Category: Recruitment

Meet Your Local Civil War Draft Board!

~ 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 5th 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, 2nd 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, 1st 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 (3rd 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, 2nd District) had read law in Senator Daniel Clark’s Manchester office back in the mid-1850s. Nathaniel Wiggin’s (Provost Marshal, 1st 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, 3rd 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, 2nd 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, 1st 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 1st Maine Light Artillery and as a captain in a locally raised company of the 1st 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, 2nd 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, 1st District) appears to have left of his own volition because he managed to secure a lieutenant colonelcy in the 2nd 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, 1st 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, 2nd 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, 2nd 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, 2nd 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 1st division, VI Corps during the Peninsula campaign) speaks, perhaps, to his administrative acumen.[xii] Chester Pike (Provost Marshal, 3rd 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, 1st District), Samuel Upton (Commissioner, 2nd District), and Francis Faulkner (Commissioner, 3rd 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, 1st District), Tilton (Commissioner, 2nd District), and Hall (Provost Marshal, 1st 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, 2nd 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, 3rd 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-19th-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, 2nd 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, 1st 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, 2nd 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, 3rd 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, 1st 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, 2nd 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

~ 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 5th 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 5th 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 5th 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 19th-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?

~ 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 5th 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.

Recruitment Patterns of the 5th New Hampshire

~ hdubrull ~ 1 Comment

Benjamin Morse’s Enlistment Form (1861): Morse was a 24-year-old weaver living in Concord, NH when he enlisted on September 1, 1861. Edward Sturtevant, who recruited Morse, signed the form in the bottom right-hand corner. Sturtevant, who was working as a police constable in Concord at the time, recruited just under 70% of the men in Company A (half of whom came from Concord). He became the captain of this company, and Morse served in it until he was badly wounded at Antietam. Morse was variously reported as having had his left leg or foot amputated. After the war, he returned to Concord and worked as a machinist before becoming a barber. He died in 1898.

As I explained in my last post, I recently finished collecting biographical information on 540 of the 1000 or so original volunteers who enlisted in the regiment in September and October 1861. I can’t thank Madison Lessard ’22 and Connor O’Neill ’22 enough for helping me with this data collection.

In 400 cases, I found the names of recruiting officers on volunteers’ enlistment forms. In all, I discovered the names of 50 different recruiters, and in most instances, I managed to identify them. I used this information to map the recruiting grounds of each company in the regiment. The resulting Google Earth maps are really cool and very informative. I’ve incorporated these maps into a video of a PowerPoint presentation (with a dramatic voice over) that you can watch here. I’ve included a number of photos as well, so it should be a relatively painless 33 minutes.

Thanks for reading and watching!

How Was the 5th New Hampshire Recruited and Officered?

~ hdubrull ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve researched the 5th New Hampshire, one question has bothered me for quite some time: how exactly was the regiment raised and officered in 1861? And what might the way in which officers were chosen tell us about Colonel Edward E. Cross’s relationship with his company commanders?

To my knowledge, nobody has written a dedicated work on the raising of the Federal armies in 1861. In all likelihood, that’s probably because the way regiments were enlisted and organized varied from place to place. At the same time, existing works on the 5th New Hampshire are not entirely clear on how the recruiters were chosen or why some and not others became officers in the regiment.

It was for this reason that when I compiled my spreadsheet on the “400,” I created a field that listed the recruiter who enlisted each volunteer (an officer’s name appeared on the enlistment form for every recruit). I noted that in the case of some companies a large number of men had participated in their recruitment but many of them had not become officers. Indeed, quite a few had not even served in the regiment. Why were some men chosen and others not?

