A Raw Recruit's War Experiences

by Ansel D. Nickerson

But, as we all know, the groceryman proved a false prophet. When the news of the attack upon Fort Sumter came, it found me setting type in the “Gazette and Chronicle” printing office in Pawtucket, where I had been regularly employed as apprentice and journeyman since 1846. “All work and no play” had made Jack a pretty dull boy indeed, and the war promised a vacation, temporary or permanent, which I had long been seeking, and which I at once made up my mind that I would avail myself of at the earliest possible opportunity. As the war news became more and more interesting, filling the paper nearly full every week to the exclusion of less important matters, I became more and more determined to give the country the benefit of my services. Very many of my associates had enlisted and gone “to the front,” and I could not satisfy myself with any good reason for longer remaining at home when men were so much needed to defend the honor of the old flag and assist in upholding the integrity of the government in its day of greatest peril. In the language of that good old hymn, I realized that

“I can but perish if I go,”

and said:

“I am resolved to try.”

And I did. With what result will be seen.

I expected to encounter opposition at home, and consequently I kept my plans to myself. A year had passed away, and yet I was not enrolled among the “boys in blue.” Three hundred thousand nine months’ volunteers were called for by President Lincoln, and proclamation was made that if the necessary quota from each State was not filled by the fifteenth of August, 1862, a draft would be resorted to. I concluded to step in out of the draft. War meetings were held almost every night in the old Armory Hall on High street in Pawtucket. I was a regular attendant in the capacity of reporter for the newspaper upon which I was employed. The speakers were generally men past middle life, whose principal business seemed to be to urge the young men to volunteer, and not to volunteer themselves. One evening, for some reason, there was a dearth of speakers, and after a while some one in the audience called out my name, and soon the call became so loud and so general that I was compelled to respond. I ascended the platform, and, as nearly as I can remember, I spoke as follows: “Young men, one thing has especially impressed me this evening. Every speaker who has preceded me has said to you, ‘Go!’ Now, boys, I say Come!” and turning to a recruiting officer who sat on my right, I said, “Put my name down!” I think it was the shortest speech I ever made; at any rate, I know it was the best received. There seemed to be no bounds to the enthusiasm which was manifested, and the recruiting business in Pawtucket at once received a “boom.”

After the meeting was over and congratulations were ended, I went home. Now began the “tug of war.” The house was silent—very silent—and so was I. I didn’t sleep much that night. In my wakefulness I concluded not to say anything to my family about what I had done, but leave her to learn the news from some other source. But this little scheme was upset very early in the morning by the lady of the house asking me concerning the war meeting of the previous evening, and the names of the speakers. After giving her such general information as I possessed, I hesitatingly informed her that she had had the honor of entertaining one of the speakers over night. Woman like, she then wanted to know if anybody enlisted. Things were getting pretty close home now. The ice must be broken. I told her that several persons enlisted, and gave her the names of some of them; and, after a moment’s hesitation, I said, “I don’t know what you will think, or say, when I tell you that I was one of them, and that I am going to the war.” Judge of my surprise, and of my own depreciated estimate of what I had previously considered my great patriotism, when she exclaimed, “Well, all I have got to say is, that if I had been a man, I should have gone long ago.” The ice was pretty effectually broken now, and what I feared might prove a council of war, was turned into a council of peace. That speech settled the whole business for me, and I was ready, yea, anxious, to shoulder my musket and go “to the front” immediately; in fact, I wished I had gone before. Woman’s work in the war! I fear it has not been fully appreciated or justly acknowledged. The patriotism, the heroism and the sacrifice were not confined to the soldiers. They knew little of the inexpressible longings, the fears, the prayers, the yearning hopes, the terrible suspense, of those at home who loved them. What pen can truthfully describe the weary watching and waiting of the wives and mothers, the daughters and sisters, during those long four years of fire and blood? God bless them, one and all!

Several weeks elapsed between the time of enlistment and going into camp. At last we were ordered to report on Dexter Training Ground, in Providence, the name of the camp being “Camp Stevens,” in honor of Major General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, who was killed September 1st, 1862, in the battle of Chantilly, Virginia, while leading his division in a charge. To very many of the members of the regiment, their first military experience began on Camp Stevens, and truthfulness to history compels me to add that with no small number of the enlisted men it ended there, they being unable to “pass muster,” or, in other words, to endure the severe ordeal to which they were subjected by the chief mustering officer, Captain William Silvey, of the regular army. I had entertained fears from the start that I would be “thrown out” on account of a supposed pulmonary difficulty. I “braced up” as best I could for the examination. Captain Silvey looked me squarely in the face as I stood in line, and placing one of his hands upon my breast, he struck with the other a blow which seemed hard enough to fell an ox, and then remarked “All right!” I could not have been made more happy than I was by his decision if he had knocked me down. He settled one thing at any rate which had long been a disputed question in our family, namely, that my breathing apparatus was “all right.”

After the examinations were concluded, the “lucky ones” were sworn in and marched down to the quartermaster’s department to receive their equipments. The “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war” had never possessed any great charm for me. I had belonged to an engine company and a Sunday-school, but never to a military company; in fact, until I went on to Camp Stevens I do not remember ever to have had a musket in my hand. This will serve to explain why, when all of the members of my company had been supplied with arms, the officer in command called attention to the fact that I had my gun wrong side before, my hand grasping the lock or hammer instead of the “guard.” The suggestion that I should join the “awkward squad” was sufficiently exasperating to have almost induced me to throw up my commission.

But a still further humiliation was in store for me. At our first drill in the manual of arms, among the other orders given was, “ram cartridge,” when the officer in charge discovered that I had inserted the wrong end of the ramrod into the muzzle of the gun, I having found the hollow space in the large end very convenient in which to insert the ball of my little finger in sending the imaginary cartridge to its destination. Fortunately for me, no further opportunities for demonstrating my fitness for promotion in the “awkward squad” were furnished me, and my leisure hours were spent in acquiring proficiency in drill. How well I succeeded will appear.