Rev. Hiram Eddy
It is to be noted that at the same time that this endeavor was being made to fill the ranks of a regiment for three years' service, recruiting was going on with almost equal vigor under the call for men to serve for nine months, and three full companies were contributed by Litchfield County to the Twenty-eighth Infantry, which bore a valiant part in the campaign against Port Hudson in the following summer. It is possible to gain some idea of how the great tides of war were felt throughout the whole land by imagining the stir and turmoil thus brought, in the summer of 1862, into this remote and peaceful quarter by the engrossing struggle.
In the last week in August, the necessary number of recruits having been secured, the different companies were brought together in Litchfield and marched to the hill overlooking the town which had been selected as the location of Camp Dutton, named in honor of Lieutenant Henry M. Dutton, who had fallen in battle at Cedar Mountain shortly before. Lieutenant Dutton, the son of Governor Henry Dutton, was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1857, and was practising law in Litchfield when he volunteered for service on the organization of the Fifth Connecticut Infantry.
The interest and pride of the county in its own regiment was naturally of the strongest; the family that had no son or brother or cousin in its ranks seemed almost the exception, and Camp Dutton became at once the goal of a ceaseless stream of visitors from far and near, somewhat to the prejudice of those principles of military order and discipline which had now to be acquired. The preparation and drill which employed the scant two weeks spent here were supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel Kellogg, fresh from McClellan's army in Virginia, and he was afterwards reported as delivering the opinion that if there were nine hundred men in the camp, there were certainly nine thousand women most of the time.
With all possible haste, preparations were made for an early departure, but there was opportunity for a formal mustering of the regiment in Litchfield, when a fine set of colors was presented by William Curtis Noyes, Esq., in behalf of his wife. A horse for the Colonel was given also, by the Hon. Robbins Battell, saddle and equipments by Judge Origen S. Seymour, and a sword by the deputies who had served under Sheriff Wessells.
Presentation of colors, September 10th, 1862
On September 15th (1862), the eight hundred and eighty-nine officers and men now mustered as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry broke camp, made their first march to East Litchfield station, and started for the South, with the entire population for miles around gathered to witness, not as a holiday spectacle, but as a farewell, grave with significance, the departure of the county regiment.