Let’s start with the macro question: how were Northern regiments “typically” raised in 1861? In his classic, The Life of Billy Yank, Bell I. Wiley wrote:

The lead in forming units was usually taken by men who aspired to be officers. Often governors promised colonelcies to prominent citizens who would raise regiments, and the prospective colonels in turn offered captaincies to friends on condition that they recruit the minimum number required for a company. In some cases the impetus came from the other direction, with would-be officers signing up men and then using the lists as claims for commissions.[i]

Andrew S. Bledsoe’s Citizen Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Office Corps in the American Civil War, a much more recent work, emphasizes the degree to which “the overwhelming majority of company-grade officers on both sides, whether elected, promoted, or appointed, were selected from within their own company’s ranks.”[ii] Bledsoe, however, tends to stress the election of junior officers by their companies.[iii] The War for the Common Soldier, by Peter S. Carmichael, now the Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, highlights the extent to which “enlisted men served under familiar and respected figures of authority.” These included the “lawyer in town, the neighboring planter, and the local businessman” who “usually organized companies.”[iv] These observations all provide some purchase on the question in general, but no real details on how a regiment was actually raised.

The foregoing brings us to how the 5th New Hampshire was recruited. In My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross & the Fighting Fifth, Mike Pride and Mark Travis write that the “Fifth was recruited from across New Hampshire, its ten companies roughly corresponding to the state’s ten counties.” The next sentence states that “the Fifth’s company captains were prominent men in their communities” before providing biographical details about some of these company commanders.[v] But who did the recruiting, how were the captains selected, and what was the relationship between the two? On the next page the reader learns that due to the political pull of his father, Ira Barton recruited part of a company for the 1st New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry and became a captain in that three-month regiment. Barton did the same thing with regard to the 5th New Hampshire. However, the language is somewhat elliptical in this passage, and the use of the passive voice makes it unclear how events transpired. How exactly did Barton’s father get permission for Barton to raise a company? Did Barton undertake to recruit a company on the understanding that he would be made a company commander? Did he become a company commander because he recruited the men? Who exactly made these decisions? In what order did all of this happen?

In the next paragraph, Pride and Travis discuss the man who eventually became Captain of Company G: “State authorities named Charles Long as captain to recruit for the Fifth in Claremont.” Again, the language is a little unclear. Was he made a company commander before he started recruiting for the 5th New Hampshire or after? Or was “captain” a rank he held solely as a recruiting officer? And who were the state authorities referred to? Was it the executive council? The state adjutant general’s office? Pride and Travis do point out that Cross picked his captains, but how or when this selection occurred (or on what basis) remains unclear.

Nathaniel S. Berry, a staunch supporter of the Lincoln administration, was the Governor of New Hampshire from 1861 to 1863. (Image courtesy of David Morin.)

Robert Grandchamp’s Colonel Edward E. Cross, New Hampshire Fighting Fifth goes into somewhat more detail, but it doesn’t entirely spell everything out. Grandchamp states that “in each of the state’s ten counties, men who were interested in becoming officers in the new regiment began the process of recruiting their neighbors and enlisting them to serve three years in the army.” Grandchamp does not specify who empowered these men to recruit or how they were chosen. He goes on to point out, however, that “not all the men who recruited soldiers for the Fifth received commissions.” According to Grandchamp, Colonel Cross ultimately selected those who received a commission in regiment, but, again, how or when this happened is not clear. However, Grandchamp adds that Governor Nathaniel Berry “saddled” Cross with officers like Elijah W. Johnson and Ira Barton “who proved to be incompetent and worthless.” At the same time, Cross did not obtain Lieutenant Edward J. Conner (an 1857 graduate from West Point who hailed from Exeter, NH) then serving on the frontier with the regular army, as his lieutenant colonel: “the appointment instead went to Samuel Langley, the sickly adjutant of the Second New Hampshire.” (It appears that the Commanding General of the U.S. Army, Winfield Scott, was extremely reluctant to release officers from the regular army to lead volunteer regiments.) Grandchamp’s observations suggest that decisions about field and company officers were not the colonel’s alone.[vi]

I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of this story once I have a chance to go to the New Hampshire Division of Archives and Records Management, but for now this is what I’ve figured out. On July 22, 1861, Congress passed an act calling for 300,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. The 5th New Hampshire was the first regiment in the state that was recruited to answer this call. Although it appears that some men were enlisted at the end of July and beginning of August, volunteering did not really take off until the middle of the latter month. On August 5, Cross conferred with Berry about obtaining a commission. On August 14, the executive council voted to give make Cross the commander of the 5th New Hampshire. It was not until he met the governor and the executive council eight days later, however, that Cross was offered the position. He accepted on two conditions: “if I could organize and fit out the Regiment to suit myself, and appoint all the officers.” Cross’s terms were accepted, and he later wrote that “I cheerfully bear testimony to the fair & honorable style in which the authorities kept their faith.”[vii] Cross received his colonel’s commission on August 27.

