The Story of the Raising and Organization of a Regiment of Volunteers in 1862 / Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Commandery of the District of Columbia, War Papers 46

by Ellis Spear

Amongst those raising companies were young lawyers who had perhaps learned to draw an indictment, but who would not then have been able to draw anything in the military line, unless it were rations, or the enemy's fire. There were schoolmasters whose only qualifications for getting men to the front and keeping them there, were based on experience in teaching young ideas how to shoot. There were farmers, clerks, and fellows just out of college, some graduates and some undergraduates, but with not a tried or known military qualification in the whole squad. I mistake; there was one who recruited a company, and who had been in the Mexican War, but he was afterward found to have forgotten most that he had ever learned, and was soon found also unable, in the matter of legs, to keep up with the procession. And there was another who had had experience in an earlier regiment raised in 1861, but he resigned after his first battle. However, with these miscellaneous qualifications, unaided by experience, the embryo officers worked energetically to enlist the men. The work was largely, but not wholly, of the button-holing order. It was not unattended with exciting incidents. Anxious mothers met the recruiting officers sometimes in tears and sometimes in wrath. One such, I remember, drove him from the premises with a pitchfork. It was the first charge he had met and he retreated. The young man, however, got his recruit. The method of recruiting at that time would not bear strict investigation. It shared in the general and unavoidable slip-shodness and haste which marked the whole work of raising great armies out of an undrilled and unmilitary population, and on short notice. Troops in large numbers were needed and that urgently. Political considerations forbade drafting. They must be raised by volunteering. The inducements were bounties to the men and commissions to the officers. He who could raise a company in the least time was looked upon with the greatest favor and, other things being equal, got the earliest letter in the alphabet of the regiment. The recruiting officer did not know what kind of a man, of what physical or moral fibre, the service required, and had no opportunity to learn. His object was to get his hundred men as quickly as possible; and provided the recruit had limbs, organs, and dimensions, that was enough. The care of the Governor of the State, and usually his knowledge, went also no further. He had the State's quota to fill, and was most concerned to fill it as early and as easily as possible. The average examining surgeon had no more knowledge of the business than the recruiting officer, and was inclined to take the patriotism of the volunteer as conclusive evidence of bodily soundness. The mustering officer mustered in the lump, what the recruiting officer had gathered and the surgeon had passed.

So there was small effort at sifting. The results were sometimes even ludicrous. One fellow, too short, was passed in high-heeled shoes, and grew shorter as time and his shoes wore on; but he made an excellent soldier. Another passed muster in a black beard, which soon after disclosed an ever widening zone of grey, and he became a veteran prematurely. More obscure bodily defects developed on the first hard campaign, and speedily furnished ample material for the hospital and pension roll. However, by hook or crook the ten companies were raised, and from various quarters were transported at the Government's expense, to the camp where they were to be organized into a regiment. There was some grumbling on account of having to ride in a freight car on the part of men who afterwards, many times, would have very gladly availed themselves of that jolting method of transportation. At the rendezvous the company first to arrive found neither quarters nor rations, and therefore marched into the city, woke up the Mayor, and then relied on his patriotic charity. But the later arrivals fared better, and there was plenty of beef and bread.

The Governor, when he saw the enlistment rolls, and heard that the men had been placed in camp at the rendezvous, said to himself and his counsellors: "These fellows who have recruited so many men and have actually landed them in camp must have military qualifications," and straightway he commissioned them all. Strictly speaking, however, it was not straightway, but as soon as the clerks could fill out the commissions and the Governor found time to sign them.

All these assembled recruits and expectant officers presented when in camp the general appearance of a town meeting. But one uniform was to be seen; that was of the gentleman who had seen service in the regiment of 1861; the uniform of the Mexican veteran evidently had been worn out long since. However, soon the Major came who had seen some service as a captain in an earlier regiment, and who had succeeded in getting himself transferred with an increased rank; leave of absence and promotion at the same stroke. He wore a uniform, but looked lonesome. However, he had seen a camp and had been in a regiment, and had some ideas of what ought to be done. He organized a guard whose only weapons at first were those given by nature or borrowed from the wood pile. His first officer of the day, in a brown cutaway, striped trowsers, and a silk hat, bore as insignia of his office a part of a military weapon, now discarded, but at that early date in use, and known as a ramrod. If there were a sword in camp, excepting those of the major commanding and the veteran of '61, its owner must have concealed it, perhaps for fear of applications to borrow. Imagine the guard mounting! the difficulties of getting into line; no two hats alike; no uniforms and no two suits alike, and the officer of the day in costume approximating that of a Quaker, and with a ramrod for a sword! The orders were of a nature of explanation and conference, and were the result of an agreement between the officers and men. To the credit of all concerned it must be said that these agreements were faithfully carried out, and if any fellow presumed to disobey the officer of the guard after due remonstrance, he was liable to be knocked down and perhaps kicked, according to the gravity of the offence. But there were no accidents from fire-arms. Shot-guns had been left at home and Springfield muskets had not arrived. Clothing arrived in boxes in advance of the quartermaster, but lack of quartermaster was a small matter. One of the captains (since a distinguished lawyer), was detailed to attend to the business of distributing the clothing, and the invoices and vouchers were long afterwards, I believe, made up by counting noses and multiplying that factor by the number of articles properly allowed each man. By good luck or the favor of Providence rations soon became plenty. There was no canned roast beef nor those other luxuries much advertised long afterwards, as we all know, but there was salt beef in abundance and bread and potatoes and coffee. The country boys sorely missed their daily pie, but there was no grumbling; the beef and potatoes were cooked in the company's kitchen, and such were the innate good manners of the cooks that the officers were served first out of the rations of the men.

