by Bruce Graham
“We’ve been Whigs, son, since your grandfather’s time. He was a founding member in this area. And he still wants to be one. But the organization is dead, and we have to choose to vote Republican or Democrat.”
“Well, what party are we going to be for?”
“I’ll let you know in a few weeks.”
My next recollection was my father speaking over supper a while later of the pending election. Although my father was taciturn and rarely given to emotional outbursts, he jerked his head sharply toward Aunt Mary when she said she was planning to vote Republican. I distinctly remember my father’s words: “Nobody with any sense could vote for that crank. I probably won’t vote at all.”
Aunt Mary’s face flushed and I thought she was going to burst into tears.
My father immediately repented of his harshness. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that most people who know his history wouldn’t trust him in the White House and I wouldn’t expect that you know that much.”
I doubted if his comment helped much.
Aunt Mary let her cutlery fall into her plate. “Mr. Summer stopped in and told me a lot about the Republicans, how most of the Whigs in town have switched and that their platform for freedom for the slaves includes more industrial development for the North.”
“Oh, he did, did he? I don’t doubt that they’re sincere and mean well. But Fremont is much too odd to get my vote, and it’s not simply because I resent the Whigs going out of business. I hate slavery as much as the next man, but I don’t want to break up the Union just to get rid of something that will die out soon enough on its own. Even in the South the slaves are being freed, I hear that there are more free darkies in Richmond, Virginia than slaves.”
For the first time in my memory Aunt Mary glared at my father and her voice became sharp. “Mr. Summer never mentioned that. Where did you hear it?”
“It was in the Connecticut paper we get at the Mill. And if the Southerners get their backs up and secede, the mills here may lose business. A lot of our business goes south. And how are the Republicans going to give us free land and free men after they’ve saddled us with Fremont, have you thought about that? He was court martialed for what he did in California and yet managed to become fabulously wealthy.”
For some reason I figured I could add something to the discussion; “They wouldn’t allow catching fugitive slaves or more slave states into the Union.”
My father relaxed and resumed eating. I assumed that he was gathering his thoughts.
Aunt Mary decided to add to the conversation. “The fighting out west shows that the slavery issue needs to be brought to a final conclusion. If we destroy slavery the country can get about with other business.”
“Enough!” said my father. “I’m sorry that I ever said anything. Mary, I’m glad that you have the gumption to think for yourself. Nathan, Judith, keep up your studies. For my part, I’ll keep my mouth shut and do as I please.” He smiled a slight smile, tinged with a bit of whimsy about it, and went back to attacking his dinner plate.
Within a few weeks the election was over: The Republicans won many elections nationwide and locally, but the Republican national ticket was defeated and disappeared from public view.
Our village was the third largest community in the town of Rockingham. Bellows Falls was the biggest, an incorporated village, on the Connecticut River, boasting lots of industry, including factories and mills and a railroad junction. The second largest was Saxton’s River, another incorporated village, along the southern side of the town, and without much industry, since it had no railroad connection. Our hamlet contained no places of worship, unlike the two larger villages.
Our family attended the Baptist Church in Chester. Chester was closer and easier to reach from Bartonsville than the other sites in the town of Rockingham that had functioning places of worship. I heard that my Grandfather and Father had attended the Union Church in the village of Rockingham, but services there ended a few years before I was born. Over the years of my church attendance, I was frequently treated to sermons liberally sprinkled with references to the terrible Romanism that was becoming rampant even in Vermont, and occasional derision for the beliefs of Unitarians, several families of whom lived in the nearby area. I was still in primary school when I learned of the death of one of the leading Unitarians in town, Solomon Wright, whose large farm was two miles south of Bartonsville. We were not surprised to learn that there was opposition to his burial in any public cemetery, so he was buried quietly in his own cemetery a furlong south of his farm buildings.
Each Sunday, except in the most severe weather, I would hitch up the buggy and we would travel past La Grange to Chester, where my sister and I would precede the service by attending religious education sessions for about an hour, while the men would take the time to socialize and swap gossip and stories and conduct some informal business and the ladies would do what ladies do. The men would dicker over real estate, horse trades, bartering of farm products, lumber, hardware items or clothing or services of some sort. As I became older I heard some of the negotiating, including a lawyer agreeing to exchange his preparation of wills for firewood and a doctor giving advice on treatment of an absent husband’s ague on the woman’s promise of a half gallon of maple syrup on the following Sunday.
Because my father was in business for himself, he swapped his work for any number of things and was active in negotiating. When I was old enough to understand what went on I comprehended how we acquired new tack for the horse, lots of fresh vegetables, maple syrup, clothes for my sister and me and extra firewood, and why my Dad was often away from home evenings.
