In the days ahead, Sergeant Upham would lead and encourage these young soldiers as they faced the enemy for the first time. At times like this, a soldier’s thoughts shifted inexorably to home. Setting aside his roll book, Charlie could reflect on a small memento he carried: a lock of fine brown hair encircled by a silk ribbon. The lock was folded into a slip of paper inscribed “Evening. May 18, 1861”—presumably when Charlie had received it from eighteen-year-old Emma Clark as he departed for war.
BLACKBURN’S FORD
General Tyler had left the Connecticut men of the 1st Brigade with their colonel, fifty-one-year-old Erasmus Keyes, and pushed ahead with other units to determine the position of the Confederate flank. At Blackburn’s Ford, a crossing of Bull Run, Tyler suddenly met a Confederate force that pulled him into a sharp skirmish.
The brief engagement “had a disheartening effect upon our soldiers,” mused Elnathan Tyler of Middletown, “especially those who thought the rebels would not fight, or at most would only fight a few minutes and then run away … As our dead and wounded soldiers lay in the shady door yard of an old house in Centreville we had a chance for the first time to see some of the horrors of war. To many of us who had seemed to think the whole thing was a grand military picnic, those dead and dying soldiers was a dispiriting reality, and our enthusiasm which had been at the boiling point, was chilled by a doubt.”14
It was now July 20, the day before the fight at Bull Run was to take place. Few of the soldiers got any sleep that night. Quartermasters hurriedly issued rations, and the Connecticut regiments’ brigade pulled out shortly after 2:00 a.m., leading the advance.
One of the chaplains with the 2nd Connecticut was forty-eight-year-old Hiram Eddy, a Presbyterian minister of imposing physique. Eddy had left his pulpit in Winsted, as well as his wife and five children, to volunteer. His diary preserved his impressions from the historic morning when 30,000 Union troops prepared for battle: “The grandeur of the army. All parts of the nation, representatives passing by from Main[e] to Minnesota and Iowa—All in good cheer & thousand ‘buly for yous’ rang out as the regiments & brigades went past. Every body was hopeful. No one dreamed of anything but victory.”15
“We had heard the artillery of both sides for some time, and as we went rapidly forward for the last mile or two before reaching the scene of action, the increased roar warned us that we might soon feel as well as hear. We soon emerged from the last piece of woods between us and the battle-field … the perspiration streaming down our faces … panting, and puffing, and trying to catch our breath,” wrote Elnathan Tyler.16
Just before ten in the morning, the Connecticut soldiers approached the stream called Bull Run. Gus Dana described the 1st Connecticut’s movements: “We inclined to the right to cross an open field & ford the stream … half way across this field the rebels opened on us with shot and shell, one plowing a furrow at the feet of Maj Rodman and turning him a somerset unhurt. Orders to doublequick soon brought us to the bank of Bull Run; the stream itself was insignificant but the banks very precipitous … On nearing the run an officer on a grey or white horse on the high bank on the further side, shouted ‘What regiment is that,’ ‘First Conn’ we shouted and Gen. W. T. Sherman, as it proved to be, said ‘Bully for the First Conn, here’s work for you up here.’”17
News of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Winsted, Connecticut, on a Sunday morning. Rev. Hiram Eddy, minister of the town’s Second Congregational Church, immediately rewrote the sermon he was to give that day. According to a parishioner, Eddy’s fiery new sermon, emphasizing devotion to the Union, “electrified his hearers, and raised them to the plane of his own patriot ardor.” At forty-eight years old, Reverend Eddy was twice the age of most soldiers, but he asked his church for a leave of absence and joined the state’s 2nd Regiment as chaplain. (John Boyd, Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Connecticut, p. 462).
The men of the 1st Connecticut pounded onto the battlefield with their regimental flag held aloft by the color-bearer. Two months earlier, Julius Catlin, Connecticut’s lieutenant governor, had presented the national flag to the regiment with these words: “Take the flag, and, when it presses closest on the foe in some hard-set contest, will some brave boy among you strike one true blow for freedom for an old man at home, whose heart and prayers go with these colors to the field?” (W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, The Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the War of 1861–65, p. 67).
“We followed Gen Sherman … through the woods and half way down the valley that separated us from Beauregard’s command,” went on Gus Dana. “Orders to fire were given and afterwards we learned that we drove off a force of rebel Inf and Cav but I could only see the white gate posts I was ordered to aim at. I fired 22 rounds, kneeling down, while the rear rank fired over us … One of my comrades from East Hartford, the next to me in the front rank kneeling to fire … said ‘Ain’t this glorious Gus, I’m going to re-enlist.’”18
The 2nd and 3rd Connecticut regiments, along with the 2nd Maine, had diverted into the woods to avoid artillery fire before reaching the stream. A soldier from the 3rd recalled: “We found General Tyler there awaiting us … As we came up in good order and on the double quick, the General greeted us with ‘Ha! Ha! Here comes my Connecticut boys!’ and then he ordered one of the bands … to stop there and strike up ‘Yankee Doodle’ while we pressed forward and crossed the Run.”19
“At 11 or 12 the contest was at its height & the spectacle was grand & awful,” wrote Chaplain Eddy.
The cannonade—The musketry—The working of the great Parrot gun planted in the corner of the woods. The discharge & the bursting a mile & a half away. It seemed like a tuft of cloud bursting out … then the runing of the soldiers away from beneath it to avoid the contents of the shell. And finally, about two o’clock we co’d distinctly see the rebels leave the place on double quick. From the commencement there was not a doubt but that the day wo’d be ours. Among the large number of spectators there was not the least appearance of fear … And at this time there was no doubt the enemy was in our hands. They had been driven from all the positions which they occupied in the morning.20
Gen. Daniel Tyler, commanding the 1st Division (approximately 5,000 troops) opened the Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. Born in the village of Brooklyn, Connecticut, Tyler was nearly sixty-two years old. He was a graduate of West Point but had left the military nearly thirty years earlier to become a manufacturer.
From the crest of a hill, a Confederate battery was shelling Union forces. About two in the afternoon, General Tyler ordered Colonel Keyes to capture the battery.
A twenty-two-year-old tinworker in the 3rd Connecticut recounted: “Keyes took the Second Maine and our regiment and pressed forward up the hill at double quick. We went up that hill shouting and yelling as if two thousand demons had suddenly been let loose from Pandemonium … We pressed forward towards the top of the hill. Here we found ourselves under the fire of infantry as well as artillery.”21
Colonel Keyes reported, “Colonel Jameson of the Second Maine, and Colonel Chatfield of the Third Connecticut Volunteers, pressed forward their regiments up the base of the slope about one hundred yards, when I ordered them to lie down, at a point offering a small protection, and load. I then ordered them to advance again … As we moved forward we came under the fire of other large bodies of the enemy posted behind breastworks, and on reaching the summit of the hill the firing became so hot that an exposure to it of five minutes would have annihilated my whole line.”22
“We fell back a few rods and lay down on the Warrenton