Before these two regiments were organized came the President's call for three hundred thousand militia to serve nine months, under which Vermont's quota was nearly five thousand. The five regiments were quickly raised and sent forward, and to three of them, just before their term of enlistment expired, fell a full share of the glories of Gettysburg, under the intrepid leader, General Stannard. The charge of his Vermont Brigade beat back Pickett's furious assault, and decided the fate of the day.[115] Once more the brave little commonwealth was called on to furnish a regiment, and the 17th was sent to the front with ranks yet unfilled. Its third battalion drill was held on the battlefield of the Wilderness. The untried troops were hurled at once into the thick of the fight and suffered fearful loss, and henceforth were almost continually engaged with the enemy till the fall of Richmond.
Besides these seventeen regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, the State furnished for the defense of the Union three light batteries and three companies of sharpshooters, who well sustained the ancient renown of the marksmen whom Stark and Warner led, and at the close of the war Vermont stood credited with nearly thirty-four thousand men. Thus unstintingly did she devote her strength to the preservation of the Union to which she had been so reluctantly admitted. What manner of men they were, Sheridan testified when, two years after the war, standing beneath their tattered banners in Representatives' Hall at Montpelier, he said: "I have never commanded troops in whom I had more confidence than I had in the Vermont troops, and I do not know but I can say that I never commanded troops in whom I had as much confidence as those of this gallant State," and the torn and faded battle-flags under which he stood told more eloquently than words how bravely they had been borne through the peril of many battles, and honorably returned to the State that gave them.
When, after four weary years, the war came to its successful close, the decimated regiments of Green Mountain Boys returned to their State, received a joyful but sad welcome, and then, with all the embattled host of Union volunteers, dissolved into the even, uneventful flow of ordinary life. Notwithstanding the remoteness of the State from the arena of war, Vermont suffered a rebel raid from a quarter whence of old her enemies had often come, though of right none should come now. A majority of the people of Canada were in warm sympathy with the rebellion, their government was indifferent, and the Dominion swarmed with disloyal Americans, who were continually plotting to aid their brethren at the front by covert attacks in the rear. The federal government was on its guard, but a blow fell suddenly at an unexpected point.
On the 19th of October, 1864, while Vermont troops under Sheridan were routing the rebels at Cedar Creek, a rather unusual number of strangers appeared in the village of St. Albans, a few miles from the Canadian border. Moving about singly or in small groups, and clad in citizen's dress, they attracted no particular attention, till, at a preconcerted signal, three small parties of them entered the banks, and with cocked and leveled pistols forced the officials to deliver up all the moneys in their keeping. Other armed men in the streets at once seized and placed under guard every citizen found astir, while some attempted to fire the town by throwing vials of so-called Greek fire into some of the principal buildings. Having possessed themselves of the treasure in the banks, amounting to two hundred thousand dollars, in specie, bills, and bonds, the party took horses from the livery stables, and rode out of town, firing as they went a wanton fusillade which wounded several persons, but happily killed only a recreant New Englander who was in sympathy with their cause. They proved to be a band of rebel soldiers, commanded by a Lieutenant Young, who held a commission in the Confederate army. They beat a hurried retreat with their booty beyond the line, whither they were pursued by a hastily gathered party of mounted men under the lead of Captain Conger, who had served in the Union army. None of the raiders were taken, but later fourteen were captured in Canada, with $87,000 of the booty, by Captain Conger's men, acting under orders of General Dix, and aided by Canadian officials. During their brief imprisonment they were entertained as honored guests in the Montreal jail, and, after undergoing the farce of a trial in a Canadian court of justice, they were set at liberty amid cheers, which evinced the warm sympathy of the neutral Canadians. It appeared in the testimony of a detective that Colonel Armitinger, second in command of the Montreal militia, was aware of the contemplated raid, but took no measures to prevent it. "Let them go on," he said, "and have a fight on the frontier; it is none of our business; we can lose nothing by it."
The affair formed an important point of consideration in the Geneva arbitration, and Secretary Stanton declared it one of the important events of the war,—"not so much as transferring in part the scenes and horrors of war to a peaceful, loyal State, but as leading to serious and dangerous complications with Great Britain, through the desires and efforts of the Southern people to involve Canada, and through her Britain, in a war on behalf of their Southern friends."[116] The unfriendly attitude which the Canadians held toward our government, throughout the struggle for its maintenance, might be profitably considered whenever the frequently arising project of annexation comes to the surface.
The Fenian irruptions of 1866 and 1870, abortive except for the panic which they created in Canada, with more than the ordinary certainty of poetic justice, formed their base of operations at St. Albans, the point of rebel attack in Vermont.
Impelled by the military spirit which the war had aroused, the legislature made provision for the organization of a uniformed volunteer militia, to which every township furnished its quota. Under the instruction of veterans of the war, the militia made commendable progress in drill and discipline. But after a few years it was disbanded, and the commonwealth has drifted back into almost the condition of unpreparation which existed at the beginning of the war. For the most part, the young men who have become of military age since those troublous days are more unlearned than their mothers in the school of the soldier.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] G. G. Benedict, Vermont in the Civil War.
[112] The limits of this work preclude detailed account of the noble services of Vermont troops, which are fully and graphically related in G. G. Benedict's valuable work, Vermont in the Civil War. Of many noble examples of heroic self-devotion where Vermonters unflinchingly endured the storm of fire, the record of the 5th regiment at Savage's Station is memorable,—in the space of twenty minutes, every other man in the line was killed or wounded. Company E went into the fight with 59 officers and privates, of whom only seven came out unhurt and 25 were killed or mortally wounded. Five brothers named Cummings, a cousin of the same name, and a brother-in-law, all recruited on one street of the historic town of Manchester, were members of this company. All but one were killed or mortally wounded in this action, and he received a wound so severe that he was discharged by special order of the Secretary of War.