign born.[vi]

It seems odd that a New Yorker would enlist in a Granite state unit, but there are possible explanations. To meet the manpower quotas set by the state, New Hampshire towns sent agents to New York to collect men who were willing to serve as substitutes for sums that in the summer of 1863 often topped $500. It appears these agents may also have collected some men who were attracted by the large bounties offered in New Hampshire for volunteers (towns, the state, and the federal government each contributed to these bounties). It’s possible McCully found these terms enticing. Since the 5^th New Hampshire was then at Point Lookout, MD, guarding Confederate POWs, he may also have joined because he thought the regiment would spend much of its time performing cushy service.

The service was cushy. Until it wasn’t. In late May 1864, the regiment left Point Lookout to take its turn in the Overland Campaign. On June 3, 1864, a couple of days after reaching the Army of the Potomac, the 5^th New Hampshire was thrown into the grand assault against Confederate forces at Cold Harbor. I’ve written about this battle elsewhere. It suffices to say here that the regiment performed well and was one of only two Union units to break through the front line of the Confederate defenses. Unfortunately, since other regiments did not advance with the same kind of spirit, the 5^th New Hampshire’s flanks were uncovered. The rebels shot the regiment to pieces and took 40 men prisoner. Charles McCully was one of those who was wounded. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I have not been able to determine the nature of his wounds.

Alfred Waud, 7th N.Y. Heavy Arty. in Barlows charge nr. Cold Harbor Friday June 3rd, 1864 (1864): The 5th New Hampshire broke into the Confederate defenses at Cold Harbor right next to the 7th New York Heavy Artillery. After experiencing some local success, both regiments were cornered, badly used by rebel forces, and driven off.

McCully was transported to Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC (just like Ephraim Adams). From there, he was sent to a hospital in Philadelphia, PA. And there the record in The Revised Register ends with an ominous “N.f.r.A.G.O.” an abbreviation that signifies “No further record Adjutant General’s Office.” In my experience, this notation indicates a man probably deserted. This surmise is confirmed by a muster roll that notes: “No discharge furnished—Wounded June 3^rd 1863—Abs[en]t in U.S. Hosp[ita]l Annapolis MD.”[vii] Desertion from hospitals was common. When some men felt well enough to leave under their own power, they checked themselves out, never to return to the army.

Except McCully did return to the army. In September 1865, he showed up at Fort Hamilton (which now sits under the Brooklyn end of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge) and enlisted in the 2^nd battalion of the 12^th US Infantry Regiment.[viii] In 1866, this battalion later became the 21^st US Infantry Regiment after the army was expanded to assume the arduous responsibilities associated with Reconstruction. For most of the time that he remained with the regular army, McCully was stationed near Richmond, VA. He stayed with the 21^st US Infantry until January 1867, when he was discharged at Petersburg, VA, for disability. It may seem odd that a sometime troublemaker and deserter would return to the army, but during the Civil War, some men developed a taste for the life and tried to make a go of it. The 5^th New Hampshire had a number of such men.

An image of the shoreline in front of Fort Hamilton at some point in the 1870s.

McCully then disappears from the documentary record for 13 years. Or at least, he seems to have disappeared from FamilySearch. One wonders if, as a deserter from the 5^th New Hampshire, he sought to keep a low profile.

McCully next came up for air in Goffstown, NH. The Census of 1880 enumerates a “C. Worley McCully,” aged 45, born in New York, and boarding with the family of Franklin Tucker, a 41-year-old laborer. I have no doubt this is our man. So far as I can see in the Census of 1880, there was no other McCully living in New Hampshire whose first name started with a “C.” Why McCully moved to New Hampshire remains a mystery. One might be tempted to say he knew somebody there from his 5^th New Hampshire days. However, nobody from Goffstown enlisted in the regiment during the war, and that meant very few people in town had any connection to the unit. (Franklin Tucker had spent most of the war with the 2nd New Hampshire and was also wounded at Cold Harbor, but there is no evidence that he knew McCully during the war.) If only we knew what McCully did during those lost 13 years, we might produce a reason for his move to the Granite State.[ix]

It’s worth noting here that when McCully appeared in Goffstown, he was unmarried. This in itself was unusual. Over 90% of the veterans of the 5th New Hampshire were married at some point in their lives. McCully appears to have been married in the Census of 1860, and it’s possible that he was married at some point during his 13 missing years. But even had he lost a wife due to death or divorce, there were strong incentives for a middle-aged laborer to remarry. One wonders in this case, then, if his marital status indicated that for some reason he was not a particularly eligible match.

A view of Goffstown Village in 1887.

Documents from 1890 reveal something about McCully’s outlook and situation. In July of that year, he filed for a pension. In all likelihood, he had avoided doing so until this point because he was afraid that his desertion would come to light. Desperation seems to have overborne his caution because his entry in the Veterans Census of 1890 indicates he was a “Pauper.” For obvious reasons, his pension index card listed his service with the 6^th New York and the 21^st US Infantry but left out his time with the 5^th New Hampshire. A number of veterans played this game with the federal government—some got away with it, and some didn’t. But this game came at a cost; in angling for a bigger payment, McCully could not refer to the wound he had suffered at Cold Harbor while serving with the 5^th New Hampshire. His entry in the Veterans Census also listed his service with the 6^th New York and the 21^st US, but left the 5^th New Hampshire out. Under “Disability Incurred,” one finds “Rupture [Hernia] General Disability.” There is nothing about the wound from Cold Harbor.[x]

Charles McCully’s pension index card from 1890. Note that he did not refer to his service in the 5th New Hampshire. Henry F. W. Little (1842-1907), McCully’s pension attorney, won the Medal of Honor for heroic service on the picket line in September 1864 while serving with the 7th New Hampshire in front of Petersburg, VA. Little later wrote The Seventh Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion (1896).

The Census from 1900 does not list an occupation for McCully, and one wonders if his disability was such that he depended entirely on his pension. In any event, McCully did not have long to live. He appears to have contracted melanoma which chewed away at his face. He spent his last several months, no doubt in great agony, at the Hillsborough County Hospital in Goffstown where he died on May 9, 1903.[xi]

Obviously, it is difficult to track marginal folks like McCully through documents. People like him did not want to be found until they were ready. In the meantime, nobody tried too hard to locate them. Folks in this position often left behind many mysteries. Some can be resolved with more research. For example, if I had the time to look through the 6^th New York’s records, I could probably find out why McCully was reduced to the ranks from sergeant. Or, perhaps with a little more mental elbow grease, I could determine what happened to McCully between 1867 and 1880. Bringing obscure figures like McCully back to life is not just an exercise in antiquarianism, interesting though the process may be. Rather, it helps us understand how the “other half” in a regiment—the deserters, shirkers, malingerers, thieves, and even rowdies—lived both during and after its service. For obvious reasons, these types of soldiers have not made the same mark on the historical record as others. But their experiences are just as much a part of soldiering as anybody else’s.

So there are mysteries, and they are a bit difficult to clear up, but they are worth illuminating. I’ll leave you with one that some of the more attentive among you may have already noticed. It is probably the type of question that we can never answer for sure. The 5^th New Hampshire was widely recognized as a storied unit, and literally hundreds of its veterans proudly proclaimed their service in the regiment through inscriptions on their headstones. Charles McCully, however, was an Empire City man, born and bred. He served in the field with the 5^th New Hampshire for a mere five months. After he was wounded at Cold Harbor, he deserted. For that reason, after 1864, he did everything he could to conceal his service in the regiment. Yet, “Co. G 5 REG. N.H.V.” remains engraved on his tombstone to this day. How or why this occurred will probably remain unknown. But perhaps it provides us with insight into how some of those among the “other half” may have viewed their service with a famous regiment.

[i] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011525055&view=1up&seq=273

[ii] “United States Census, 1860″, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC7R-7X8 : 18 February 2021), Charles Mc Cully, 1860.”United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC7R-7X8 : 18 February 2021), Charles Mc Cully, 1860.

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_New_York_Infantry_Regiment

[iv] https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/application/files/4515/5058/8660/6th_Infantry_CW_Roster.pdf

[v] A “Drayman” was someone who drove a dray, that is, a flatbed wagon. This description matches well with his occupation in the Census of 1860, which was a “Carman.”

[vi] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q27M-9MBF : 16 March 2018), Charles Mc Cully, 09 Dec 1863; citing Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,316,447.

[vii] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLM8-CY5M : 16 March 2018), Charles H Mccully, 09 Dec 1863; citing Portsmouth, Rockingham, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,319,539.

[viii] His occupation was listed again as “Carman.” “United States Registers of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798-1914,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VRQ8-HSV : 12 March 2018), Charles Mccully, 23 Sep 1865; citing p. 224, volume 60, Fort Hamilton, , New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication M233 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 30; FHL microfilm 350,336.

[ix] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHRF-NTW : 14 January 2022), C. Worley McCully in household of Franklin Tucker, Goffstown, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, United States; citing enumeration district , sheet , NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm .

[x] “United States General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KDBC-BRC : 20 February 2021), Charles Mccully, 1890; see also “United States Census of Union Veterans and Widows of the Civil War, 1890,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K837-1NF : 8 March 2021), Charles A Mccolley, 1890; citing NARA microfilm publication M123 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 338,199.

[xi] “New Hampshire Death Records, 1654-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FSNT-FHZ : 22 February 2021), Charles Mcculley, 09 May 1903; citing Grasmere, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, Bureau Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,110,576. See also https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/144382470/charles-c-mccully.

Placide and Ephraim Adams: The True 5th New Hampshire Story

April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Father and Son in the Union Army: This image does not show Placide and Ephraim Adams, but I thought it might help readers imagine what the age difference between the two looked like.

In my last post, I told a story involving Placide Adams and his two sons, Benjamin and Ephraim. I couldn’t resolve a mystery that involved Placide and Ephraim, and I made some incorrect speculations. This post serves as an extended correction of the sort you’d see in a newspaper—except it’s much longer.

Below, I’ll relate an abbreviated version of the narrative I wrote in my last post (to spare you the chore of flipping back and forth between posts), explain how some kind and generous people loaned me documents that cleared up the story, and recount what really happened—or at least relate a tale that’s much closer to the truth.