Our religious education began at age five or six with the Old Testament stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, move on to the Children of Israel in Egypt, Exodus and the kingdom of Saul, David and Solomon. The tales were in dramatic form, to hold our attention and convey a message of Divine love and concern, with a fair sprinkling of hell-fire and brimstone. We would hear of prophesies and when we were entering puberty the classes moved into the New Testament and Jesus’ work and admonitions about morality and our duty to the world and to the Lord. The high, or low, point was the focus in our teenage years on sexual morality, where every few weeks the adolescents were divided, the boys being lectured in one part of the nave by the pastor and the girls spoken to by Eliza Pulsifer, in the Church’s social room. She and her family lived near the Church. Whenever we boys were feeling our oats, we guffawed and passed around rumors about Eliza. Luke Cummings claimed that she was a cold, shrewish spinster who hated men. Tom Stowell opined that she had become crabby and ugly after being jilted by a suitor many years earlier. And Oliver Smalley said that she was a repentant fallen woman, who had borne a child outside of marriage that she gave away and was making amends by cramming hatred and fear of sex down the craws of the girls. Whichever of the stories, or others, that might be true, we knew that Eliza’s efforts would severely limit our probability of enjoying the favors of the local girls unless we married them.
The services were almost all the same, and they blurred together, along with the readings from scripture. They dragged it out unmercifully, and after years I came to resent the time taken for us to hear almost the same message every week. Ever since, however, I’ve realized how firmly fixed passages from Holy Writ have been burned into my memory.
I eventually moved on to the newly begun high school in Bellows Falls. It opened two years before I entered. My father didn’t ask whether I wanted to attend it, but simply arranged everything. I was fourteen and during the week boarded at the large home of the Conant family on Westminster Street. The patriarch, William Conant, operated a furniture and equipment store on Bridge Street, and my father had directed business to him from the Bartonsville mills. He maintained a household staff and I suppose that my presence was a little additional burden.
The old man’s children were in the business, and his grandchildren attended the high school. So I was ex
posed to influences at the Conant residence to learn the fine points of history, English and Latin.
I would take the train in to Bellows Falls on Monday morning, stay with the Conants, Monday through Thursday nights and return home after school on Friday. We were under the heavy thumb of the elder Conants and so even after two years at the high school, I had little chance to meander from the straight and narrow.
The Conants were ardent Republicans. There was no lack of hostility to the slave holding oligarchy in the South and Border States, although John Brown’s raid in 1859 caused them much anxiety. “Leave it to the electoral process to break up the slaveholders,” said William Conant the younger over dinner one night. “A revolution is not only bad, but won’t work.”
At the beginning of my third year I arrived to find that young Edward Conant, in his senior year, was keeping company with Becky Stuart, also a senior, whose family lived on Henry Street, only a block or two from the Conant house. The two Conants in High School and I would meander to the Stuart house in the morning to join Becky Stuart and her brother Tom and sister Prudence for a mass move to school. Prudence was in second year and I had not previously noticed her. But on the second day of our rambles, I certainly noticed. I think that it’s called puppy love, anybody who has experienced it knows how it works.
I would try to find excuses to walk with Prudence, carried her books, offered to help with her courses. She yielded to my blandishments once in a while, but I gradually came to the awful realization that she was enamored of Enoch Baird, who lived at the far end of Green Street. I contrived to find ways to supersede Enoch, with only partial success. I complimented Prudence at every opportunity, lent her my rain gear when an afternoon storm caught her unprepared, dropped in at her home on occasional evenings. Her parents were less than enthusiastic about my attentions, although Enoch was from even more humble background than I. I soon concluded that Prudence’s mother wanted her to be close to, not Enoch, but Edward Conant, and that I would frustrate that purpose. Even my attending Wednesday evening services at the Baptist Church with the Stuart family seemed to have no effect.
By the Christmas holidays I was prepared to end my campaign to win fair Prudence, but was given a reprieve when she invited me to join her at one of the several services. I was elated, but it was a major effort to persuade my father to take me into Bellows Falls for the event. Fortunately the weather that year was relatively benign and I was ecstatic to accompany Prudence, and especially to hold her hand. My father spent the time shopping around town, and picked me up at the Stuart home after I had walked there with Prudence.
This momentary triumph, however, was short lived, when I heard from Edward that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, as Prudence’s real objective had been to stoke Enoch Baird’s longing for Produce by publicly appearing to want me. I was a little bitter when, after the holidays, her apparent ardor toward me cooled and my hope for a place in her affections was taken by Enoch.
By the end of winter Prudence could hardly find time to exchange simple pleasantries on the way to and from school, while she and Enoch were close whenever the opportunity presented itself. I resigned myself to defeat.
CHAPTER THREE
The War came to us in slow stages. At first was the election of Abraham Lincoln. Southern secessions were almost as fantasies. But the attack on Fort Sumter was a shock, and President Lincoln’s call for volunteers to prevent dissolution of the Union electrified the nation, and Bartonsville, to action.
I was not yet old enough to join the Army, but began to look into it. The Army was a vague thing to me, and I’m sure most others of about my age. We had little idea that the Army was a tiny force, limited in size by law, and miniscule compared to the mighty forces in Europe, about which we had studied in school, especially the Napoleonic Wars. Because the United States had defeated Mexico’s large army and occupied vast western territories we assumed that the Army was a large force. The President’s request for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days, therefore, seemed to us as only a minor addition to a horde that was fully capable of suppressing the rising.
