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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSouthold and the Civil WarCivil War History by Amy Folk, Southold Town Historian Southold and the Civil War Wars especially civil war, seldom happen over a single issue. Usually a combination of issues and events create the fuse that leads to the eventual violent explosion of war. In the United States in the 1840s and 50s, politicians wrestled with issues such as the balance of power between the Federal versus State government and the Northern economy versus the Southern economy. Added into the mix, was the expansion of the nation and the struggle of who, if anyone, should have a say in which culture, (north or south) would be allowed westward. Tied into all of these issues was slavery, which at the time was regarded as being ancillary to THE main issue - the division of the nation. For many people the concept of the inhumanity of holding fellow humans in bondage was not in the forefront of their minds, nor was it even an afterthought. For most, slave labor was needed in the south for their economy. It was for them a simple fact, in the days before agricultural machinery, that many hands were needed to raise and harvest crops. Many in the north believed that slaves were like children, who needed the guiding hand of a white person in their lives. Ignoring the fact that slaves were denied the even the basics in education need to function as a productive member of society. Others recognized that freed slaves would pose competition for jobs commonly held by immigrants in the north. Abolitionists who wanted freedom (but not necessarily equality) for those enslaved were regarded by most of society as radicals. The 1860 presidential election saw a polarized nation, with four candidates on the ballot for the office. Popular sovereignty, (letting each new state choose if they wanted slavery or not), was probably the biggest issue for the candidates and their parties. The Democratic Party was split into two camps. Stephen Douglas represented the mainstream northern Democrats, who supported popular sovereignty. The newly formed National Democratic Party, made up mostly of members from the south, did not want popular sovereignty and supported John Breckinridge of Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln represented the Republican Party. Also in the race was another new party, the Constitution Union, whose candidate John C. Bell of Tennessee, felt that slavery was not an issue and should be ignored. Militant supporters of the democrat and republican parties in the north formed groups, who in quasi-military uniforms marched in parades supporting their political parties. The Democrat’s group was called the Minute Men and the Republican’s were the Wide Awakes. The Wide Awake clubs were particularly active on north fork. In Mattituck and Greenport on the eve of the 1860 election the local wide awake clubs held torch lit evening parades to encourage supporters to vote.1 In Orient, a club called the Bell and Everett formed to support John C. Bell and his running mate Edward Everett. The club lasted month before throwing their support to Lincoln.2 On the 20th of December 1860, when it became clear that Lincoln and the Republicans had won - South Carolina, partially in protest over the election of a Republican to the office of President, seceded from the United States. The following month, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia Civil War History by Amy Folk, Southold Town Historian and Louisiana followed South Carolina’s lead and seceded. In February, Texas joined the secessionists and a provisional Confederate government was formed. Now considering itself part of a separate nation, South Carolina’s Governor Pickins began demanding that the U.S. government turn over control of military installations within its borders such as the partially completed Fort Sumter. Several months later, Pickins tired of the refusal of a government that the state no longer recognized, decided to starve out the soldiers stationed at Sumter and ordered his forces to prevent the fort from being resupplied. Lincoln took office in March and stepped up the efforts to restock the fort. The issue came to a head on April 12th when Fort Sumter was fired upon by Confederate forces, sparking the war. The news that Sumter was attacked by the Confederates sparked a firestorm of patriotic fervor across the nation. The United States’ army had always been kept deliberately small, mostly consisting of men, who had attended military academies, such as West Point.3 There was no way that the existing army would be able to force the rebel states back into the union. Volunteers scrambled to form into military units to defend the union… except in Southold. In the month that Sumter was attacked, one man was moved by the news to enlist. Antoine Engler of Cutchogue enlisted in the 7th New York. The next month two more men joined units forming in New York City.4 Men were pulled to these groups either by ties of family or friendship, some perhaps by convenience of the unit when the patriotic zeal to enlist struck.5 Just as the politics of the nation was split, so too was the sentiment about the war in Southold. John Riddell of the Suffolk Times, urged his readers to join the fight. Henry Reeves of the Republican Watchman held the opposite view and was ardently against both the war and abolition. Reeves, “advocated the “strict” interpretation of the United States Constitution identified with the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian tradition…his basic position rested on the literal sense of the words and phrases of that instrument of government… “The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is.”6 Passionate in his view point, Reeves criticized the government, “…labeling the Administration “nerveless imbeciles,” and “donkeys,” with Secretary of State Seward as the “arch Mephistopheles”, and Abraham Lincoln as the “Illinois ape,” baboon,” and “obscene joker.”7 Within months of the wars outbreak, Reeves came to the attention of federal authorities. On September 3, 1861 Reeves, who had been elected by local Democrats, was on his way to the State Convention in Syracuse. In the Hudson River Railroad ticket office in Manhattan he was approached by two men. After asking his name, the men seized his arms and forcefully carried him out of the station, first to the office of Marshal Robert Murray, then to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. Reeves and his critical newspaper editorials had come to the attention of Secretary of State Seward, who ordered his arrest.8 Caught up in Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus, the federal government was arresting those who publically criticized the administration. Reeves was held with other mostly political Civil War History by Amy Folk, Southold Town Historian prisoners at Fort LaFayette, an island fort in the Hudson River between Brooklyn and Staten Island.9 William Wickham, a fellow democrat, lawyer and former District Attorney of Suffolk County, took over editorship of the paper. A month later William H. Ludlow, former speaker of NYS Assembly and prominent Copperhead traveled to Washington to intercede on Reeve’s behalf.10 After signing an oath of allegiance and a parole of honor, Reeves was released on October 5th and returned home to Greenport to again take up the reins of his newspaper in a quieter less vitriolic manner.11 In Southold by the end of the first year of the war, only 21 men had signed up to fight. As far as Southold was concerned, life aside from news from the distant battlefront, continued on undisturbed. From the spring of 1862 into the beginning of the summer, despite offers of cash bonuses from recruiters, there were only three more enlistments. In July 1862 the Union needed more men to fight. The President sent out a call for the nation to raise 300 thousand volunteers to serve three years in the military. Congress passed a Federal conscription act that, “…all men between the ages of 25 and 35 and all unmarried men between 35 and 45 liable to military duty. 12 This was, “…the first instance of the federal government assuming military draft prerogatives in the United States. The protests made by the governors did not question the president’s authority to order a draft, which at least one source contends was of “dubious legality”, but rather the quotas and time allowed for the recruitment.”13 Stuart Woodford, whose mother Susan was born and raised in Southold, and who had spent summers visiting with her family arrived in August to recruit family and summer friends for a newly formed Infantry group, the 127th. Speaking first in the Southold Presbyterian church, then in each of the hamlets in the town, Woodford enlisted the largest group of recruits from the Southold town area - 109 men, to form Company H. He then went on to recruit men from up and down Long Island and Brooklyn to fill out the group, known by the nick-name the Monitors. 35 men also perhaps inspired by Woodford’s stirring appeals for recruits, but perhaps wanting a flashier uniform and a more battle hardened reputation, volunteered to join the 2nd Battalion Duryee Zouaves also known as the 165th, in September 1861. In September the draft list was begun. The secretary of war divided up the number of recruits needed between the states and notified the governors of their allotment. “Names were procured through a laborious house to house enrollment conducted by government agents. Then a lottery in each congressional district determined who would go to war. Drafted men who presented an “acceptable substitute” or paid 300 dollars were exempted.”14 Southold town had according to the rolls 1,043 draft-able men, 66 aliens, and 49 men who were exempt because they served the town as firemen, postmasters, telegraph operators or railroad workers.15 In the same month, a special town meeting decided that Southold would make good on the US Bounty to all who enlisted from the town or those who had enlisted since the US Bounty ceased after July 2.16 The supervisor was directed to borrow money and to pay the families of all volunteers monthly to help defray their loss of income.17 Civil War History by Amy Folk, Southold Town Historian Late in October, several doctors arrived to examine those on the rolls and issued 113 medical exemptions ranging from varicose veins, to missing body parts, to tuberculosis.18 These exemptions plus the men who had already volunteered left Southold with 744 possible draftees to await the results of the draft lotteries. Even the promise of guaranteed bonus money from the town failed to stir more than eleven men. By the opening of 1863, all of the men of Southold who were inclined to enlist had done so. “I hope the Copperheads will have to close their mouths, or crawl in the dirt & spit forth nothing but dust…” wrote