I. My Last Post: A Drama, a Mystery, and Uninformed Speculations

My last post began with an anonymous letter that appeared in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette on November 5, 1862. It referred to the story of Placide Adams, a “poor Frenchman” (i.e., French-Canadian) who, along with his adult son, Benjamin, had enlisted in the Union army. To provide for his wife, Placide had left his 15-year-old son, Ephraim, behind. However, prominent men in the neighborhood induced the boy to enlist, and he ended up in the same regiment as his father. Placide begged the colonel of the regiment (Edward Cross) to let the boy go because he was too young and delicate, but that officer would not relent. Having exhausted every remedy, Placide and his son deserted at Middletown during the Maryland Campaign and headed for Canada. The anonymous author of the letter obviously felt for Placide, stating “the intention of the man, the spirit of the act, does not imply desertion, as his heart is in the war.” The letter was signed, “One who sympathizes with this honest Frenchman, as well as with the Northern States.”

This letter caught my eye because desertion from the Union army, for obvious reasons, is an understudied topic. Here I had a tale about a father and son deserting together and receiving support from a letter in one of New Hampshire’s most widely read newspapers. I decided to check that story out.

According to the Census of 1860, the Adamses lived in Canaan, NH, which sits just east of Lebanon, NH. (If you take I-89 to Vermont, Lebanon is the last town you hit before crossing the Connecticut River.) Placide (46), a French-Canadian laborer with an imperfect command of English, headed a family consisting of his wife, Sarah (41), two sons, Benjamin (20) and Ephraim (14), and a daughter, Jane (11). In May 1861, Benjamin enlisted in the 2^nd New Hampshire. In September 1861, Placide walked or rode to Grafton, NH, and enlisted in the 5^th New Hampshire. Less than a year later, on August 14, 1862, Ephraim went to Enfield, NH, and also volunteered for the 5^th New Hampshire. I surmised that one of the people who persuaded Ephraim to enlist was Converse G. Morgan who was then recruiting a company in Enfield for the 11^th New Hampshire. So far the anonymous letter in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette checked out.

Enlistment Forms for Benjamin, Placide, and Ephraim Adams.

The problem with the letter was that I could find no evidence in the Revised Record of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of Rebellion 1861-1866 of Placide or Ephraim’s desertion in Middletown, MD. I speculated that if the desertion occurred there, they must have absconded around September 14, 1862 when the regiment formed part of the Army of the Potomac’s reserve near that town during the Battle of South Mountain.

I surmised there were three possible explanation. First, there was a chance that the Revised Record was wrong. I thought this unlikely. The Revised Record is not infallible, but it usually doesn’t make omissions of this size or sort. Second, the anonymous author had knowingly presented a spurious charge against Edward Cross, the controversial colonel of the 5^th New Hampshire who was notoriously reluctant to let underage soldier go once he had them in his clutches. But this possibility also did not ring true for various reasons. Third, the author of the missive had confused someone else with Placide. I had my reasons for thinking this, too, was implausible.

How did my story end? Benjamin deserted from his regiment in April 1863 to get married in Canaan. He was apprehended in February 1864 and served with the 2^nd New Hampshire until he was mustered out in April 1865. Placide deserted in December 1864 and appears not to have returned. Ephraim, whom Placide was so determined to protect, suffered a bad wound at Cold Harbor in June 1864, and eventually transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps where he finished out the war. I closed my post with a sentimental picture of Placide and Ephraim living together in Canaan (as reported in the Census of 1880). By this point, Placide had only several months left to live.[i]

And there all my speculations stood. Did Placide and Ephraim desert during the Battle of South Mountain in 1862 or not? I didn’t know, but it seemed unlikely. It turned out I was wrong, but in my defense, I wrote that their compiled service records and pension files—both located in Washington, DC—probably had the answer. And so they did.

Census of 1880 entry for “Placid” and Ephraim Adams who were then living in Canaan, NH.

II. Some Really Helpful People

Believe it or not, my blog has followers. And they apparently circulate my posts. Dave Morin, who collects cartes de visite, mainly of New Hampshire Civil War soldiers, sent my post to Paul Levasseur. It so happens Paul is a direct descendent of Placide Adams. Not only that, Paul had copies of documents pertaining to all three Adams men. And on top of everything else, Paul contacted me and expressed a willingness to share these copies with me. I have to ask: was a historian ever so lucky? I think the answer is, simply, no. But I will take a very small slice of credit for this good fortune because I did blog about Placide Adams in the first place.

In any event, Paul had some business at the New Hampshire Historical Society last week, and he left a manila folder full of photocopies for my wife to pick up. That night, I eagerly thumbed through them. They completely changed my picture of what happened.

III. What Really Happened to Placide and Ephraim

Did Placide and Ephraim desert during the Maryland Campaign? The answer is yes. Contrary to what the Revised Register indicates, Placide and Ephraim Adams both deserted on September 14, 1862 while the 5^th New Hampshire rested in reserve during the Battle of South Mountain. This much is clear from the collection of papers that Paul supplied me, which included pension applications, compiled service records, and even official charges of desertion. In both cases, Sergeant George Vose, Sergeant Arthur Perkins, and Corporal Thomas McNabb—all from Company I—served as witnesses to the charge of desertion, which was signed by Captain John W. Bean. Did they actually see the Adamses running away? Or were father and son there one moment and gone the next? I don’t know. What fascinates me is how Placide and Ephraim made their way back to New Hampshire.

Arthur Perkins (left) and John Bean (right): Perkins was cited as a witness in the charge of desertion against Placide and Ephraim Adams. Bean signed the charges. Aged only 17 by the time the Battle of South Mountain occurred, Perkins was not much older than Ephraim. In the image above, he appears as a 1st Sergeant. The likeness of Bean was taken during the winter of 1861-1862 in Matthew Brady’s studio.

They had some time to plan their escape; Ephraim probably reached the regiment about two-and-a-half weeks before they ran off together.[ii] Even so, they had many difficulties to overcome. Canaan was 480 miles away. The Canadian border was another 100. As they walked away from the battlefield, how did they explain their absence from their unit? How did they evade the provost marshal? How did they travel? How did they eat? How did they secure money for this odyssey? How did they find new clothes? When one considers these questions, it seems clear that the Adamses must have been very intrepid or very desperate

There is an irony about their escape worth mentioning, too. Placide had deserted to save his son, but on this long voyage home, he must have depended a great deal on Ephraim. The father was functionally illiterate, and his command of English was limited, so he must have needed his Vermont-born son’s help to navigate their way northward and overcome a variety of difficulties.[iii]

And then there is one last question. How did Ephraim feel about this turn of events? Although “induced” by those of higher status to enlist in Enfield, he had, nonetheless, volunteered of his own free will. What did he think when he showed up to the regiment and his father announced they must desert? Did Ephraim desert willingly? Having had time to reflect on his enlistment, had he begun to experience buyer’s remorse? Or did his father have to convince him to leave? Did Placide need to resort to heavy-handed persuasion? Was the boy ambivalent about deserting?

Whatever the case, it seems likely that Placide and Ephraim reached Canaan before the anonymous letter to the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette appeared in early November 1862. How else would the author have obtained so many details about the Adamses’ plight? It is also possible that Placide and Ephraim were safely ensconced in Canada by this point as well.

For a spell, nothing new that we know of happened to the Adamses. That is until April 8, 1863, when Benjamin Adams, Placide’s older son, deserted from the 2^nd New Hampshire while the regiment remained in Concord to rest and recruit.[iv] The reason is not difficult to find: on April 13, 1863, he married Mary Anne Bannoth in Canaan, NH.[v] One wonders if Ephraim and Placide attended the wedding. Benjamin’s new life of married bliss, however, lasted less than year. He was apprehended at the end of February 1864 and brought back to his regiment in July. He returned to duty without undergoing the ordeal of a court martial, but he was required to forfeit all pay and allowances for the time he missed. He also had to make up the 11 months he had been absent. Eventually, he was discharged (time expired) near Richmond, VA, on April 14, 1865.

Benjamin managed to stay at large much later than his father and brother. Placide and Ephraim appear to have returned to New Hampshire (if they ever left) in 1863. Ephraim was arrested in Keene, NH, (about 60 miles south of his hometown of Canaan) on August 25, 1863, by the provost marshal. Two days later, he reached Concord where he was probably placed in the stockade that surrounded the draft rendezvous. Placide appears to have been arrested at about the same time (his record indicates he was in jail awaiting trial on August 30, 1863). It is probably no accident that the two were captured shortly after a) the regiment returned to New Hampshire to recruit and rest and b) the draft started in the state. It’s possible that Placide was spotted by one of his old army comrades who was on furlough. Or maybe the provost guard, which was much more active in the state now that the draft had been instituted, tracked them down. Maybe it was both.

However it played out, both Placide and Ephraim were dragged back to the regiment. Placide’s court martial did not take place until February 1864. In the meantime, he had re-enlisted in January for another three years. One wonders if he hoped that by doing so, he would inspire the court to deal leniently with him. The charge was serious; since he had left the regiment in the midst of a battle, he had technically deserted “while in front of the enemy.” In the end, the court sentenced him to “forfeit $10.00 per month of his monthly pay during this period of service & to make good the time lost by his absence.” A private’s pay was then $13 per month, soon to be raised to $16 in June 1864, so this punishment left Placide with a pittance. On top of that, he owed the army the 11 months he’d been absent. I don’t know how this was supposed to be figured on top of his re-enlistment. Ephraim’s punishment was somewhat lighter. In September 1863, he was “restored to duty without trial,” but he had to “forfeit all pay and allowances during the time he was absent” and make good the time lost to desertion (meaning he would have to serve until July 1866 or thereabouts). In all likelihood, the court must have decided to give the boy a break since it assumed he had been influenced by his father.

After his court martial, Placide saw little active service. Maybe he was fed up. Maybe age caught up to him. Or maybe he was truly ill. Whatever the case, he was in and out of hospitals for much of 1864—for rheumatism, dyspepsia, and a variety of undiagnosed illnesses. In 1862, he had deserted to protect his son. Now he could not—or would not—protect Ephraim. In December 1864, while staying in Campbell Hospital in Washington, DC, Placide Adams walked off the grounds and never returned to the 5^th New Hampshire.

