In addition to these comforts, the men put up swings and bars for gymnastic exercises, so that we were abundantly provided with means of recreation, as well as with all the necessities of life. I think I never saw an equal number of men more happy, contented, and good-natured, than ours were at Camp Abercrombie. Our life there was like that of a summer picnic; and the men, though keen for fighting and prompt to perform all their military duties, had the air of a party of summer excursionists.36
The picnic ended abruptly when the regiment’s lenient colonel resigned, replaced by a colonel from the regular army who “saw at a glance that rigid discipline was needed.”37 Military procedures immediately replaced glee clubs and gymnastics.
John DeForest, an officer in the 12th Regiment, described the daily grind that most volunteer troops followed:
we get up at sunrise. Then the reveille beats; the men turn out under arms; the three commissioned officers look on while the first sergeant calls the roll; the muskets are stacked and the men break ranks. At half past six we breakfast; from seven to eight there is company drill; from half past nine to half past ten, more company drill; at twelve, dinner, which means soup and hardtack; from four to six, battalion drill; at half past six, hardtack, pork and coffee; at nine, another roll call; at a quarter past nine, lights out.
It is a healthy, monotonous, stupid life, and makes one long to go somewhere, even at the risk of being shot.38
ON THE MOVE
Connecticut’s regiments didn’t remain long in Washington. The objectives of two generals had them moving all over the South in two early attempts to snuff out the Confederacy.
General Scott’s proposal became known as the Anaconda Plan for its resemblance to the constricting snake. By tightening the cord around the Confederacy, Scott hoped to cut off supplies to the Rebels, hinder their movements, and force their surrender.
General-in-chief Winfield Scott felt that reuniting the nation would be easier if little blood was shed. Instead of masterminding battles, Scott proposed to “envelop” the South with a blockade by sea, and a fleet of gunboats supported by soldiers along the Mississippi River.
Meanwhile, Union supporters in the North were impatient for battle. “Here we have spent some hundreds of millions of dollars; some six months of time; a vast amount of patience in collecting, and equipping, and drilling our forces, and have got together some three hundred thousand men, and now we begin to hear talk of ‘going into winter quarters,’” complained the Hartford Daily Courant. “The public will be disgusted! We have nothing but the bitter mortification of the Bull Run affair to chew upon … nothing but a good smart, ringing victory … will do … Gross disheartenment will settle down on the Union cause, unless more vigor is shown in taking the offensive.”39
In November of 1861, Scott retired, and George B. McClellan sprang into his position. Little Mac responded to the North’s clamor, planning the Peninsula Campaign, which called for the Union army and navy to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. The winter gave McClellan time to further train his green troops while he polished his “On to Richmond” scheme for the spring of 1862.
Connecticut soldiers found themselves ordered throughout the South to prosecute the strategies created by Generals Scott and McClellan. The 5th Regiment, on picket duty outside of Washington, kept Stonewall Jackson’s troops from the Potomac River, the railroad, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Charles Squires of Roxbury groused about not going into combat, writing to his sister, “I think that you have more fighting at home than we have down here.”40 (Squires would see action soon enough; in the Spring of 1862, the 5th would scuffle with Jackson’s troops around Winchester, Virginia, and in the Shenandoah Valley.)
Meanwhile, the men of Connecticut’s 6th and 7th Regiments boarded steamers for an expedition to the coast of South Carolina under Gen. William T. Sherman and the navy’s admiral DuPont. On November 7, Union ships bombarded the Confederate-held Fort Walker in Hilton Head, and Fort Beauregard across the sound, forcing their submission. The 6th and 7th Connecticut were the first infantry to land, prepared for hand-to-hand fighting if the Confederates resisted. As the boats approached land, the men of the 7th jumped out and splashed ashore at Hilton Head. Marching into Fort Walker unopposed, they had the honor of planting their regiment’s flags on the battlements—the first Union colors to wave over South Carolina since its secession.
Connecticut’s 8th, 10th, and 11th Regiments also took part in Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s expedition to establish control of the North Carolina coast. At Roanoke Island, the 10th Regiment advanced on a Confederate battery under heavy fire, taking the battery but losing their colonel, Charles Russell, to a gunshot wound at the outset of their first fight. In the port of New Berne, the 8th and 11th Connecticut successfully fought the Rebels to gain control of the Neuse River. “Gen Burnside came along up side our Regt and order us to charge on them,” wrote Cyrus Harrington of the 8th, “in which we did in double quick time in which they fired upon us killing 8 wounding several. It was a bold attempt but we won the victory driving the rebels in every direction.”41
The 5th Connecticut Infantry’s neatly laid-out company streets and orderly rows of Sibley tents, with a gentle plume of smoke wafting from a campfire, gave a feeling of serenity to this camp scene taken in October of 1861 on Muddy Branch, a small stream flowing into the Potomac River in Maryland, northwest of Washington.
“The order to charge was given,” wrote the 11th’s lieutenant Joseph Converse, “up sprang thousands of blue-coats,—a glittering wave of steel flashing in front,—and rushed forward with loud huzzas, an invincible line.”42 The Confederates fled their works.
Back in Connecticut, the 9th Infantry (also known as the Irish Regiment) broke camp at New Haven, finally ending up at desolate Ship Island, Mississippi. Under Gen. Benjamin Butler, the men of the 9th Connecticut, along with their comrades in Connecticut’s 12th and 13th Regiments, helped capture New Orleans.
The soldiers of Connecticut’s 1st Cavalry were always on the move, galloping throughout Virginia, as they scouted and skirmished with the enemy around the countryside. In the narrow valleys among the Allegheny and Branch Mountains, “The winding roads and countless convenient hiding-places … swarmed with guerrillas. These partisans of slavery and rebellion gathered everywhere in small squads to persecute Union citizens, annoy our soldiers, capture our scouts and carriers, and shoot our pickets … To destroy these roving rascals was to be the task of our cavalry battalion.”43
It was March of 1862 when General McClellan launched the Peninsula Campaign, his first foray to capture Richmond. He pushed thousands of troops up the Virginia Peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Among them was Connecticut’s 1st Heavy Artillery, which had originated months before as the state’s 4th Infantry Regiment. Now the regiment traveled with sixty-five enormous field pieces and more than four tons of ammunition over land that seemed solid and dry, but wasn’t.
“Puncture the surface anywhere and water gushes forth,” declared one of the 1st Heavies. “The tent pins drew water where we pitched our tents … as the heavy hundred-pounder [gun] moved slowly along the road, the wheels of the sling cart would sometimes pierce the upper crust, and the monster gun would be almost hopelessly mired … it often happened that horses and mules would prove of no avail to draw them out. Then several hundred men would man the ropes; Major Kellogg would mount on the axle of the sling cart, give the word of command, and with a long pull all together the huge guns would be dragged out and drawn