Henry W. Prince of the 127th in a letter to Franklyn Overton in March 1863.19 With the threat of a draft looming over their heads, the following year the town voted to issue 7% bonds to raise bounty money for recruits. At the special town meeting taxpayers agreed to assume the payment to hire enough “volunteers” to fill the town’s quotas for the March 10th draft but directed the supervisor to limit the amount paid to each man at $400. The burden of finding and recruiting to make the quota for the town fell on to the shoulders of Supervisor John O. Ireland.20 When John Henry Young who had enlisted in the 127th NYSV heard about the situation at home, he exclaimed in a letter home, “I was sorry to see the result of the late special town meeting. I was in hopes that this Draft would “fetch’em out” Is the whole town Copperhead? They seem to use every means in their power to prevent their young men from coming into the army. They want to see the Rebellion crushed, but will not lend a helping hand or let any of their friends if they can help it. Aunt Polly is patriotic too and who will say she is not a fighting character! Then why not let one of her sons come to the War? Perhaps William Henry had been better off today if he had come with us. God only knows at any rate it were better to have an arm broke on the Battlefield than on a farm, then he would get a pension.”21 In April, June, July and December the town again was forced to seek out more substitutes for the draft.22 Surprisingly, in comparison to the rest of Long Island- the town had very few men who deserted. According to a study done by Judith Lee Hallock, three percent of men who enlisted from Southold deserted in comparison to a rate of 10% nation-wide.23 All of the financial burdens of the war began to weigh on state and local communities. In February 1865, New York State levied a 2% tax on all real and personal property to pay off state bounties.24 The burden of recruiting draftees and paying monthly supplemental support to the families of volunteers by April 1865 finally forced Southold to vote to raise taxes annually, until the war debt was paid off.25 Mid-April the nation lost some of its naïve and closeness to its political leaders when for the first time in United States history the president was assassinated. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on the 15th at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. Never again would a U.S. president be able to appear in public unburdened with security guards. On May 13, 1865, a month after Lincoln’s death, Lee surrenders and the war is over. It takes until 1871, before Southold’s war debt is finally paid in full. 1 Suffolk Weekly Times, November 8, 1860, 2; Sag Harbor Express, Oct 25, 1860, 2. 2 Sag Harbor Express, October 25, 1860, 2. Civil War History by Amy Folk, Southold Town Historian 3 Bleyer and Hunt. Long Island and the Civil War, 32. 4 Town Historian Records. 5 Bleyer and Hunt offer another possibility as to why so many enlisted in units other than local. “The state usually recruited by companies of one hundred men or regiments of ten companies or one thousand men although in reality, many were shorthanded. The local militias… were unable to recruit sufficient men to serve as volunteer regiments, so local residents were forced to enlist in other units.” 32. 6 Margaret O’Connor Bethauser, Henry A. Reeves Noteworthy but Neglected, 5. 7 Bethauser, 14. 8 Henry Reeves, Republican Watchman, October 26, 1861, page 1. 9 Henry Reeves, Republican Watchman, October 26, 1861, page 1. 10 Bethauser, 17. 11 Henry Reeves, Republican Watchman, October 26, 1861, page 1. 12 Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots, 8. 13 Judith Lee Hallock, The Role of the Community in Civil War Desertion. Civil War History, Vol 29, no 2 June 1983. 123. 14 Bernstein 8. 15 Enrollment of Persons Liable to Military Duty September 4, 1862, original at Smithtown Library. Copy in Town Historian Records. 16 Proceedings of a Special Mass Town meeting. 189. Copy in Town Historian Records. 17 Southold Town Records, Liber H. 19. 18 Military Exemptions Records, held at the Smithtown Library. Oct 30,1862. Copy in Town Historian Records. 19 Helen Prince, Civil War Letters and Diary of Henry W. Prince, 1979, Privately Published 26. 20 Southold Town Records, Liber H. 25-26. Southold Town Record, Proceedings Special Mass Town Meeting. 190 Historian Files. 21 June 22, 1864, Correspondence John Henry Young to Cousin Libbie. Unpublished. In the collection of the Oysterponds Historical Society. 22 Southold Town Records, Liber H. 25-27. Southold Town Records, Proceedings Special Mass Town Meeting. 192,194-195. Historians Office. 23 Judith Lee Hallock, 131. The 3% translates to only four men deserted from Southold. The Town Clerk’s records actually list six men: George H Allyn, Andrew Smith, William E. Williams, Gilbert A Brown, Ezra Clark, Christopher C. Case. The first three men deserted from Staten Island, Brown and Clark deserted late in the war leaving from battlefields, probably the victims of PTSD. Case is listed as a deserter on the Town records, but does not appear to have ever mustered into any military unit. 24 Chauncey M. Depew, Chap. 56 Laws of New York-By Authority. Copy in Town Historian Records. Real property is usually defined as real estate and buildings that are on it. Personal property is everything else that is not connected to land. 25 Southold Town Records, Liber H 32.