Alfred Waud, “7th N.Y. Heavy Arty. in Barlows charge nr. Cold Harbor Friday June 3rd, 1864” (1864) (detail): Fighting alongside one another, the 5th New Hampshire and the 7th New York Heavy Artillery, were the only two federal infantry units to crack the Confederate line during the Battle of Cold Harbor. It’s not clear when Ephraim was wounded during the bitter fighting that took place during this battle.

In the meantime, though, Ephraim’s strange military career reached a sudden and terrifying climax. Although he had originally volunteered in August 1862, he had seen no combat whatsoever. Indeed, almost all of his active service had taken place at the POW camp on Point Lookout, MD, where the 5^th New Hampshire had guarded rebel prisoners between November 1863 and May 1864. In June 1864, however, it was time for the regiment to join the Overland Campaign in Virginia which had turned into a great, bloody slogging match. At some point during the 5^th New Hampshire’s wild and initially successful assault on the Confederate position at Cold Harbor (June 3, 1864), Ephraim suffered a grievous wound. As his pension claim states:

He received a gun shot wound from the enemy; that the ball passed through the left arm upon the under side only a few inches from the shoulder, shattering the bone in its passage, and passed into the chest where it now remains; that the ball in passing through the arm severed mostly the cords [i.e. tendons] of that part of the arm.[vi]

He was immediately transported to Harewood Hospital in Washington, DC, and thence to Cuyler Hospital in Germantown, PA, at which latter place he stayed from mid-June to mid-October 1864. He then transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps where he appears to have served until June 1865. How he managed to do so remains unclear since after being wounded he “was never . . . able to carry a musket and do regular duty.” Not only that, he experienced constant pain from the ball lodged in his chest and was “short breathed.” We should not forget that at this point Ephraim was still only 17.

Harewood Hospital, Washington, DC (1864): This is what the interior of one of the pavilions at Harewood Hospital looked like when Ephraim Adams stayed there.

There are two items worthy of comment regarding Placide and Ephraim’s lives after the war. First, Placide returned to the same neck of the woods in New Hampshire. The Census of 1870 found him in Hanover, NH, working as a “Woodchoper.”[vii] Ten years later, he was back in Canaan where he had lived in 1860.[viii] His choice of towns is interesting. Deserters often steered clear of their hometowns to avoid the opprobrium of their neighbors, but it appears that folks in this area bore Placide no grudge.

Second, Ephraim was badly disabled, but he did the best he could to pick up the pieces and live a normal life. At the end of the war, his left arm was “very weak & of little to no use for labor,” and he was “unable to lift anything of weight with it.” Later in life, one of the affidavits in his pension file vouched that Ephraim was unable to perform “any manual professional or skilled labor whatever.” The List of Pensioners on the Roll (1883) indicates the extent of his disability: Ephraim received $18 per month, not as much as amputees or those suffering from paralysis, but more than just about everyone else.[ix] Yet he got married in 1870 (he was still only 23) to Lucina Philomena Roberts and eventually had nine children with her. Census records describe him variously as a “mechanic” (1870)[x] (he appears to have worked as a carpenter, although how he managed with one arm is unclear) and a “farmer” (1880).[xi] Eventually, he obtained a job as a mail clerk and spent his last days in White River Junction, VT, where he died in 1909.[xii]

The Census of 1880 found Placide and Ephraim living together in the same house in Canaan. Perhaps the old man and his disabled son sought to pool their resources. Or maybe they enjoyed each other’s company. Around the time of the census that year (June), the good people of Canaan might have seen them ambling together through town, the father shuffling along, and next to him, walking slowly, the son, his left arm dangling uselessly at his side. Placide had only five months left to live. Together, they may have reflected on the ironies of their Civil War service. Neither overage Placide nor underage Ephraim had any business being in the army, and yet, there they had been together. The father had attempted to preserve the son from harm by deserting—only to land both of them in hot water. Despite the desertion, the people of Canaan seem to have sympathized with Placide’s motives. And then Ephraim had confounded all his father’s calculations by suffering a disabling injury. To quote Aesop’s fable of “The One-Eyed Doe,” “You cannot escape your fate.”

IV. Why This Story Matters

I hope you found this narrative interesting. But some of you may wonder why this story matters.

For obvious reasons, desertion is understudied, so any anecdote that allows us to penetrate the minds of deserters is helpful. I’m going to guess that when it comes to deserting, to quote Octave in The Rules of the Game, “Everyone has their reasons.” And Placide clearly had his reasons.

While the army sought to create a culture that laid down clear expectations about behavior that were supposed to be internalized by soldiers and sustained by discipline, the rank and file often clung to its own ideas, values, and aspirations. In this story, Placide countered the army’s demands with his own sense of rectitude. And others recognized the righteousness of his position—including the anonymous letter writer in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette and even the general court martial at Point Lookout which appears to have gone easy on him. Surely, the ages of he and his son were a consideration. But one cannot overlook another important, obvious consideration. Both Benjamin and Placide appear not to have deserted because of cowardice or politics, but because of their commitment to family. We often think of Southerners deserting because of the difficulties their kin faced on the home front, but Northerners, albeit under different circumstances, could leave the army for similar reasons. Clearly, for the Adamses, family came first. And when it comes especially to Placide, who can blame him?

[i] For citations from the original post go here.

[ii] Colonel Edward Cross returned to the regiment on August 23, 1862 after convalescing in New Hampshire from a gunshot wound to the thigh he received at Fair Oaks. Ephraim reached Concord only a couple of days after Cross left that town, so I assume the young soldier must have reached the regiment shortly after Cross.

[iii] While Placide Adams managed to sign his name on his enlistment form, the Census of 1880 indicated that he could neither read nor write.

[iv] See Martin A. Haynes, A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, in the War of the Rebellion (Lakeport, NH: 1896), pp. 154-157; Martin A. Haynes, History of the Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers; Its Camps, Marches, and Battles (Manchester, NH: Charles F. Livingston, 1865), 129-131

[v] “New Hampshire Marriage Records, 1637-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FL6J-FKM : 26 September 2017), Benjamin W. Adams and Mary Anne Bannoth, 13 Apr 1863; citing Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,120.

[vi] The full narrative in his claim reads as follows: “In the battle at Cold Harbor Va. he received a gun shot wound from the enemy; that the ball passed through the left arm upon the under side only a few inches from the shoulder, shattering the bone in its passage, and passed into the chest where it now remains; that the ball in passing through the arm severed mostly the cords of that part of the arm; that he was immediately after receiving said wound sent to Harewood Hospital Washington DC. from which he was transferred to Cuyler Hospital, Germantown, PA. on or about the 13th of June Ad. 1864, where he remained until about the 17th day of October Ad. 1864 and was transferred to the Veteran reserve Corps in Oct. 1864 and to Co “I” 7th Reg of said Corps on or about Dec. 29th 1864—that said wound was received in said Battle on or about the 3d day of June, Ad. 1864 and he was never afterwards able to carry a musket and do regular duty thereafter; that his left arm is now very weak & of little or no use for labor; that he is unable to lift anything of weight with it; that [he] is about powerless; that there is constant pain in his left side in the region of the ball; that he cannot do any thing that hurries breathing; that he is short breathed and unable to exercise much.”

[vii] “United States Census, 1870”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH56-RLY : 29 May 2021), Placid Adams, 1870.

[viii] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHRV-GH3 : 14 January 2022), Placid Adams in household of Ephraim Adams, Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States; citing enumeration district , sheet , NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm .

[ix] List of Pensioners on the Roll, January 1, 1883, vol. 1, 187. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012962265&view=1up&seq=197&q1=Canaan

[x] “Vermont, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1732-2005,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPQX-H7RC : 3 March 2021), Ephraim Adams and Fannie Roberts, 30 Mar 1870; citing Marriage, Hartford, Windsor, Vermont, United States, various town clerks and records divisions, Vermont; FHL microfilm 005486622.

[xi] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHRV-GH9 : 14 January 2022), Ephraim Adams, Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States; citing enumeration district , sheet , NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm .

[xii] “United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MMPC-3VY : accessed 15 April 2023), Ephraim Adams, Hartford town, north side, Windsor, Vermont, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 273, sheet 12A, family 272, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,241,696. See also his obituary that appears here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/190944618/ephraim-adams

That Time that Placide and Ephraim Adams Deserted–or Didn’t

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Enlistment Form for Benjamin Adams (May 1861): The dispersal of the French-Canadian Adams family began in May 1861 when Benjamin Adams enlisted in the 2nd New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry.

On page three of the November 5, 1862 issue of the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, one of the state’s leading papers, appeared a curious, anonymous letter. The author referred the paper to the case of Placide Adams. A “Frenchman [sic] with a very imperfect knowledge of the American language, he had acquired a taste for American institutions, and with patriotic zeal” enlisted in the 5^th New Hampshire. His adult son had enlisted in the Federal army as well. Adams “had left, to care for and provide for his wife in his absence, his younger son, a mere boy of the age of fifteen.” Unfortunately, “men in higher position than this poor Frenchman induced this boy to follow the fortunes of the father, and the Colonel of the Regiment received him against the rights and protest of the father.” The colonel—Edward E. Cross—had refused to release the son. “That boy,” the writer continued, “had not the just chance of the soldier to live if not shot, since his tender years and the hardships of army life would ensure disease.” Adams apparently begged Cross to release the son and declared that if the colonel did so, Adams would remain in the regiment “and fight all the battles of his country till peace should be declared.” Cross was unyielding, and so Adams deserted with his son at “Middletown” and brought the boy back to Canada. The anonymous author wrote of Adams that “the intention of the man, the spirit of the act, does not imply desertion, as his heart is in the war.” The letter was signed, “One who sympathizes with this honest Frenchman, as well as with the Northern States.”

What are we to make of this story, and is it supported by any evidence?

Enlistment Form for Placide Adams (September 1861): Was this “poor Frenchman” inspired by “patriotic zeal” or three squares and $13 per month? We will probably never know, but many older men (Adams lied about his age on this form–he was actually 46) were inspired to enlist because of financial insecurity.