An image of Cross taken shortly before the war. Cross served as the regiment’s colonel until May 1863 when he took command of the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, II Corps (the 5th New Hampshire’s brigade) shortly after the Battle of Chancellorsville. He was mortally wounded on July 2, 1863 while directing this brigade in the Rose Woods near the Wheatfield at the Battle of Gettysburg. (Image courtesy of David Morin.)

By this date, enlistments were well under way which means that the state had already appointed recruiters to raise the regiment (I still don’t know how, when, or by whom they were selected). In other words, it seems likely that these men had started their work before they knew for certain that Cross would be the colonel of the regiment, and Cross had no say as to who these men were.

It was at some point over the next two and a half weeks that Cross decided who his company commanders would be. In a September 15, 1861 letter to his close friend Henry O. Kent, assistant adjutant general for the state, Cross claimed the regiment had 650 recruits (the number was actually closer to just over 300) and that he had chosen his company commanders.[viii] The provisional nature of his decisions is indicated by the fact that he still thought Conner would be his lieutenant colonel and that Barton, though mentioned in the letter as raising an artillery battery, was not then contemplated as a company commander in the 5th New Hampshire. Still, most of the men who became company commanders are listed in his missive: Richard Welch, Charles E. Hapgood, John Murray, Charles H. Long, H. T. H. Pierce, Richard R. Davis, Edmund Brown, and James Perry.[ix] By September 20 at the latest, Cross’s decisions had become final and public. The Farmer’s Cabinet (Amherst, NH) announced that day that Charles Hapgood “had been selected by the authorities of the State, as Captain of the Company to be formed in this County [Hillsborough] for the Fifth N. H. Regiment.”[x]

Exactly how and when Cross picked these men remains unclear. One thing is certain; there was no election. The decision about company commanders appears to have been finalized well after recruitment had started but before even a third of the regiment had been enlisted. It seems likely that Cross did not know many of his captains personally. Although he had visited the family home in Lancaster throughout the 1850s, Cross had not lived in New Hampshire since 1849. Pride and Travis, along with Grandchamp, claim that Cross was a notoriety when he returned to New Hampshire, but some evidence suggests that his connections in the state were limited.[xi] There is also no evidence that Cross traveled across New Hampshire interviewing potential candidates for captaincies. Cross may have corresponded with his recruiters (how else would he have known how many men had enlisted by September 15?). But this correspondence is not extant, and we don’t know for sure if it occurred let alone when it started. We are left, then, with the speculation that Cross’s choices were based on recommendations given to him by Kent, others holding state offices, and various acquaintances.

Clearly, the most important quality that Cross looked for in a captain was military experience whether it be service in the 1st New Hampshire (Edward E. Sturtevant, H.T.H. Pierce, and Ira Barton had all been officers in this three-month regiment), a Mexican War record (John Murray), or graduation from Norwich Military Academy (Charles H. Long). Not surprisingly, Cross desired military experience among his field officers as well: as we have seen, he had hoped to get Conner as a lieutenant colonel, and William Cook, his major, had played a prominent role in the Massachusetts state militia. Indeed, Cross’s September 15 missive to Kent described his future company commanders exclusively in terms of their military attainments.

John Murray was a 37-year-old teamster living in Newcastle, NH, when the war broke out. To my knowledge, he was the only soldier in the 5th New Hampshire who had seen substantial combat with the regular army before the war. Joining the 3rd US Artillery in 1846, he had been cited for bravery during the assault on Chapultepec during the Mexican War. By the time he left the regular army in 1853, he had made sergeant. Cross was so impressed with Murray’s performance as the Captain of Company D in the 5th New Hampshire that by November 1862 the colonel started exerting political influence to have Murray appointed major of the regiment. Unfortunately, Murray was killed in action at Fredericksburg. After that battle, Cross wrote to Murray’s widow, Phila Murray, “He had no superior in my regiment. Captain Murray was one of my best friends. I loved him for his sterling honesty, his frankness and the dependence which could always be placed in him; for his brave and soldierly character.” (Courtesy of Library of Congress.)

