by John Boyko
American soldiers and agents entering Canada to recover deserters became yet another source of tension among Canada, Britain and the United States. Another incident in the Detroit-Windsor area brought the issue to the fore. A Captain Church from Michigan was ordered across the border at Detroit with five unarmed men to find a small group of deserters. They found their erstwhile comrades and, one way or another, persuaded them to return. On their way back, though, they were accidentally discovered by a local magistrate named Billings and a few of his friends. Words were exchanged and the deserters ran—apparently not convinced to return to Michigan after all.
Billings reported the incident to recently appointed Governor General Lord Monck, who, upon investigation, found that the story was not an isolated one. Within days, Lord Lyons was in Seward’s office, demanding to know what was going on. Seward asked questions of military officials and then told Lyons that Captain Church had acted on his own and that since he had gone unarmed and allowed the deserting men to flee rather than start an altercation with Billings, he had acted honourably.34 Seward was quite obviously skirting the larger questions of sovereignty and neutrality, but Lyons allowed the matter to drop. Lyons supported Monck’s intention to move more troops to the border near Detroit—not to stop American deserters, but to prevent the incursions of those intent upon retrieving them.35
SECOND THOUGHTS
With newspapers filled with stories of deserters running both ways, and then the Trent crisis and talk of an imminent American invasion of Canada, many Canadians who had jumped to the lure of joining the Union as a great and glorious crusade had second thoughts. Colonel Rankin, for instance, after working so hard and tossing away his career to raise a regiment of Rangers, publicly renounced his dedication to the Union cause. He resigned his American commission and declared his loyalty to Canada.
Norman Wade of Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia, felt his loyalty similarly tested. He had left his home in 1859 for a life at sea and found employment on American ships. In September 1861, he had enlisted in the Union navy and was assigned to the 400-ton USS Young Rover. In letters home to his parents, Wade explained his reasons for enlisting and touched on the main motivators for nearly all who were doing so: adventure, profit and cause: “When I came back to Boston from Detroit, times were so dull I had a good mind to come home but falling in with an old friend who was going on the Young Rover and who got the billet for me, which is not so bad as my pay is twenty-five dollars a month besides the prize money.… I am confident our cause is a just one.”36
Wade served his three-month enlistment largely by playing his part in guarding ports against blockade runners. He then signed up again. When the Trent crisis broke, he found his mates suddenly girding up for the new war most thought was coming. He wrote home expressing the fear felt at every level: “If a war should break out between these two Countries there is no telling where it would end, as it is bad enough now.”37 He could not tell his parents whether he would fight or desert.*
The Wolverton brothers similarly felt conflicted fears and spoke with many fellow Canadians who had no desire to be a part of an American army that appeared poised to march north rather than south. While only fifteen years old, the precocious Newton Wolverton was chosen by his peers as their spokesman. Using contacts he had developed through his work in Washington’s quartermaster’s department, he eventually secured a brief meeting with President Lincoln. He told the president of his concerns and Lincoln said that he understood. The president said: “We are happy to have you Canadians helping the Northern cause and want you to stay. I am not in favour of war with either Britain or Canada. As long as I am president, there will be no such war, you may be sure of that.”38
Many Canadian parents felt great trepidation about having their sons so far from home and in constant peril, and wrote to Monck and Lyons asking for help in extricating their children from Union regiments. Most claimed that their boys needed to be saved because they were minors who had run away from home to join the army. In December 1861 alone, at the height of the Trent crisis, Lyons and Monck placed ninety-two cases before American authorities.