According to www.findagrave.com, Placide Adams appears to have been born on November 4, 1814 in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, which sits on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River, between Quebec and Trois Rivières.[1] At some point, Adams moved to Vermont where his two sons were born. The Census of 1860 found “Placey Adames,” then aged 43, in Canaan, NH. He was described as a “laborer” with $200 in real estate and some small (but illegible) amount of personal property. His household consisted of his wife Sarah (41), his son Benjamin (20), another son Ephraim (14), and a daughter Jane (11).[2] With the outbreak of the secession crisis, this household was soon broken up. On May 20, 1861, Benjamin (also described as a “laborer” in his enlistment papers) joined Company I of the 2^nd New Hampshire.[3] He was mustered in on June 7, 1861.[4] Four months later, on September 12, 1861, Placide traveled to Grafton, NH, and volunteered for Company I of the 5^th New Hampshire; he was mustered in the next month.[5]

Enlistment Forms for Ephraim Adams (August 1862): Ephraim Adams’ form was signed by “C. G. Morgan” (see lefthand image) who, I presume, was Converse Goodhue Morgan (1827-1880), a prosperous merchant in Enfield, NH, then recruiting a company for the 11th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. The “A. H. Robinson” who signed as examining surgeon (see righthand image) was most likely Abraham H. Robinson (1812-1898), a well-to-do physician in Concord, NH. Of especial interest to fans of the 5th New Hampshire is the witness who signed the lefthand page (the signature appears sideways): Milo M. Ransom. A Baptist minister from Lisbon, NH, Ransom (1834-1912) had enlisted in the 5th New Hampshire just two days before so he could assume his duties as the regiment’s second chaplain (the first chapain, Elijah Wilkins, also of Lisbon, having resigned in June 1862). In Days and Events, Thomas Livermore remembered Ransom as a “little, puling fellow”, but the minister may have been instrumental in ensuring that Ephraim ended up in the 5th New Hampshire with his father.

Ephraim did not remain at home long “to care for and provide for” his mother. On August 14, 1862, he enlisted in Enfield, NH, claiming he was 18 (when he was, at most, 16).[6] The man who best fits the role of somebody in a “higher position” who enticed or pressured young Ephraim to volunteer was Converse G. Morgan (Ephraim’s enlistment papers appear to bear the signature of a “C. G. Morgan”). Morgan was a prosperous Enfield merchant who was then raising what became Company H of the 11th New Hampshire.[7] A plurality of his company eventually came from Enfield with Lyme and Canaan also producing substantial numbers of men. For the sake of filling up his company, Morgan probably applied the hard sell to Ephraim.[8] The young man did enlist but somehow escaped Morgan’s clutches and ended up in the 5^th New Hampshire. How Ephraim managed this feat remains unclear. Perhaps he made service by his father’s side father a condition of his enlistment. Whatever the case, Morgan and Ephraim went their separate ways with the latter, in some respects, having a better war (for Morgan’s fate, see this endnote).[9]

Converse G. Morgan (1827-1880): Could this be the man in a “higher position” who talked young Ephraim Adams into volunteering? At this great distance in time, we can’t know for sure, but he seems a likely candidate. The 1860 Census describes him as a “Merchant” in Enfield, NH, with $2500 in real estate and $2500 in personal estate. At the time that Ephraim Adams volunteered, Morgan was recruiting a company for the 11th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. Morgan’s military career was cut short by dismissal for deserting his post while on picket duty in 1863. For further details, see endnote 9.

Ephraim soon found himself serving next to his father in Company I.[10] So far, so good. The letter checks out.

The story that the letter relates also seems to fit with what we know about the military situation. The letter claimed that Placide spoke to Cross about his son. Having obtained no satisfaction, the Adamses deserted at “Middletown.” That statement suggests that if some sort of exchange took place between Placide Adams and Colonel Cross, it had to have occurred between late August and September 14, 1862. Why? Cross returned to the regiment from his convalescence in New Hampshire (he had been wounded at the Battle of Fair Oaks) on August 23, and Ephraim reached the 5^th New Hampshire several days after that. September 14 is the very latest the discussion could have occurred because it was on that date the regiment was held in reserve during the Battle of South Mountain (which was often referred to as “Middletown Heights” after Middletown, MD, which lay several miles southeast of the battlefield).[11] Ostensibly, the desertion took place that day.

One can easily understand why Placide Adams would have felt great consternation during these three weeks. His 16-year-old son had reached the regiment at exactly the same time as a military crisis loomed. Returning from the Peninsula, the 5^th New Hampshire disembarked at Alexandria, VA, just as Pope’s Army of Virginia was mauled at the Second Battle of Bull Run. According to Cross’s diary, his regiment covered the retreat of Pope’s broken force. Only days later, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia commenced its invasion of Maryland. With each passing day, it became clear to all that a decisive battle was approaching. Understandably, Adams must have feared for his underage son’s safety and decamping on September 14 would have made sense.

Likewise, military developments would have rendered Cross unsympathetic to Adams’s pleas. The 5^th New Hampshire had suffered very heavily on the Peninsula. Cross had brought “900 officers & men” to Ship Point, VA, in early April 1862. By late August 1862, when the regiment returned to Alexandria, VA, it numbered only “three hundred and fifteen men fit for duty.” While quite a few had been killed in action, died of disease, or obtained discharges, a large number were in the hospital with a variety of ailments. While convalescing in New Hampshire, Cross had mistakenly believed he would be given 350 new recruits to fill his depleted ranks. He must have been disappointed to obtain just over 60. Moreover, the regiment was in poor condition, “weather-beaten, worn out, and ragged.” As he covered Pope’s retreat near Centreville, Cross worried that his soldiers, “greatly worn by long hardships on the Peninsula, had not the strength for such efforts.” Throughout the summer and fall, he would lose even more men to disabled discharges. Like Adams, Cross knew that a big battle was in the offing. Yet, on the morning of the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), Cross could only produce “301 bayonets, and 18 commissioned officers” at roll call. It should come as no surprise that during this period, he would have been in no mood to countenance Adams’ request.

There is one problem with the letter, and it is a very big problem: there is no record in Ayling’s Revised Register of either Ephraim or Placide deserting in the fall of 1862. One person who did desert some months later, though, was Benjamin Adams, who left the 2^nd New Hampshire. According to Ayling’s Revised Register, Benjamin deserted on April 8, 1863 in Concord, NH where the regiment had been camped since early March.[12] The reason is not difficult to find: on April 13, 1863, he married Mary Anne Bannoth in Canaan, NH.[13] His new life of married bliss, however, lasted less than year. He was apprehended at the end of February 1864 and brought back to his regiment. Eventually, he was discharged (time expired) near Richmond, VA, on April 14, 1865.

Placide eventually did desert, but not until much later: December 6, 1864. He was in Washington, DC, at the time, perhaps recovering from an illness in a hospital. He probably left in the company of Paul Pontin, a 29-year-old substitute from France recently transferred into Company I who is also listed as having deserted from Washington, DC, on the same day as well.

And what of Ephraim Adams? He was wounded at Cold Harbor, VA, on June 3, 1864 and transferred to the 2^nd Company, 2^nd Battalion of the Veteran Reserve Corps in October of that year. He bounced around between several Veteran Reserve Corps units before being discharged on June 22, 1865 in Washington, DC. And so, “that boy” who “had not the just chance of the soldier to live if not shot” avoided death by illness and survived a serious combat wound. One can’t help but wonder if Placide decided to run off now that there was no need to protect his son who was now safely ensconced in the Veteran Reserve Corps.

The letter in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette, then, does not agree with Ayling’s Revised Register. What happened? There are three possibilities.

The first is that Ayling’s Revised Register is incorrect and Placide along with Ephraim deserted before the Battle of Antietam, returning at some point later. Admittedly, this explanation seems unlikely. Ayling’s Revised Register is fallible but could it have omitted both the desertion and the return (or apprehension) of the two men? Moreover, if Placide left the regiment to save his son, why would he return with that son some time later to continue their military service?

The second possibility is that the anonymous author knowingly presented a spurious charge against Cross. This answer is not terribly satisfying either. Why would somebody make such a charge in one of the state’s leading papers when it could be disproven so easily? (A great mass of correspondence passed between the regiment and New Hampshire the throughout the war.) This letter, though, may indicate something about Cross’s reputation in New Hampshire. In February 1862, Cross had released an underage soldier (Oratus Verry) from the regiment with the greatest ill-grace only after Thomas Edwards, New Hampshire’s congressman from the 3^rd District, had intervened in the matter. Cross wrote an acerbic letter to the congressman that excoriated him for his interference. The letter ended up in the New Hampshire papers and elicited critical comments from a number of editors. Perhaps the author of the letter in the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette drew inspiration from this incident when depicting Cross.

The third possibility might be that the writer of the letter was confused. It turns out that on August 30, 1862, while the 5^th New Hampshire marched in the rain toward Centreville, VA, just as the Second Battle of Bull Run was ending, two soldiers deserted from the regiment: Frederick Flury and Enos B. Nevers. Both men belonged to Company I where Placide and Ephraim also served. Flury, like Placide Adams, was from Canaan, NH. Not only that, but Flury was also a French-Canadian; he had been born in Trois Rivières, about 25 miles southwest of Placide Adams’s birthplace. Is it possible that the anonymous author of the letter to the New Hampshire Patriot & State Gazette somehow knew of Placide Adams’s distress regarding Ephraim and then, upon hearing of the desertion, mistook Flury, another French-Canadian from Company I, for the elder Adams? There are problems with this solution. Aside from the fact that such a mistake would have been a big one, the author identified “Middletown” as the scene of the desertion. This could only mean Middletown, MD, and as we have already seen, that would place the date of the desertion around September 14. Only one man deserted at roughly this time: Cpl. Charles H. Bartlett of Company D who hailed from Milan, NH (on September 15, 1862). Since no location for his desertion is given in Ayling’s Revised Register, we can’t even be sure he was with the regiment at the time; had he been ill, he could just as easily have deserted from a hospital elsewhere. Clearly, though, there was no mistaking Bartlett for Adams.