It was a shock to learn that without those volunteers the government would not have been able to defeat the secession. It was not a surprise that young men flocked to the colors in numbers that far exceeded both the requested number and the capacity of the national government to process them. We boys followed the departures of our not very older siblings and friends toward the assembly points. Then we settled down to follow the courses of their achievements on the field of battle and the expected early routing of the southern bumpkins. The battle of Bull Run brought us up short. The news, and even worse, casualty reports, from across the vaguely defined border between the Confederacy and the Union, from Virginia to Texas and the unsettled territories gradually told us that the struggle would be long, arduous and tedious. Then came news of President Lincoln’s call for 300,000 more volunteers.
I was already resolved to join the military service. The question was, which one?
My mother’s brother, Caleb, had over the years been an occasional visitor at our home. My father always welcomed him and the gathering was always cordial. As I approached maturity I joined their sessions.
During that first summer of the War, when Uncle Caleb arrived to visit, he brought his long gun that he had kept from his service in the Marines during the Mexican War.
He had joined the Marines directly out of Black River Academy, over the objections of his parents. He had been in the front line at the Battle of Chapultepec that crushed the Mexican Army. He’d suffered a superficial leg wound, and had been among the first to return home when the conflict ended. When my father and sister and I had visited his home he had proudly brought his gun down from the mantel. “Ready for the Indians or anybody else.”
On the first occasion of my Uncle holding out the gun I took it in both hands. “It’s long.”
“As tall as you, Nate. And with quite a punch. It’s .69 caliber, that’s two thirds of an inch. It’s not a rifle. It’s a musket, not very accurate, but enough to go after Johnny Reb.”
“What’s a rifle?”
“The barrel of the gun has grooves that twist around, called rifling. The rifling causes the ball or bullet to spin. Spinning makes the round more accurate for a much longer distance.”
“Why isn’t this a rifle?”
My Uncle shrugged. “It was made before rifling was perfected. Some of them have been reworked into rifles. But this one’s an original, you can see the stamp, 1844, just in time for us to fight the Mexicans. I don’t have the bayonet, but it’s a long one.”
“Maybe you should be familiar with this, Nate. If you go in you’ll probably be issued one. Except for the reworked ones that have rifled barrels the action is the same.”
I hefted the gun and drew back the hammer, and aimed toward the chimney.
“That’s it, boy,” muttered my Uncle. “Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot.” He clapped his open hand on my shoulder. “Your time will come soon.”
My father was strangely silent.
“What do you think, Dad?”
“If the Union needs you you’ll have to go. Your Uncle beat the Mexicans without my help, but this is a different breed of cat.”
After my eighteenth birthday, I let the local recruiting agent know that I’d be ready to go. He gave me a paper for my father to sign. I eagerly awaited induction. And I wasn’t the only one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Only two of us were on the train from Bartonsville that took us to the Rutland mustering-in station, each of us loaded down, to lesser or greater degrees, with things that our parents said that we couldn’t do without. In my case the choice was by my father, who advised me that the less that I carried the better it would be for me, since the Army would provide most of what I’d need and my satchel was consequently thin. John Bates, however, hauled a fat duffel bag and I hesitated to ask what it was. John was resentful from the start and always seemed to have a ch
ip on his shoulder.
We were bundled up against the chill, which was good since the rail car was not heated. At depots along the way---Chester, Proctorsville, Ludlow, Cuttingsville---other young, and some not so young, men climbed on until the car was just about full.
Our chatter was the nervous banter of late adolescents trying to show nonchalance in order to obscure unease about doing something that we felt we should do, but without any enthusiasm. On our arrival at Rutland we were taken to the assembly point. We were housed in flimsy board buildings and given the rest of the day to become organized, which for most of us was trying to coach enough heat from the two wood stoves to keep from freezing.
In the early evening an older man in a fancy uniform arrived with a tall, bulky man in a blue uniform and large stripes on his sleeve. The man with the large stripes identified himself as Sergeant Robert Qualls and temporarily in charge of the hundred or so men making up our company until we had some basic training. He introduced the other man as a captain, who would administer the oath. The captain told us all to raise our right hands and recite after him a long oath of allegiance. We did so, and I was impressed with the part that referred to us being subject to the orders of the President, an idea that had never crossed my mind. While that was going on the sergeant made notes on a list of our names.
When we had done that the captain saluted and said that we were now officially part of the 7th Vermont Volunteers in the United States Army. He spun on his heels and left. The sergeant said that we’d be getting up around daylight, given breakfast outdoors and issued our uniforms and equipment and training firearms. He left a pile of paper and pencils on a table and told us to write to our parents, or wives if we were married, that we’d arrived safely and would write again when our training was finished here and we were being sent to another place for more intensive training. “You won’t have time or energy for writing after tonight. So do it now.” He then picked out three men, who I thought were the most energetic of all of us, and announced that they were temporary corporals, each in charge of a third of us. He then broke us up into three groups and pushed one of the three he had designated as corporal to the front of a group. “It’s your job to lead your section to breakfast and to the parade ground, and you men have the job to follow him.” With that Sergeant Qualls left.