Lyons continued throughout the war to intercede on behalf of parents, but it was an arduous process of moving through diplomatic channels and contacting regiments in the field. It was all made more difficult by unreliable enlistment records. Most cases bogged down somewhere along the red-taped route or ended when it was reported that the soldier in question could not be found, had deserted, or had died. Lyons was proud on the rare occasions when he was successful in returning a child soldier to his parents.39
The problem of so many Canadian and Maritime parents wanting their sons out grew to the point that American Secretary of War Cameron applied to Congress to grant him the power to expedite the process through which he could discharge foreign minors from service.40 Instead, on February 13, 1862, Congress enacted legislation that ended the practice of petitioning for the release of all underage soldiers. The regulation remained that one needed to be over eighteen to enlist, but the recruit’s word was to be taken as proof and once taken it would not be questioned.* The new legislation required that Monck inform all distraught parents who suspected their underaged children were in the American army that there was little he could do to help.41 A growing number of parents nonetheless begged for help, but fewer and fewer releases were secured.
The American legislation hurt many young people whose martial enthusiasm dimmed with the realization that a soldier’s life was hard work, with long stretches of boredom punctuated by bursts of terror. Charles Riggins from Canada West, for instance, who had initially enjoyed military life, became disenchanted when training ended and fighting began. In July 1862, he wrote to his sister, “I am quite shure that if I was home now I would let the south whip the north or vis versa or any other way for all I would care, it is well enough soldiering is very nice in peace & it is all nice enough to fight for ones country but when you are treated as slaves & that too worse than the slaves at the south.”42 Only a month later, Riggins wrote again about how he had made a mistake to enlist and wanted out: “You may write to Lord Lyons & try to get me out if you can—try very hard if you please—I want to get out very bad—tell him that I enlisted under eighteen & that I am only five months over it now. Tell him that I am a British Subject but do not say anything to anyone about it.”43
THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN
From the chaos of Bull Run in July 1861 until March 1862, the handsome and egotistical thirty-five-year-old Union general George McClellan built his army. To the frustration of Lincoln and the Northern press, he gathered more and more troops and weapons but, other than small skirmishes, all his massive army did was train.
Riggins and his 14th United States Infantry Division were part of it all. Although they would not meet, Edmonds was there too, still in her guise as Franklin Thompson. Having spent the winter tending the sick and wounded who overwhelmed hospitals, she had developed the thick skin needed for survival when engulfed by so much human misery and sorrow. Her journal records her experience: “Of what an amount of suffering I am called to witness every hour and every moment. There is no cessation, and yet it is strange that the sight of all this suffering and death does not affect me more. I am simply eyes, ears, hands and feet. It does seem as if there is a sort of stoicism granted for such occasions.”44 Edmonds put in long shifts and tried to cheer the sick and dying with card games, letter writing and spirited conversation while tending to their failing bodies.
Finally, on March 14, 1862, McClellan passed the orders that had been anticipated for months, and his enormous army, the largest in American history, began to move. Riggins’s and Edmonds’s regiments were part of a giant flotilla heading down the Potomac River and south through Chesapeake Bay to Fort Monroe, near the mouth of the James River. The plan had McClellan’s army marching northeast up the York Peninsula past Yorktown and Williamsburg all the way to Richmond. Lincoln’s concept of McClellan’s mission was that it should de
stroy Lee’s army, but his young general saw the war as a mammoth game of capture the flag, with the enemy’s capital as his goal. McClellan hoped that the Peninsula Campaign would win him—and the men he encouraged to call him Young Napoleon—the everlasting glory that he so desperately craved.45
The campaign began badly as McClellan sabotaged himself by moving slowly and digging in. While helping to construct entrenchments, Edmonds saw the freeing of slaves, and felt the humbling sensation of watching families crying for joy with the dawning realization that they were truly and finally free. She noted her surprise that all were not as she had expected: “Some of them are whiter and prettier than most of our northern ladies. There is a family here, all of whom have blue eyes, light hair, fair skin and rosy cheeks; yet they are contrabands and have been slaves. Yet why should blue eyes and golden hair be the distinction between bond and free?”46
As the army began to move, an unyielding rain turned Virginia clay to mud, slowing down the trudging, demoralizing slog to Yorktown. Edmonds suffered with the rest. Damp breezes and malarial mosquitoes wafted from adjacent swamps over the tired, sodden troops—yet they walked on. They walked for five days on two days’ rations.