To get to the bottom of the matter, one would have to survey documents concerning Placide and Ephraim Adams that are stored at the National Archive. These would include Placide and Ephraim Adams’s compiled service records (CMSR) or their pension files. The “record of events” for Company I of the 5^th New Hampshire would also shed some light on what happened. Frederick Flury is a person of interest too. He has proven especially elusive. On his enlistment form, he gave Canaan, NH as his residence, but the Census of 1860 did not find him at this location.[14] His post-war career has been difficult to trace; like many deserters, he probably stayed away from his pre-war residence.

Placide Adams, on the other hand, returned to his old stomping grounds after the war. If the letter indicated anything, it was sympathy for the “honest Frenchman,” and perhaps the people of Canaan bore him no grudge. The Census of 1870 located him and his wife (Sarah) in Hanover, NH, where he was described as a “Woodchoper.” By June 1880, when the next census took place, he had moved back to Canaan, NH, (now a “Farmer”) along with his wife. He lived next door to Ephraim who was married to Lucina Adams and had three children: Placide, John, and Esther. Placide only had five months left to live. Perhaps, even in those days, Placide and Ephraim reminisced about that terrible time in September 1862 when the father had feared for the son and led the boy out of the army—or did not.

[1] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/124805117/placide-adams I have not been able to substantiate this information elsewhere. Ayling’s Revised Register lists Placide’s birthplace as “Canada East, St. Anne’s.”

[2] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-DGH : 14 December 2017), Ephraim Adames in entry for Placey Adames, 1860., Mauricie Region, Quebec, Canada.

[3] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-BD1X : accessed 20 September 2018), Benjamin Adams, 20 May 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,257,028.

[4] Ayling’s Revised Register, p. 29.

[5] Alying’s Revised Register. See also “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-Y89F : accessed 20 September 2018), Placide Adam, 12 Sep 1861; citing Grafton, Grafton, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,640.

[6] The part of the enlistment form requiring parental consent for a minor was left unfilled. “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YKS4 : accessed 20 September 2018), Ephraim Adams, 14 Aug 1862; citing Enfield, Enfield, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,642.

[7] See Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry in the Rebellion War, 1861-1865 (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1891), 10-11.

[8] See Leander W. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry in the Rebellion War, 1861-1865 (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1891), 10-11.

[9] According to the 11^th New Hampshire’s official history, in April 1863, Morgan was on picket duty outside of Mount Sterling, KY, when he, along with several soldiers, stopped by a house to find some food. It so happened, that General Edward Ferrero, the brigade commander (yes, that Ferrero, the one who sat in a bomb proof drinking while his division was shot to pieces during the Battle of the Crater), was at the home “in conversation with the ladies of the house.” Ferrero accused Morgan of deserting his post and recommended the captain’s dismissal from the service. Apparently, this was not Morgan’s first such infraction, and he was indeed dismissed. He found a job as a clerk in the Paymaster-General’s Office in Washington, DC, but he did not take the dismissal lying down. In 1867, he somehow managed to get it reversed and was retroactively given an honorable discharge dating to the date of his dismissal. He then quit his job at the Paymaster-General’s Office and returned to Enfield, his custom somewhat diminished and his health poor. He died in 1880. Cogswell, A History of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, 244-246.

[10] Out of the 1000-odd men who joined the regiment in the fall of 1861, only about 50 were of Canadian origin, and of this fraction, only a third were French-Canadians (judging from the names). Company I had more than its share of Canadians—about ten men, half of whom may have been French-speakers. These five French-Canadians in Company I did not find life in the regiment congenial; all of them eventually deserted:

Joseph Piney (October 19, 1861)
Frederick Flury (August 30, 1862)
Joseph Sylvester (December 4, 1862)
Joseph Gravelle (March 31, 1864)
Placide Adams (December 6, 1864)

[11] There is a Middletown, VA, but this town sits at northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. The regiment did not visit this area in 1862.

[12] Ayling, p. 29. See also Martin A. Haynes, A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, in the War of the Rebellion (Lakeport, NH: 1896), pp. 154-157.

[13] “New Hampshire Marriage Records, 1637-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FL6J-FKM : 26 September 2017), Benjamin W. Adams and Mary Anne Bannoth, 13 Apr 1863; citing Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,120.

[14] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YZ7C : accessed 22 September 2018), Fredrick Flury, 10 Sep 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire State Archives, Concord; FHL microfilm 2,217,640.

Why the Household Status of Soldiers in the 5th New Hampshire Matters

July 22, 2022 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Jonathan C. S. Twitchell (1834-1910): When he enlisted in 1861, Twitchell was a lumberman and millman living in his father’s household in Drummer, NH. At 27 years old, Twitchell was a bit older than most volunteers who still lived at home with their parents. But he was also typical in that his father, Ransom Twitchell, a farmer, had amassed an estate of almost $3000; soldiers who still lived with their parents tended to come from wealthier households. Starting out as a private, Twitchell was eventually appointed Captain of Company K in October 1864. This image shows him with the chevrons of a 1st Sergeant. He served with the 5th New Hampshire until the end of the war and was wounded only once (in the right leg). After the war, he married (1866), moved around a bit, and eventually ended up in Stonehouse, VA, where he worked as a grocer. (This carte de visite and the others displayed in this post are courtesy of David Morin.)

You never know where the data you collect will lead you, and the household status of soldiers in the 5^th New Hampshire is a case in point. When I amassed information from the 1860 Census about the people with whom volunteers were living, I never imagined such stark patterns would emerge So, without further ado, let’s go look at the statistics. Yes, I’m afraid there will be lots of numbers in this post.

Varieties of Households

In my pool of 540 soldiers who enlisted in the 5^th New Hampshire in September and October 1861, I found the household status of 423 men by using the Census of 1860. The results are below:

155 lived in households headed by their fathers
141 were the heads of their own households
91 lived in households headed by people unrelated to them.
13 lived in households headed by their mothers
11 lived by themselves in various arrangements
9 lived in households headed by their siblings
1 lived in a Shaker community
1 lived in the town poor house
1 lived with his uncle

All of these situations interest me, and I could find something intriguing to say about all of them, but I’d like to focus on the three most common arrangements because they account for 91% of the men in the regiment.

Soldiers Living in Households Headed by Their Fathers (N=155)

Not surprisingly, this group, on average, was the youngest of the three (20.3 years old). The median age was 19. Like the other two groups I’ll be discussing, this one was relatively evenly distributed among all the 5^th New Hampshire’s companies (although A and F were a bit on the short side).

This graph mirrors the overall profile of the regiment (see here). That surprised me somewhat; I would have thought this group would have been even younger since, after all, it was living at home with parents. What is not surprising is the drop off in numbers at 24; it was usually at this point that young men got married and left home.

This was also the wealthiest of the three groups. If we look at the estates of these men’s fathers, we see that they were relatively well-off (for the total value of the estate, I added personal and real estate as indicated by the Census of 1860).

Farmers dominated among the fathers of these soldiers, making up just over 60% of the group (n=147). The value of most farms fell somewhere between $1500 (which seems to have constituted the minimum for a viable concern) and $4000. The prevalence of skilled labor, white collar workers, professionals, and owners of capital account for the wealth of these men.

Farmer: 89
Laborer/Farm Laborer/Day Laborer: 18
Carpenter: 7
Mechanic: 4
Physician: 3
Lawyer: 3
Trader/Merchant: 2
Marble Worker: 2
Teamster: 2
Cordwainer: 2
Blacksmith: 2
Iron Machinist: 2
Mason: 2
Millwright: 1
Box Maker: 1
Iron Manufacturer: 1
Shoemaker: 1
Painter: 1
Joiner 1:
Crockery and Looking Glass [Manufacturer]: 1
Bridge Builder: 1
Real Estate Broker: 1
Stone Cutter: 1
Miller: 1
Tailor 1:
Bank Cashier: 1

Keep these numbers in mind as you look at the other groups; the contrast is shocking.

Thomas Folsom (1827-1863): Folsom was fairly typical of the heads of household who served in the 5th New Hampshire–he was older, married, a father, and man of small means. Born in Gilmanton, NH, whose population had been shrinking for decades, he married Mary Frothingham in 1850. By the time he enlisted, he had a seven-year-old son named George. According to the Census of 1860, Folsom still lived in Gilmanton, working as a day laborer with an estate that totaled $300. He was shot in the thigh at the Battle of Fair Oaks (June 1861) and mortally wounded at Chancellorsville (May 1863), dying three weeks later.

Soldiers Who Were Heads of Households (N=141)

Without looking at the figures, I would have guessed that this group was relatively young (20s and early 30s) with a little bit up capital saved up. And I would have been way off the mark.

The average age of these men was a stunning 34.4 years old.

51 were in their 20s
55 were in their 30s
24 were in their 40s
11 were in their 50s

Men in their 20s, who were probably the best suited for soldiering, formed just over a third of the group. Moreover, on average, the economic prospects of these heads of household did not look terribly good, especially when you consider they had enjoyed ample time to accumulate capital.

I found the value of the estates of 110 of these men, and they look as follows. (Please compare with the fathers of the men who were still living at home in 1860.)

The occupations of this group make it very clear why it was not as wealthy as the fathers of soldiers still living in their parents’ households.

Shoemaker: 37
Laborer/Farm Laborer/Day Laborer: 36
Farmer: 15
Factory Operative: 5
Machinist: 4
Blacksmith: 4
House Carpenter: 4
Joiner: 3
Tailor: 2
Cordwainer: 2
Brick Mason: 2
Coachman: 1
Stone Mason: 1
Stone Cutter:1
Saw Mill Laborer: 1
House Painter: 2
Shoe Cutter: 1
Booking Agent: 1
Stage Driver: 1
Printer: 1
Clergyman: 1
Railroad Laborer: 1
Music Teacher: 1
Ornamental Painter: 1
Cabinet Maker: 1
Worm Cutter: 1
Tanner: 1
Peddler: 1
Bit and Augur Maker: 1
Basket Maker: 1
Merchant: 1

Like the soldiers still living in their fathers’ households, this group was fairly evenly distributed among all the regiment’s companies (although they were overrepresented somewhat in A, D, G, and especially the band).