It is important to note that several of these men did good work as recruiters, particularly Sturtevant and Barton. Recruiting was important—or, rather, the potential to recruit since the captains were selected before a third of the regiment had volunteered. But the ability to attract volunteers was clearly not as important as military experience. For example, in Company D, George A. Balloch and John H. Locke recruited more men than Murray, but Murray had a lock on the captaincy because of his Mexican War record (Balloch, however, became the company’s 1st Lieutenant while Locke earned the rank of 1st Sergeant in Company B for his pains). This valuing of military experience extended from the captains to the other junior offices and the non-commissioned ranks. As the 5th New Hampshire was being recruited, Sturtevant and Barton filled key positions in their companies with men who had served under them in the 1st New Hampshire. Sturtevant recruited 16 veterans of the 1st New Hampshire to his new company (13 of whom came from his old company); seven of them were mustered in as non-commissioned officers (one 1st sergeant, three sergeants, and three corporals). The same story occurred in Barton’s company. He recruited 13 men from the 1st New Hampshire (11 of whom came from his old company) out of which he found one 2nd lieutenant, one 1st sergeant, one sergeant, and three corporals.

On some occasions, however, military experience and recruiting success were not enough. In Company I, Elijah W. Johnson had graduated from Norwich and recruited more men than Charles Hapgood, but the latter became the company commander. Why? The documents suggest that Hapgood possessed much greater social weight and ability; Johnson was a carpenter and Hapgood a wealthy merchant. After the war, Johnson remained a carpenter (dabbling in farming) while Hapgood would go on to become an extraordinarily successful businessman.[xii] In other words, Hapgood’s potential as an officer seemed greater. A knack for making money is not the same thing as military ability, but in this particular case, Cross (or whomever recommended Hapgood to Cross) made the right decision. Johnson, who managed to obtain the rank of 1st Lieutenant, was forced to resign his commission in January 1862 after a brigade board of review found him wanting. Meanwhile, Hapgood eventually went on to become the colonel of the regiment. Clearly, Hapgood was a more able figure. When the Farmer’s Cabinet (located in Amherst, NH, where Hapgood lived) found out that he had been named captain in the 5th New Hampshire, it gushed that he “is a soldier per se, with all the qualities inborn and acquired to fit him for the station he is to occupy.” “Of commanding form, stentorian voice, excellent judgment, and thoroughly skilled in military tactics, and withal, one of those good hearts,” he was sure to “win the love of his men.”[xiii] It would appear that Hapgood’s success in business, his overall ability, and something about his manner won him the job. As Mr. Waternoose said in Monster’s, Inc., “It’s all about presence. About how you enter the room.”

Our survey of why some men received a higher rank than others in the 5th New Hampshire has been instructive. An investigation of a few men who did a fair amount of recruiting for the regiment but failed to obtain a commission is also instructive. It reveals the importance of social status and that “je ne sais quoi” that gave others confidence in one’s ability to command.

For example, when the war broke out, Eli Fernald was a moderately prosperous 35-year-old whitesmith from Milton, NH.[xiv]  When recruitment began for the 5th New Hampshire, he enlisted a substantial number of volunteers for Company A from that town. Nonetheless, he was not selected to serve as an officer, and he did not enter the ranks of the regiment. It is not surprising that he did not obtain the captaincy because Sturtevant, who possessed military experience, recruited most of the company himself and enjoyed widespread popularity in Concord where a plurality of the company was raised. What really must have hurt Fernald, though, was that one of the men he recruited from Milton, Stephen E. Twombly, a young shoemaker, was picked as second lieutenant for Company A.[xv] This turn of events is interesting because Twombly appears to have been something of a dud; he resigned his commission in May 1862. If Sturtevant considered Twombly better officer material than Fernald, that does not say much for Fernald. Coincidentally, in 1864, Twombly eventually secured a position as 1st Lieutenant of Company L in the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery—the same company where Fernald was the Quartermaster Sergeant.[xvi] Neither man appears to have possessed much leadership potential; the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery provided commissions to a number of people who could not obtain them elsewhere (and refuge for men who wished to avoid combat). In any event, during the war, Twombly, who does not appear to have been an impressive figure, beat out Fernald for a commission in two different companies. Fernald died of consumption in 1869, so it’s possible that health problems may have limited his ability to lead in an infantry regiment.[xvii]