During the Peninsula Campaign, as happened throughout the war and on many fronts, it was common for Canadians and Maritimers to come across countrymen in the field. One day as Edmonds was returning from a scavenging mission, she saw a funeral ending for yet another fallen comrade. She was told that the young man was Lieutenant James Vesey. He was thirty-two years old, had been popular among fellow officers and his men, and was from New Brunswick. Edmonds deeply mourned his loss for they had known each other at home and she had been rekindling feelings for him. On their first chance encounter shortly after embarking on the muddy march, she had avoided eye contact and conversation lest he reveal her disguise. When he did not recognize her, she initiated brief chats. Edmonds was warmed by his stories of home and his affectionate mentions of her, but she managed to maintain her ruse, and then he was gone. She later wrote, “His heart, though brave, was tender as a woman’s. He was noble and generous, and had the highest regard for truth and law.”47
Vesey was not Edmonds’s first affair of the heart. In October 1861, Franklin Thompson had developed a close friendship with Jerome John Robbins. Robbins’s letters indicated the depth of the friendship, then his growing suspicion about Thompson and his surprise when Edmonds confessed her true identity. When Robbins indicated that he was married, their relationship went no further. Robbins kept Edmonds’s secret.48
In late April, Edmonds was re-assigned as the regiment’s postmaster and then as mail carrier and dispatch rider. Her skills with a horse and determined courage served her well, as her new duties were tough and dangerous and sometimes demanded rides of up to sixty miles. Edmonds was often alone for hours or even days at a time, and she came to know the cold fear of capture and the heat of enemy fire. She became more aware of rumour and camp gossip, and one day heard that a Union spy had been killed in Richmond. She decided that she wished to fill the vacancy. She gave her notice of interest to her direct report, who moved it up the chain of command. After being interviewed and tested, she got the job and declared her oath to the Union for the third time.
Edmonds’s first mission was to infiltrate enemy lines and ascertain the strength and preparations around Yorktown. She began with a disguise. She purchased the clothes of a liberated slave, dyed her skin black, shaved her head and donned a wig. She practised the broken English of a field hand and assumed the name Ned. She tested her ruse with friends at the medical station where she had been working and fooled them all—she was ready.
After sunset, she passed through both Union and Confederate pickets. The next morning, she fell in with a group of slaves carrying coffee and provisions to the front lines. It was clear that the men suspected Edmonds, but they played along. The group moved back to Yorktown, where they were ordered to work on reinforcing the breastworks. It was perfect. She was able to estimate height and depth and count artillery pieces. She made special note of the Quaker guns: logs painted black to resemble real artillery pieces, meant to intimidate the enemy. She made rough sketches of the works and hid them in her shoe. After two days she stole away and reported back to McClellan’s aides.
Edmonds embarked on nine more missions behind enemy lines. She went disguised as a slave, a peddler and once, ironically, as a woman. Each mission was dangerous and each successful. Explaining her willingness to risk all in such dangerous undertakings, Edmonds later wrote, “I am naturally fond of adventure, a little ambitious and a good deal romantic, and this together with my devotion to the Federal cause and determination to assist to the utmost of my ability in crushing the rebellion, made me forget the unpleasant items, and not only endure but really enjoy, the privations connected with my perilous positions.”49
With the completion of each mission, Edmonds returned to her regiment and to nursing or riding dispatches and mail. After one assignment that had her in the saddle for three straight days, she was handed a weapon and participated in the battle of Williamsburg. After the bloody battle of May 1862 she recalled, “The dead lay in long rows on this field, their ghastly faces hid from view by handkerchiefs or the caps of their overcoats, while faithful soldiers were digging trenches in which to bury the mangled bodies of the slain.”50 Edmonds searched the wounded for signs of life and helped with the burials.
Although heavily outnumbered, the tough and stubborn Southern defenders stymied McClellan’s efforts. With McClellan missing opportunity after opportunity but his army still close and dangerous, Confederate president Jefferson Davis put Robert E. Lee in overall charge of the South’s campaign. In late June, showing the audacity for which he would become famous, Lee attacked. His bold gamble became known as the Seven Days Battle. It was an inspired move that took McClellan completely by surprise and left 1,734 Federal troops dead and more than 13,000 wounded or missing.