A poor man can be just as patriotic as a wealthy one, but in this case, one wonders if the financial motive for enlisting was somewhat stronger with this group. In the fall of 1861, bounties had not even begun to approach their stratospheric 1863 and 1864 levels. However, a number of these men, who must have suffered from the economic downturn associated with the Panic of 1857, may have thought that the prospects of army life, which included “three squares” a day and $13 per month, were attractive. Certainly, something important must have attracted these men. They left behind wives and children, thereby sacrificing a great deal more by leaving home than their younger, unmarried comrades did.

Henry McGann (1843-1919): Born in Bangor, ME, McGann found himself in Cornish, NH, in 1860, living and working on the farm of Nathaniel Pease, whose total estate amounted to about $2300. This was a common pattern among volunteers who lived in a household headed by someone not related to them; more often than not, these men were farm laborers who lived with their employers. McGann’s service record indicates he was a brave soldier. He was wounded three times–at Fair Oaks (June 1862), Fredericksburg (December 1862), and Farmville (April 1865). A pension payment form from 1888 mentions that he suffered from ““G. s. wds. r. knee & face” [gunshot wounds to the right knee and face]. McGann was appointed Sergeant and re-enlisted in 1864, serving until the end of the war. Here, however, he sports the chevrons of a Corporal. Original volunteers like McGann who later became NCOs seem to have been the glue that held the regiment together in the last 18 months of the conflict, when the rank and file consisted mainly of foreign-born substitutes. After the war, McGann appears to have been involved in the lumber industry for some time. He was married at least three–if not four–times. He ended his days at the New Hampshire Soldier’s Home in Tilton, NH.

Soldiers Living in Households Headed by Someone Not Related to Them (N=91)

I feel a little diffident making definitive statements about these men for several reasons. First, it’s not always easy to determine if people living in the same household are not related. Second, since these soldiers were not heads of household, I worry that census takers may have overlooked whatever personal property these men had acquired (only nine are listed as owning any property at all). Third, since it’s not clear who their parents were (as opposed to the soldiers who lived with their parents), it’s impossible to establish their class background.

Since these men did not head their own households, they too were fairly young (average age was 22.2 years old, median age was 20). Their age profile, however, is somewhat different from the soldiers who lived in their fathers’ households. This is largely the case because there are a number of older men who were farm laborers who appear to have lived with their employers who were farmers (more about that later).

The age profile is as follows:

I found occupations for 83 of these men. The distribution of occupations is as follows:

Farm Laborer: 43
Shoemaker: 5
Farmer: 4
Clerk: 4
Cordwainer: 2
Physician: 2
Carpenter: 2
Painter: 2
Glass Bottle Converter: 1
Teacher: 1
Looking Glass Man: 1
Millman: 1
Machinist: 1
Student: 1
Mechanic: 1
Stone Cutter: 1
Sash and Blind Maker: 1
Hostler: 1
Currier’s Apprentice: 1
Weaver: 1
Sawing: 1
Factory Operative: 1
Sailor: 1

Almost all of the laborers appear to have lived with their employers who were farmers. Many of the other men seem to have lived with their employers or boarded with a family for convenience’s sake.

A Final Experiment

For the heck of it, I used a simple measurement to compare the war experience of these three groups. What proportion of them died during the war, and what exactly did they die from? Here’s what I found.

Soldiers Living in Their Father’s Households (n=155):

17 killed in action (11% of total)
5 suffered mortal wounds (3% of total)
21 died of disease (14% of total)

Over a quarter of this group died in the service (28%) with the total evenly split between combat and illness. This was the only group where such was the case; in the others, more men died from combat than disease.

Soldiers Who Were Heads of Household (n=141)

10 killed in action (7%)
10 suffered mortal wounds (7%)
7 died of disease (5%)

Almost a fifth of this group died in the service (19%) with 5% dying of disease and 14% dying in combat. This group suffered an unusually low number of deaths from disease.

Soldiers Living in a Household Headed by Someone Unrelated to Them (n=91)

16 killed in action (21%)
5 suffered mortal wounds (5%)
10 died of disease (11%)

Over a third of this group died in the service (34%) with 11% dying of disease and 26% dying in combat. This group experienced the highest overall mortality, largely because it suffered far more from combat than the other groups.

Each group underwent distinct experiences during the war. Soldiers who were heads of household suffered as much from combat as the soldiers still living in their father’s households but kept their overall mortality down by dying far less frequently from disease. Soldiers living in a household headed by an unrelated person suffered the highest overall mortality largely because over a quarter of them died in combat.

Some of these outcomes seem explainable. For example, it seems possible that the heads of households suffered less from disease because they were older, had been exposed to more illness, and built immunity over the course of their lives.

I don’t know what accounts for some of the other outcomes. Why, for example, were soldiers living in a household headed by someone unrelated to them almost twice twice as likely as other groups to die from combat?

Conclusion

Even though several types of households predominated among our sample, there was a great diversity of living arrangements. But what strikes me even more forcibly, though, is that every almost man, young or old, belonged to a household of one sort or other—either as a member of at its head. The number of men who lived alone in a boarding house or hotel was negligible.

The other fact that makes a great impression on me is that the young men who still lived with their fathers belonged to households that were wealthier than others. Indeed, their fathers seemed like the type of men who hired men from the other two types of households that predominated among the men who volunteered for the 5th New Hampshire.

Without a doubt, New Hampshire had its rich, middling, and poor people, and in return for a wage, some men worked for others. But it seems possible to exaggerate class differences during this period.

What perhaps mitigated these differences was that many owners of property still worked with their hands. Even though they all owned capital, the farmer on his land, the carpenter in his shop, and the blacksmith at his forge lived by the sweat of their brow. Indeed, most of the men who volunteered for the 5^th New Hampshire were unfamiliar with the class relations we associate with modern industrial capitalism. True, by 1861, the factory system had reached New Hampshire, but operatives in the mills of small towns that dotted the countryside still mainly consisted of young women. Moreover, the smattering of iron molders, file cutters, and machinists who joined the 5^th New Hampshire were highly skilled craftsmen who probably did not conceive of themselves as forming part of an urban proletariat.

Since these groups differed substantially in a number of ways (e.g. age, wealth, etc.), it should probably come as no surprise that their experiences of the war differed. At this point, though, I’m not prepared to explain exactly how and why. That’s a topic for another post.

“New Hampshire is a Good State to Emigrate From”: State Demography and the 5th New Hampshire

July 14, 2022 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Jacob Keller (1827-?): Keller emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1855. He settled in Claremont, NH, where he worked on the farm of Charles F. Long, father of Charles H. Long who later commanded Company G of the 5th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. At some point before the war, Keller moved to Boston where he was employed as a machinist. After a brief stint in the 6th Massachusetts Militia Regiment, Keller returned to Claremont, NH, and became the 1st Lieutenant of Company G of the 5th New Hampshire. Keller traveled farther than most to reach Claremont, but he was part of an important demographic trend in New Hampshire at the time. While the population in small, rural towns stagnated as large numbers of folks left the state, people from the New Hampshire countryside, neighboring states, and other countries increasingly migrated to the state’s urban areas.

The Census of 1860 and Demographic Trends in New Hampshire

Why should somebody studying the 5^th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry show any interest in New Hampshire’s demography on the eve of the Civil War?

First, and most important, military units are an expression of the society that produces them, and society is fundamentally influenced by demography. By studying the demographic changes that New Hampshire experienced during the Civil War period, then, I thought I could better understand the background of the men who made up the regiment. Second, by studying this topic, I hoped to learn more about the nature of the strain that the war imposed on the state during and after the conflict.

In looking at the Census of 1860, one is immediately struck by the slow growth of New Hampshire’s population over the previous decade. While the number of people in the United States as a whole had grown by 35.6% during the 1850s (with the white population expanding by 38%), the corresponding figure for New Hampshire was 2.5%. In fact the census specifically pointed out that the only state whose population grew less than New Hampshire over this period was Vermont (0.3%).[i] Other figures that appear in the introduction to the census indicate that New Hampshire bore other hallmarks of a slow-growing state. The birth rate, as calculated by the census, was 2.05%, well below the 2.90% that was the national average for whites in the United States.[ii] Having fallen from 5.55 in 1850 to 4.94 in 1860, the number of people per dwelling in New Hampshire was far below the national average of 5.95 (although I’m not quite sure what exactly that number signifies).[iii] In other categories, New Hampshire did not seem to be a big outlier. New Hampshire’s marriage rate (0.79%) and death rate (1.39 per hundred) did not seem totally out of whack with the rest of the country (0.82% and 1.28 per hundred, respectively).[iv]

Interrogating the figures for the state more deeply does reveal some interesting phenomena. Not surprisingly, New Hampshire was older than the rest of the United States. Some population pyramids comparing the two make this point clear.

Unfortunately, the different scales actually dampen the big differences between the two graphs. What stands out, though, is that proportionally speaking, the United States had more males in the 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, and 30-39 age groups than New Hampshire—while New Hampshire had more males than the United States did in all the older age groups.[v]

At the same time, another outstanding fact is that New Hampshire, proportionately, had more women than the United States did, except in the 0-9 and 10-19 age groups. Moreover, overall, New Hampshire had more females than males (50.9% versus 49.1%), something that was unusual in a country where men outnumbered women (but not unusual in New England where states like Massachusetts also had more women than men).

And yet, in some respects, New Hampshire matched up fairly well with some national averages. For example, 19.5% of New Hampshire’s population consisted of men at “the military ages” (18 to 45)—somewhat above the national average of 17.9%.[vi] One cannot avoid the suspicion, though, that the age distribution within this group tended to skew older in New Hampshire than many other places. It may also have been the case that men on the older end of this range were of dubious value since they were less likely to volunteer or bear the rigors of campaigning. And if that was the case, the proportion of men in New Hampshire who were truly capable of military service was probably smaller than that of other states.[vii]

The proportion of New Hampshire’s population that lived in urban areas was very close to the national average. I define “urban” as an incorporated area with a population of at least 2,500 people. Yes, I know that 2,500 is a small number. And yes, I know that the Census of 1860 did not actually employ any standard for measuring urban areas. However, it is worth pointing out that starting as early as 1880, the census bureau began wrestling with how to define such areas, and it started labeling incorporated areas of 2,500 or more as “urban” in 1910.[viii] So let us use this this measurement and see where it takes us.