If Fernald obviously did not possess the temperament for command, Oliver P. Newcomb’s story appears to confirm the significance of social status. A 24-year-old apprentice jeweler from Orford, NH, who still lived in his father’s household, Newcomb recruited a number of men for Company C.[xviii] For someone so young, he seemed to have a gift for recruitment, and he was obviously interested in a commission. He also became quite proficient at his occupation (sources describe him variously as a jeweler or watchmaker), accumulating an estate of $3000 by 1870.[xix]  But in 1861, his youth, his lack of means, and the fact that he was not yet independent must have told against him. Although James B. Perry, who became the company commander, was only a couple of years older, he probably seemed a more accomplished figure. Perry was already a wealthy farmer from Hanover, NH, with $4,000 in real estate.[xx] Perry is perhaps best known as the officer who, along with James Larkin, was court-martialed by Cross for mutiny in November 1862 (more of which anon). Despite this incident, which resulted in part from Cross’s irascibility, Perry was a dependable soldier who died facing the infamous stone wall at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Newcomb eventually did obtain a coveted commission: he became a 2nd Lieutenant in the 9th New Hampshire in August 1862 and was quickly promoted to 1st Lieutenant a couple of months later. He resigned his commission, however, in January 1863.[xxi]

Oliver P. Newcomb during his short stint with the 9th New Hampshire. See https://picclick.com/Civil-War-Cdv-Of-Lieutenant-Oliver-Newcomb-9Th-323165079801.html

Joseph Q. Roles, who enlisted a group of men for Company H, is an interesting figure because he was a dedicated recruiter with no interest in a commission. A hotel keeper in Ossipee, NH, he was the definition of a local worthy who had just started to build a small business empire. In 1860, he possessed $2000 in real estate and $1844 in personal estate. By 1870, those figures had grown to $5000 and $12,700 respectively, extraordinary sums for the period. The History of Carroll County (1889) reports that in addition to a hotel, Roles ran a grocery store while dealing in cattle, real estate, and lumber. Roles also served as “a selectman, justice of the peace, county commissioner, recruiting officer . . ., county treasurer, and as a member of the legislature for many terms.”[xxii] Clearly, Roles saw recruitment as another civic duty and was happy to stay at home while other men became junior officers.

What does the foregoing teach us? For one thing, it shows us one model of how a regiment could be raised in 1861. The 5th New Hampshire’s experience in this respect seems to have been different from that of many other regiments. There were no elections for officers, and if we can take Cross at his word, Berry did not hand out commissions to political friends. While Berry formally retained the power to appoint officers, he seems to have made selections based on Cross’s recommendations.

Only a willful colonel in a strong position could make the kinds of demands that Cross did and obtain the consent of the governor and the executive council. These men must have wanted Cross badly if they were willing to give him what he wanted. Was it because he possessed military ability in a state that had so little of it? Was it because Cross was a Democrat and the Republican governor was anxious to avoid charges that he was handing out colonelcies solely to Republicans?[xxiii] Was it both? Whatever it was, Cross, who knew knew his mind, took full advantage of this opportunity.

While Cross was something of an authoritarian who wanted things the way he wanted them, the manner in which the regiment was raised indicates there were limits to what he could control. For one thing, while he secured the services of his brother, Richard, a regular soldier who was a member of the Corps of Engineers, Cross could obtain neither Edward Connor as his lieutenant-colonel nor Henry O. Kent as his adjutant. And while he considered military experience as extremely important, this commodity was in short supply in his new regiment. Service in the 1st New Hampshire, which had seen no action during the Bull Run campaign (and was a notoriously rowdy unit), and matriculation at Norwich Military Academy were no substitutes for real military experience. At the same time, it seems likely that Cross was not personally acquainted with many of the field or junior officers he asked Berry to appoint. Most of these recommendations must have been based on references provided to Cross by others. So while Cross “appointed” all the officers, he probably didn’t know a number of the men he was appointing. In all likelihood, Cross first laid eyes on many of his captains when they started arriving at Camp Jackson just outside Concord, NH, on September 28, 1861. Three days later, he left for Washington, DC, for a week to take care of regimental business. That means he only saw his company commanders for all of three weeks total before the regiment entrained for the federal capital on October 28.