But I anticipate. Prior to the issue of the clothing, and while the affairs of the camp were conducted in this go-as-you please manner, more civil than military, one evening the Colonel arrived, a West Pointer, and recently from service in the regular army in the field. At once there seemed to be a general impression throughout the camp, which cannot perhaps be expressed better than by the use of a phrase common on that ship-building coast, "that there was the devil to pay and no pitch hot."

The Colonel, a thoroughly trained soldier, saw things, to him new and strange, and perhaps with a prejudiced eye. It was his first experience with volunteers, and he found them in their most immature condition. The respectable citizen who seemed to be half loafing, half on guard at the Headquarters' tent did not salute, and, in fact, had nothing military to salute with, but cheerfully remarked "How do you do, Colonel." Him the Colonel regarded as a villain of the deepest dye and perhaps as a fool into the bargain. But this was all of a piece with the general appearance of the camp, so far as the Colonel saw it. Once in the tent he sent an orderly disguised as an honest citizen of the State, and who did not know, in fact, that he was an orderly, for the officer of the day. When that friend appeared, the Colonel propounded questions to him which he had never heard before, and never dreamed of. If the Colonel had inquired about hexameter verse or the volume of the cycloid, he might have obtained perhaps prompt and correct answers. But concerning the details of guard mounting and the duties of his office, the embryo Captain and Officer of the Guard was as ignorant as a spring chicken; and after some fruitless pursuit of information the Colonel expressed the opinion that it was "A hell of a regiment," and terminated the interview. The officer of the day went out with the impression that he had smelled something sulphurous, and that the Colonel was correct in his location of the regiment.

However, the men were speedily put into uniform, company books were distributed, and there was a scramble, under pressure from Headquarters, for information as to tactics and army regulations. Commissions for the officers came from the Governor, and uniforms from the tailor; the mustering officer appeared, and these miscellaneous gentlemen of various previous occupations and training, suddenly became officers and men, in the army of the United States, tailor-made and Governor-made.

Probably the parchments and the textile fabrics had been selected with quite as much care and discrimination as the raw material which they covered and designated. Certainly the commissions and uniforms were made by rule and in accordance with the army regulations. The officers, so far, had simply happened.

The diverse effect of all these new clothes was remarkable. Of course there was no such blaze of glory as that which now appears upon the Avenue on occasions of official display; but compared with the sober drabs of civil life, the blue cloth with the gold buttons and the new shoulder-straps were comparatively gorgeous. Some whose youth was more easily affected by the unusual display assumed airs of importance; others wore their honors with meekness, and some went about with a settled determination expressed upon their faces to attend to business and to ignore as far as possible these honors and glories thus suddenly thrust upon them. The camp put on a military appearance, and the regiment, if not a lion, was at least clothed in the skin of that formidable beast. Arms and equipments were procured for two companies, and there were feeble attempts to drill. Company K, blessed with an officer of some experience, went forward with a bound, and the blind leaders of the blind in other companies groped on. A drum corps was organized, if that could be said to be organized in which every member drummed or fifed independently of all others.

The Adjutant and Sergeant-Major were made out of the same raw material, and in a few days the regiment reached that astounding perfection of drill which permitted it to get into line and go from line into column and the reverse. The sound of men counting off, "1, 2," "1, 2," "1, 2," was heard throughout the camp, and that wonderful complication in which No. 2 was perpetually stepping to the right of No. 1, was a daily occurrence, and finally came to be understood. Of course the line was not at first the shortest distance between two fixed points, and the process of going from line into column resembled a convulsion.