By this low standard, New Hampshire only possessed 12 urban areas in 1860 (all figures come from the Census of 1860).[ix]

Manchester 20,068
Concord 10,867
Nashua 10,043
Portsmouth 9,306
Dover 8,487
Somersworth 4,785
Keene 4,317
Claremont 4,009
Rochester 3,833
Exeter 3,265
Gilford 2,809
Sanbornton 2,743

According to these figures, then, 84,532 of the state’s 326,073 people lived in urban areas, or 26%. That is somewhat higher than the percentage for the United States as a whole (20%).[x] While more of its population lived in urban areas than, say, Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire’s average fell far below that of New England as a whole (36%) and its neighbor to the south, Massachusetts (60%). We should also keep in mind that much of New Hampshire’s urban population lived in what were then considered fairly small towns. Only three of them appeared on the list of America’s 100 largest settlements in 1860: Manchester (44^th), Concord (86^th), and Nashua (91^st).

Large towns should be of especial interest to us because they added to their populations far more rapidly than the state as a whole. The three towns listed above grew at astounding rates in the 1850s:

Nashua: 73%
Manchester: 44%
Concord: 27%

These three urban areas far outpaced all other settlements in New Hampshire. The fastest growing county in the state, Coos, which amounted to New Hampshire’s last frontier, grew by only 11% during the 1850s—much slower than these large towns and the national average. Even Hillsborough County, where Nashua and Manchester were located, only grew by 8% as a whole. Clearly, these urban areas were the only parts of the state that experienced high population growth.

Growth in urban areas was generated largely by migration from three sources: people from smaller towns within the state, people from other states, and people from other countries. During this period, Americans were highly mobile, so none of this should surprise us. Migration, however, also explains the stagnation of the state’s rural population. In other words, at the same time that people moved to the state’s largest urban areas, large numbers also left the state. According to the Census of 1860, 382,521 living Americans had been born in New Hampshire but only 256,982 of these people had remained in the state. That means 125,539 people, or almost a third of those born in the state, had left (the most frequent destinations appear to have been Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, and Maine—in other words, all of New Hampshire’s close neighbors). These departures were only partially compensated for by arrivals from other states (48,032) and countries (20,938). The net loss due to migration was 56,569.[xi] The most striking fact that emerges from the census in this context is that New Hampshire had a very low number of foreign-born residents for a free state (6.42% of the population). Among such states, only Maine had a lower proportion (5.96%). Indeed, in this category, New Hampshire’s profile resembled that of the slave states whose percentages ranged from 0.33% in North Carolina to 7.19% in Texas.[xii]

What these figures seem to suggest is that while New Hampshire lost a great deal through emigration, it did not gain quite as much from immigration. Well might Daniel Webster have claimed (and I know the following quote is apocryphal) that “New Hampshire is a good state to emigrate from.”[xiii]

To summarize, New Hampshire was characterized by extremely slow population growth before the Civil War. Low birth rates probably played an important role in this process. At the same time, however, migration not only made a decisive contribution to the state’s demographic stagnation but also determined which parts of the state grew faster than others. A substantial number of folks who grew up in small-town New Hampshire either moved to urban areas or left the state. Immigration from neighboring states and foreign countries also augmented the growth of these urban areas. While large towns grew, small towns’ populations remained stationary. Overall, the number of people in New Hampshire barely grew at all during the 1850s. Immigration from other states and countries could not fully compensate for the number of emigrants who generally headed to nearby parts of New England. What remained was a population that that was older than the national average with a higher proportion of women.

During the war, the Federal government determined the recruitment quota of each state simply by its population. Unlike most other states, New Hampshire had more women than men and was older, on average, so it would have experienced greater difficulty in reaching its recruiting targets. Not only that, death, maiming, and sickness among its young men would have exerted a disproportionate influence.

Demographic Trends and the 5^th New Hampshire: The Importance of Migration

The overall profile of the men who enlisted in the regiment in September and October 1861 fits very nicely with the demographic trends we’ve explored thus far. Of course, the figures varied from company to company, but the regimental-wide averages well reflect what was happening in New Hampshire.

Out of the pool of 540 original volunteers that I studied, 36% (194) lived in 1861 where they’d been born. Considering what I’ve asserted about migration thus far, that might seem like a high figure, but if I had to guess, I’d attribute that number to the youth of the group. Many recruits still lived in their parents’ households, and that often meant living in the town of their birth (almost 59% of the regiment was under the age of 25, and on average, men at the time tended to get married just shy of their mid-twenties).

The numbers reveal that despite the extent of migration and the rapid growth of urban areas, the state was still largely rural. That meant the great majority of original volunteers in the 5^th New Hampshire were from small towns.

31% (160) had been born in the state and resided in the small town that had been their birthplace
20% (106) had been born in the state but found themselves in a different small town than the one in which they’d been born
16% (87) had been born out of state—most frequently in Vermont or Maine—and moved to a small town in New Hampshire
4% (23) of foreign-born recruits moved to a small town in the state

In other words, 57% (216 out of 376) of the recruits living in any given small town in New Hampshire had been born somewhere else.

These figures should remind us that small settlements in New Hampshire witnessed a fair amount of turnover during this period . The degree to which small-town New Hampshire’s population stagnated even as it witnessed this turnover is evident from the following graphs. (As you look at these graphs, keep in mind that the population of the United States grew by about 230% between 1820 and 1860.)

Among the towns from which the 5th New Hampshire was recruited, only the following doubled in size (or more) between 1820 and 1860: Concord, Claremont, Dover, and Littleton (barely).

Twenty-three percent of the pool lived in urban areas (as opposed to 26% of the state’s population as a whole). Urbanites were concentrated in only a few companies: Claremont (Company G), Concord (Company A), and the conurbation that included Portsmouth, Dover, Somersworth, and Rochester (Company D). Company G was the only one in the regiment where the majority of men came from one town. To summarize, a very small group of towns contributed the great majority of men from urban areas, and these men filled just three out of ten companies.

If anything, the picture presented by these men recruited from larger towns is one of movement and dynamism.

8% (41) came from out of state
6% (31) had been born in a small town but moved to an urban area
5% (28) lived in the urban area where they’d been born
4% (21) were foreign born and had immigrated to an urban area (the majority of these were Europeans—French Canadians tended to take up rural occupations)

A closer look at the two urban areas that contributed the most men to the 5^th New Hampshire, however, shows the degree to which migration was really important.

Of the 540 men in the pool, 45 resided in Claremont in 1861. Of these:

only 12 were born in Claremont
8 were born in other New Hampshire towns
19 were born in other states (10 in Vermont, 6 in Massachusetts, 1 in New York, 1 in Connecticut, and 1 in Ohio)
6 were born abroad (3 in Ireland, 1 in England, 1 in Germany, and 1 in Canada)

Of the men in the pool, 36 resided in Concord when they enlisted. Of these:

only 4 were born in Concord
12 were born in other New Hampshire towns (3 of whom were born in urban areas—1 each in Keene, Rochester, and Manchester)
11 were born in other states (7 in Vermont, 2 in New York, 1 in Massachusetts, and 1 in Maine)
10 were born abroad (7 in Ireland, 2 in England, and 1 in Canada)

In both cases, men who had been born in New Hampshire constituted a minority.

Before I end this post, it bears mentioning that all these statistics relating to the 5th New Hampshire’s recruits do not capture one very important group whose migration influenced New Hampshire’s demography: the very large numbers of people fleeing the state. It bears repeating that in 1860, almost a third of the people who’d been born in New Hampshire no longer lived there. Had these people remained in the state, the population would have been almost 40% larger.

Why does all of this discussion of migration matter? We don’t think of New Hampshire as diverse in this period, and in many ways it really wasn’t. The great bulk of the population was white, native-born, and rural. A majority worked the land. But underneath all that, there were important differences.

The state was not static. People moved quite a bit. Even decayed rural towns appear to have witnessed constant turnover—some people left, and others took their places. Folks throughout New Hampshire were frequently brought into contact with people from elsewhere–other towns, other states, and, occasionally, even other countries. And nowhere was this more true than in New Hampshire’s urban areas. Even in Claremont, whose population barely exceeded 4,000, the majority of recruits produced for the 5^th New Hampshire had either been born out of the state or out of the country. This diversity, of course, was not so significant as it was in more economically vibrant states. But it shows that even New Hampshire, for all its slow growth and apparent uniformity, participated in important national trends that shaped the rest of the country.

[i] Census of 1860, v. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[ii] Census of 1860, xxxviii. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[iii] Census of 1860, xxvii. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[iv] Census of 1860, xxxvi. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf; Census of 1860, xli. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[v] Census of 1860, 304-305. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-24.pdf?#

[vi] Census of 1860, xvii. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[vii] It’s important to note here that these proportions (male to female, percentage of military aged men, etc.) were unevenly distributed across the state. In Hillsborough and Strafford Counties, men were only 47% of the population while they constituted 53% of the population in Coos County. Men between the ages of 20 and 40 formed 13% of the population in Carroll and Sullivan Counties where they amounted to 18% of the population in Coos County. Coos then was the fastest-growing, youngest, most male county in New Hampshire—but it also had the smallest and most sparsely settled population.

[viii] https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/geography/urban_and_rural_areas.html; https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/GARM/Ch12GARM.pdf

[ix] Census of 1860, 306-309. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-24.pdf?#

[x] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States#cite_note-main-1

[xi] Census of 1860, xxxiii. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[xii] Census of 1860, xxxi. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf

[xiii] Rev. Stephen G. Abbott, The First Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the Great Rebellion (Keene: Sentinel Printing Company, 1890), 13.

Illiteracy and Low-Level Literacy in the 5th New Hampshire

June 13, 2022June 22, 2022 ~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

Enlistment Form for Isaac P. Rawson (1861): Rawson, who was presumably illiterate, made “his mark” on this enlistment form. Levi Barton, who signed the form as a Justice of the Peace, also witnessed Rawson’s mark. Barton was the father of Ira Barton, who became the Captain of Company E, in which Rawson served. Rawson was only 16 when he enlisted.

It’s possible that I’ve overlooked some books and articles, but a brief search of works on the Civil War indicates that scholars have not spent much time thinking deeply about soldier literacy. A number of historians have trotted out the figure that 90% of Union soldiers were literate and made the argument that the conflict “was fought by the most literate soldiers in history” (to quote James McPherson).[i] Who arrived at this figure and how it was arrived at remain a mystery to me. Just as important, none of these historians has attempted to define just what he or she means by “literacy.”