This manner in which Cross obtained captains would have unhappy consequences for the regiment. Before long, Cross grew dissatisfied with the men he had chosen for company command. In February 1862, he used a brigade board of review to discharge Brown and Welch who had not mastered even the fundamentals of drill and committed a variety of unsoldierly infractions.[xxiv] Davis, who appears to have been something of a non-entity (he is not mentioned once by either Pride and Travis or Grandchamp), resigned in July 1862. Cross also harbored suspicions about Barton’s competence that were confirmed at the Battle of Fair Oaks. Barton was pressured to resign in September 1862, and Cross made it clear that he would not write Barton a letter of reference to obtain a commission elsewhere. Cross had Perry (along with James Larkin, who was then the Captain of Company A) brought up on charges of mutiny before a court martial in November 1862, but since the affair resulted as much from Cross’s intemperance as anything else, the affair was dropped. Cross asked Pierce to resign in January 1863 over a dispute regarding guard duty. Of the original ten captains, it looks like five had been forced out of the regiment in one way or another because Cross had become disenchanted with them, and a sixth had narrowly avoided the same fate.

And what of those who managed to get on with Cross? By the time Pierce resigned, Long had left the regiment due to wounds sustained at Antietam. Murray, Perry, and Sturtevant (who had been promoted to major) had all been killed at Fredericksburg. Of the original ten captains, then, Hapgood was the only one who remained with the regiment. His ability to stay alive and remain in Cross’s good graces partially explains how he became commander of the regiment shortly after the Battle of Chancellorsville (he was appointed colonel on July 3, 1863, the last day of Battle of Gettysburg, shortly after Cross’s death).

The way in which company commanders (and their subordinates) were initially chosen undoubtedly contributed to the turbulence and drama that persisted among the regiment’s officers for most of the 5th New Hampshire’s existence. Cross’s experiences with his first set of junior officers probably accounts for his predilection ever after of promoting from within. This was the way in which young enlisted men like Thomas Livermore, George Gove, and others became commissioned officers in the 5th New Hampshire. Cross wanted soldiers who had proven themselves before his own eyes. Men left to accept commissions in other regiments (including units of United States Colored Troops or of galvanized Yankees), but hardly anybody came from outside the 5th New Hampshire to accept a commission in that regiment. But all of that can be the topic of another blogpost on another day.

[i] Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 20-21.

[ii] Andrew S. Bledsoe, Citizen Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015), 26.

[iii] Ibid., 26, 28-29.

[iv] Peter S. Carmichael, The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 21.

[v] Mike Pride and Mark Travis, My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross & the Fighting Fifth (Hanover, NH: New England University Press, 2001), 31.

[vi] Robert Grandchamp, Colonel Edward E. Cross, New Hampshire Fighting Fifth (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), 74-76.

[vii] Walter Holden, William E. Ross, and Elizabeth Slomba (eds.), Stand Firm and Fire Low: The Civil War Writings of Colonel Edward E. Cross (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2003), 7.

[viii] The figure of just over 300 comes from Ayling’s Revised Register.

[ix] Elijah W. Johnson is listed as a captain, but he ended up serving as a 1st Lieutenant under Charles E. Hapgood. See Holden, Ross, and Slomba (eds.) Stand Firm and Fire Low, 91-93.

[x] Farmer’s Cabinet, September 20, 1861, 2. The article goes on to mention that Hapgood “has opened a recruiting office at Union Hall, and his company is fast filling up.”

[xi] For example, in late September 1861, when the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, the Democratic Party’s newspaper of record in the state, introduced Cross in a column to its readers, it was clear the staff at the journal had little information about the colonel and “no personal acquaintance” with him. New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, September 25, 1861, 2. This statement is especially interesting since Grandchamp argues that Berry gave the colonelcy to Cross as a means of appeasing New Hampshire Democrats who wanted one of their own to lead a regiment. Grandchamp, Colonel Edward E. Cross, 74. Other newspapers did not seem particularly familiar with Cross when they described him to their readers either.

