When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

During the Civil War, there was a class of so-called "skedaddlers;" fellows undeserving the name of citizens, who, when the Republic called for their services, ran away to Canada, or, gaining some remote covert in the forest, defied the few officials who could be spared from the front, to enforce law at home. But to the honor of our people it can be truthfully said, that these weak-hearts were comparatively few in number. Such there were, however; and to a party of them the "skedaddlers' fort" owes its existence. It was built at about the time the first "draft" of men was ordered in 1862. There were two or three leading spirits, and altogether a gang of eighteen or twenty men banded together in that vicinity to elude the enrollment. They "skedaddled" one night—that was the time this ugly word originated—and took refuge in the woods with their guns; and not long after, it is supposed, they built this log fortalice in the depths of the wilderness.

In the dubious state of public feeling at that time, the people of the county did not say much, directly, about the skedaddlers. No one, not of the gang, knew who or how many were at the fort. At one time it was rumored that there were a hundred armed men in the woods, probably an exaggeration. Several farmers lost young cattle, which it was supposed were stolen to supply food for the fort. One story was, that a number of cows had been driven into the woods, to furnish a supply of milk. It is hardly probable that these men could have been so ignorant as to think that they would be able to resist the power of the government, if official action were taken against them, although the fact of their building a fort gave color to such a supposition. The wildest boasts were made, indirectly, through sympathizers with them. Ten thousand troops, it was asserted, could not drive them out of the woods! The skedaddlers, it was said, were about to set up a new State there in the wild lands and declare themselves free of the United States! Another threat was that they would get "set off" and join Canada. If a Federal soldier showed his blue coat in those woods (so rumor said), he would suddenly meet a fate so strange that nobody could describe it!

Some months passed, when a boy named Samuel Murch—an older brother of Willis and Ben—who trapped in the woods every fall, discovered the fort one day and reconnoitered it. He had followed a cow's tracks up from the cleared land. Several men were seen by him about the stockade, and there was a large camp-fire burning outside, with kettles hanging from a pole over it.

Every two or three days thereafter, Sam Murch, as he trapped, would go around for a sly peep at the "fort;" and he kept people informed as to appearances there.

It chanced that in October, that fall, a young volunteer, named Adney Deering, came home on a furlough. He had been wounded slightly in the leg, by a fragment of shell.

Adney, who was a bright, handsome young fellow, then in his twentieth year, looked very spruce in his blue uniform. He was brimful of patriotism and gave graphic accounts of battles, with warlike ardor. When he heard of the "skedaddlers" and their fort, he expressed the greatest indignation and contempt for them. At a husking party one evening, several of the young men proposed that Adney should go with them on a deer hunt in the "great woods," before he went back to his regiment. Someone then remarked that, if he went, he had better not wear his uniform, as threats had been made of shooting the first soldier who showed his head in the woods. This aroused Adney's ire. "Let them shoot!" he exclaimed. "I will wear my uniform anywhere I choose to go! I will go all through those woods and walk right up to the door of their 'fort!'"

Several of the older men then advised him not to go near the "fort."

"Pooh!" cried Adney. "I used to know many of those fellows. They are a set of cowards. Ten to one, they wouldn't dare fire at a soldier!"

Others who were present thought they would dare; and Adney became excited. "It is a disgrace," he exclaimed, "that those skulkers are allowed to harbor there!" And he offered to wager that he could take six soldiers and drive them out, without firing a single cartridge.

One or two of his friends laughed at this boast, which so exasperated Adney that he instantly declared that he could drive them out alone. All laughed still more heartily at that. The laughter only stimulated Adney to make good his rather loud boast, if possible; and the result was, that he hit on the following stratagem for routing the "skedaddlers." There was no lack of drums in the neighborhood, for in those days the boys, who were not old enough to volunteer, had fond dreams of going to the War as drummer-boys. Adney went about privately next morning with Sam Murch and induced three or four young fellows to take drums and go with him into the woods that afternoon. Under Sam's lead the little party arrived in the vicinity of the "fort," shortly before nightfall. Adney then stationed one of the boys with his drum at a point to the northeast of the log fortress, at a distance of about half a mile from it, in the thick woods. Another was posted farther around to the north; and still another to the northwest.