Among my pool of 540 original volunteers in the 5^th New Hampshire, I found 409 enlistment forms where a volunteer was called upon to sign his name. In only 34 cases were they unable to do so (a percentage of 8.3%). But it appears from many of the signatures I saw that large numbers of men had only the barest familiarity with pen and paper (see below for examples from 5th New Hampshire enlistment forms). And that forcibly brought to mind the following point: literacy exists on a spectrum, and not all volunteers who could sign their names were equally capable of reading and writing. Or to put it another way, many men who could sign their names were probably functionally illiterate.

Albert Eastman

Harvey Perry

Jabez McDuffee

Stephen Maxfield

Walden Cross

That fact raises the question of what the word “literate” means and what the spectrum of literacy looks like. There is no universal standard for what passes as literacy, but the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has defined levels of literacy that have become fairly prevalent. UNESCO has also generated the following definition of literacy:

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society.

The problem with many contemporary definitions is that they are either fairly general or culturally specific. In the former case, they provide very little precision for assessing literacy in the mid-19^th century, and in the latter, they are not applicable. Another problem in studying this topic is that literacy is fluid; a person can either gain or lose it. Joseph B. Quint is a good example of this fluidity. In May 1861, when he enlisted in the 1^st New Hampshire, he could not sign his name. Only four months later, in September 1861, when he volunteered for the 5^th New Hampshire, he could (he was discharged in October, however, on the recommendation of Assistant Surgeon John Bucknam because of a “Lung difaclity” [sic]).[ii]

From left to right: Jacob Quint’s enlistment form for the 1st New Hampshire (May 1861); Quint’s enlistment form for the 5th New Hampshire (September 1861); Quint’s enlistment form for the 9th New Hampshire (June 1862).

Although studying illiterate and semi-literate soldiers is plagued with difficulties, not least of which is locating primary source materials, it seems to me that Civil War historians have treated this topic superficially by assuming that the vast majority of the Union army’s rank and file was simply “literate.”

In the rest of this post, I’d like to launch a brief investigation of the experience of illiterate soldiers by looking at the 34 men in my sample who couldn’t sign their names. As I do so, it makes sense to keep two things in mind. First, the sample size is very small, so we should not leap to any dramatic conclusions about illiterate soldiers. Second, we should also resist the temptation to attribute all the distinctive features of this group to an inability to read and write.

On average, the illiterate men were about almost three years older (27.9 years) than the regiment as a whole. This average, though, conceals a strange distribution: six of the soldiers were underage (under 18) while four of them were overage (over 44). That means the proportion of men who were not of legal age was two times higher among illiterate soldiers than it was in the regiment as a whole. I don’t know what to make of that or if it’s significant, so let’s move on.

I was able to determine the family status of 25 of the 34 men in 1860. Nine were heads of household (plus a single man living with a railroad gang); the rest lived with their parents or in someone else’s household. That’s similar to the rest of the regiment, so nothing to see here.

In seven instances, I found out the occupations of these men’s fathers in 1860. Two were laborers and five were farmers. Not surprisingly, the laborers had no money to speak of, and in every case but one, the farmers possessed very little property, with real estate amounting to $800 or less. So there is, perhaps, some small correlation between illiteracy and poverty (although many sons of laborers and small farmers were literate).

Starting as early as 1880, the census bureau began wrestling with how to define an urban area, and it started labeling incorporated areas of 2,500 or more as “urban” in 1910.[iii] If we apply this standard to the United States in 1860 (yes, I know that’s anachronistic), we find that nine of our illiterate soldiers hailed from urban areas:

Concord, NH (1)
Dover, NH (4)
Claremont, NH (1)
Portsmouth, NH (1)
Lowell, MA (1)
Gilford, NH (1)

That means 26% of the sample came from an urban area. The corresponding figure for the 5^th New Hampshire was 24% and for the state of New Hampshire, 26%. So whether a man lived in town or country seems to have made no difference at all.

In 29 cases, I found what our illiterate soldiers’ occupations were in 1860:

Farm laborer (15)
Day laborer/Laborer (8)
Mule spinner (1)
Railroad laborer (1)
Blacksmith (1)
Carpenter (1)
Shoemaker (1)
Weaver (1)

This list skews toward unskilled manual labor—there aren’t as many shoemakers, carpenters, and farmers on this list as you might expect to find in a random sample of the 5^th New Hampshire. I suppose that should come as no surprise since these men were illiterate.

These men’s reasons for leaving the regiment were not at all out of the ordinary.

19 obtained disabled discharges
3 were transferred to another unit (one to the US Navy, and two to the Invalid Corps/Veterans Reserve Corps)
3 were killed in action (Savage’s Station, Gettysburg, and Deep Bottom)
3 were mustered out (two after three years, one at the end of the war)
2 died of disease
2 deserted
1 was mortally wounded (Gettysburg)
1 has no record of how, when, or why he was discharged

According to Ayling’s Revised Register, these 34 men suffered 18 wounds in combat (which is most certainly an undercount). On average, they served 17 months with the regiment. All of this is par for the course.

I was also able to find out in 30 cases whether these men had married at any point in their lifetime, and 90% did—which, again, is pretty much the same as the rest of the regiment. It’s worth noting here that several men who never married died in the service while still in their twenties.

In 21 cases, I was able to figure the highest occupation that these men attained over the course of their lifetime:

Farmer (6)
Carpenter (4)
Laborer (4)
Soldier (1)
Blacksmith (1)
Farm laborer (1)
Railroad brakeman (1)
Peddler (1)
Mechanic (1)
Shoemaker (1)

When compared to the attainments of other veterans of the 5^th New Hampshire, this list is not terribly impressive, but for men who mainly started in unskilled work and could not read, it’s not bad. And one wonders if some of these men eventually picked up literacy over the span of their lives.

The average lifespan of this group was surprisingly high: 69 years. This figure compares very well with the regiment as a whole. Six men lived into their 70s, seven died as octogenarians, and one made it well into his 90s.

Thus far—and inasmuch as numbers can tell us—it appears that on paper (for numbers reveal little about the qualitative experience of illiteracy), illiterate soldiers in this pool resembled their more educated comrades. The one exception seems to be that as young men, they had a tendency to work in unskilled occupations. Their general lack of job skills and their illiteracy may have conspired to prevent them from rising as far as their better read comrades.

But there is one area where the experiences of men who could not read or write contrasted dramatically with the rest of the regiment. Not a single illiterate man in the group attained noncommissioned rank (let alone a lieutenancy or captaincy). When my group of 34 men were mustered in, 33 entered the army as privates and one as a musician. All of them left the army holding the same rank with which they had entered. This situation calls to mind an anecdote that Thomas Livermore relates about Corporal Daniel Harrington in Days and Events:

He was a tall, straight, rosy-cheeked Irishman, a model soldier and as clean as could be, but could not write. He had been made a corporal for soldierly conduct, and I had taken him as a bunkmate, he being a willing helper about my duties and a good comrade. His ambition for promotion was excited by his corporal’s chevrons, and I recollect that one night when we lay in bivouac, our blankets rolled around us, and the stars twinkling in our faces, he roused me with “Orderly!” “What?” “Did ye iver know a sarjint that could n’t write.'”‘ “Yes, corporal”; and with a word or two of encouragement I went to sleep.[iv]

According to Ayling’s Revised Register, Harrington became a corporal in April 1862. Wounded at Fair Oaks in June 1862, he was discharged disabled in August that year. He re-enlisted in the 5^th New Hampshire in April 1864 and was wounded again at Cold Harbor in June. He later transferred to the Veterans Reserve Corps in October 1864. And he never obtained his sergeant’s stripes.[v]

Daniel Harrington’s Enlistment Form (1861)

Harrington’s experience seems to be the exception to the rule; illiterate men were usually not promoted to corporal. They couldn’t keep the books, call roll, or read written orders. But the stigma went beyond that. Northerners, particularly New Englanders, saw literacy as a badge of their superior civilization. For that reason, they must have found illiterate soldiers embarrassing because these men had somehow “let the side down.”

Livermore’s reassurances to the contrary (it cost him nothing to issue them), Harrington clearly understood that his inability to write was a bar to further promotion. Moreover, as a poor Irishman, a laborer, and an illiterate, Harrington must have instinctively realized that he suffered from a mid-19^th century intersectionality that served as an obstacle to his ambitions. All of these markers could not be hidden—including his illiteracy, which necessitated the calling of a witness when Harrington made his mark on an enlistment form.[vi] But it would be his inability to write that served as the primary excuse for not promoting him.

In any event, it appears that one big difference between men who could read and write and those who couldn’t was that the latter had very little hope of receiving a promotion. But bringing this post back full circle, what about the men who could sign their names but possessed subpar reading and writing skills? Did they, too, experience difficulty in earning promotion? In other words, did widespread low-level literacy (as opposed to illiteracy) disqualify large numbers of men from noncommissioned rank in the Union army during the Civil War?

[i] See Christopher Hager, “The Literate War/The Literacy War” Mississippi Quarterly 70:4 (January 2017), 411.

[ii] Quint eventually found his way into the 9^th New Hampshire. He died of disease in April 1863 at Point Lookout, MD. “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-BHQQ : 16 March 2018), Joseph B Quint, 21 May 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,257,028.; “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YNRZ : 16 March 2018), Joseph B Quint, 14 Sep 1861; citing Grafton, Grafton, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,217,641.; “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YNBY : 16 March 2018), Joseph B Quint, 14 Sep 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,217,641.; “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-Y2P7 : 16 March 2018), Joseph B Quint, 30 Jun 1862; citing Grafton, Grafton, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,217,660.

[iii] https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/geography/urban_and_rural_areas.html; https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/GARM/Ch12GARM.pdf

[iv] Thomas Livermore, Days and Events 1860-1866 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920) 54.

[v] Augustus D. Ayling, Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1866 (Concord: Ira C. Evans, Public Printer, 1895), 239,

[vi] “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YD6Z : 16 March 2018), Daniel Harrington, 01 Oct 1861; citing New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,217,641.