[xii] For Johnson, see his enlistment papers, the Census of 1870, the Census of 1880, and his death record from 1899:  “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9Z5-N845?cc=2127318&wc=QDLL-1RQ%3A1589942734 : 16 August 2016), 007499097 > image 937 of 1625; New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive.; “United States Census, 1870”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH56-T39 : 19 March 2020), Elijah Johnson, 1870.; “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHRV-R42 : 12 August 2017), Elijah H Johnson, Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire, United States; citing enumeration district ED 78, sheet 101C, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm 1,254,764; “New Hampshire Death Records, 1654-1947,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FS2X-DP2 : 10 March 2018), Elijah W Johnson, 03 Oct 1899; citing Rumney, Bureau Vital Records and Health Statistics, Concord; FHL microfilm 1,001,087. So far as Hapgood is concerned, see the Census of 1860, 1870, 1880, and 1900 along with his death certificate of 1909: “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WJ-YSN : 14 December 2017), Charles E Hapgood, 1860; “United States Census, 1870,” database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/ 61903/1:1:MD35-3CN : 12 April 2016), Chas E Hapgood, Massachusetts, United States; citing p. 35, family 234, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 552,146; “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHXH-JQS : 26 August 2017), Charles Hapgood, 1880; citing enumeration district ED 509, sheet 373B, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d), roll 0548; FHL microfilm 1,254,548; “United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M9TJ-N2Q : accessed 31 May 2019), Charles Hapgood, Brookline town (west of St. Paul St. & Between Longwood, Beacon, & Summit St. on north & Aspin, Norfolk, Massachusetts, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 1019, sheet 6B, family 114, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,240,669; “Massachusetts Deaths, 1841-1915,” database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/ 61903/1:1:N49S-7RX : 22 May 2019), Charles E Hapgood, 24 Sep 1909; citing Chelsea,,Massachusetts, 158, State Archives, Boston; FHL microfilm 2,313,115.

[xiii] Farmer’s Cabinet, September 20, 1861, 2

[xiv] “Maine Births and Christenings, 1739-1900”, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F4HR-XN5 : 14 January 2020), Eli Fernald, 1826; “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-6KS : 19 March 2020), Eli Fernald, 1860.

[xv] For Twombly’s enlistment papers that bear Fernald’s signature, go here: “New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Q1-YXN1 : 16 March 2018), Stephen E Twombly, 03 Sep 1861; citing Strafford, Strafford, Strafford, New Hampshire, United States, New Hampshire Secretary of State, Division of Records Management & Archive; FHL microfilm 2,217,641. For Twombly in the Census of 1860, go here: “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/ 1:1:M7WT-6PX : 19 March 2020), Stephen Twombly, 1860.

[xvi] Ayling’s Revised Register, 934, 959

[xvii] “Maine Deaths and Burials, 1841-1910”, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F482-R8J : 16 January 2020), Eli Fernald, 1869.

[xviii] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WR-LN9 : 19 March 2020), Oliver P Newcomb in entry for Asahel Newcomb, 1860.

[xix] “Massachusetts State Census, 1865”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MQCL-KD9 : 1 June 2018), Oliver P Newcomb in entry for Fanny Proctor, 1865; “United States Census, 1870”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/ 1:1:MH5X-8KC : 19 March 2020), Oliver P Newcomb, 1870.

[xx] “United States Census, 1860”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M7WT-HJ1 : 19 March 2020), James B Perry, 1860.

[xxi] Ayling’s Revised Register, 493. Newcomb may have suffered from ill health since he died in 1871 at a relatively young age.

[xxii] History of Carroll County, New Hampshire, ed. Georgia Drew Merrill (Boston, MA: W. A. Fergusson & Co., 1889),  631

[xxiii] Grandchamp, 74.

[xxiv] Grandchamp, 84-85. 1st Lieutenants Elijah W. Johnson and James B. David were also swept away in this housecleaning.