Edmonds reported men dying from sheer exhaustion.51 She served throughout the battle, delivering increasingly desperate messages. At one point, when an enemy shot panicked her horse, she dismounted and tried to calm the beast, but it bit her arm and kicked her side. She bound her bleeding arm in a sling and staggered to a field hospital. Still oozing blood, she offered assistance to the doctors and helped bind and comfort the wounded men arriving in alarming numbers from the front.
Still in great pain, Edmonds put herself back in the saddle as aide and dispatch rider for General Philip Kearny. She was directly involved in five major battles: Mechanicsville, Gaines’ Mill, Savage’s Station, Frayser’s Farm and Malvern Hill. Each seemed worse than the last, with fatigue threatening the morale of all.
The Army of the Potomac had been so close to Richmond that soldiers had seen its church steeples, but by July 14 the Union’s effort was spent. McClellan blamed Lincoln and a lack of reinforcements for the devastating loss, but he had simply been out-generalled.52 Along with the rest of the devastated and defeated army, Edmonds and Riggins, whose regiment had played significant roles at the Gaines’ Mill and the Seven Days battles, plied their way through the warm Chesapeake back to Washington.
CONSCRIPTION AND SKEDADDLERS
While the Peninsula Campaign ended well for the Confederacy in July of 1862, in April things had looked dark. The Confederate army was outnumbered and Richmond was under threat. At Shiloh, near the Tennessee-Mississippi border, Confederate general Beauregard, hero of Fort Sumter and Manassas, had suffered a stunning loss that cost 107,000 men, a quarter of those under his command.53 With only about 5.5 million white citizens to the North’s 22.5 million, the Confederates felt their losses more deeply. They could not win a war of attrition. To continue the fight, the Confederacy needed more men than the Southern states’ voluntary enlistment programs could provide.
With McClellan’s massive army on his doorstep, Confederate president Davis had called a council of war. Lee emphasized the significance of recent Southern casualties, new m
ilitary needs, and the dwindling numbers of fresh recruits. He argued that those whose patriotic zeal had inspired them to join a year before would soon be seeing their enlistments expire. After a good deal of spirited debate, Davis approved America’s first conscription.
Davis signed the law on April 16, 1862. It provided for the draft of all white men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. All who had already signed up for one year had their commitment extended to three. The age limit would be raised to forty-five in September, and in February 1865 it changed again to include those from seventeen to fifty. The law eventually excluded railroad and canal workers, telegraph operators, druggists, teachers and those who owned more than twenty slaves.
A number of states declared that the new law violated the concept of states’ rights—the very concept that most Southern leaders claimed the war was all about. The governors of Georgia and Alabama publicly stated their refusal to aid in its implementation. However, regardless of opposition in many quarters and the uneven way in which the law’s regulations were enforced, the threat of being drafted had its intended effect. Men began enlisting to avoid what would be considered the humiliation of being forced into service.
With the confidence felt in the early spring, Lincoln had approved the closure of Northern recruiting offices. But the combination of McClellan’s stalled campaign, western armies bleeding men, and Confederate troops stubbornly holding out within a few dozen miles of Washington, led to their reopening. On July 6, Northern governors were asked to do all they could to encourage recruitment. The response was tepid at best. Two weeks later, governors received a letter from Washington announcing a call for 300,000 men, with each state’s quota listed. Again the governors balked. Seward announced the notion of a draft. He sweetened the deal by offering a $100 inducement from the federal government—called a bounty—for every new recruit who enlisted before the draft took place. Union governors were encouraged to top up bounties with state and local cash incentives, and to offer advances upon signing. Those wishing to avoid the draft could pay a substitute a $300 commutation fee to go in their stead. The Confederate law had a similar clause, whereby a draftee could hire a substitute to take his place.
