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1 Chapter 1 Columbia County Goes to War, 1861–1862 Three days after Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 three-month militia members to suppress the Southern rebellion. Pennsylvania’s quota was fourteen regiments of infantry, or about 14,000 soldiers. But the response to the insult to the national flag was so great that the commonwealth sent twenty-five regiments to war within the space of ten hectic days. Many Democrats who had opposed the election of a Republican, “abolitionist” president put aside their differences to unite against the rebellion.1 One of the Pennsylvania counties that remained strongly Democratic was the centrally located Columbia County, astride the main branch of the Susquehanna River southwest of Wilkes-Barre. White settlers had begun moving into the future county in the 1770s, when the Susquehanna was the western limit of European settlement. The majority were Scots-Irish and Germans, with a smattering of Welsh and Dutch families. Originally part of a mammoth Northumberland County, Columbia was created in 1813 by taking twelve townships from Northumberland. Danville became the county seat of this new county, which was further divided when Montour County was carved from it in 1850. By that time, the courthouse had been transferred to Bloomsburg and it remained there after Montour was created. The county ’s main occupations were farming and lumbering, with a few coal mines in the southern townships.2 Since its creation, Columbia County had generally voted along Democratic lines. The county had gone for James Buchanan in the 1856 presidential election, then voted for Democrat William F. Packer for governor in 1857 and Henry Foster in the hotly contested gubernatorial election of 1860. Later that year, county residents voted for president, giving Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge 2,367 votes, while Lincoln received 1,873 votes. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and John Bell, running on the National Union Party ticket, received only one hundred votes between them.3 2 The Fishing Creek Confederacy The newspapers of Columbia County were heavily Democratic in tone. The oldest of the three active Bloomsburg papers was the Columbia Democrat, which had begun publication in 1837. Levi Tate was the editor in 1860, having purchased the paper in 1847. Tate, originally from Lycoming County, was a staunch Democrat, as clearly shown in his editorials. A second Democratic paper , the Star of the North, had appeared in 1849. Williamson H. Jacoby was the Star’s editor. Finally, the Columbia County Republican had begun circulation in March 1857, with Dr. Palemon John as editor. There was a single newspaper in Berwick, the Gazette, which had begun publication in 1853 as the Investigator. Levi Tate purchased this paper in 1855 and changed its name. Tate sold the paper three years later. When the war began, Jeremiah S. Sanders was the owner.4 The two Bloomsburg Democratic papers favored Breckinridge in the 1860 election and,like other such newspapers across the country,doubted presidentelect Lincoln’s words that he would not interfere with slavery. Many Democrats equated Republicans and abolitionists. They were the ones to blame for the increasing sectional problems, trumpeted the Democratic papers. Slavery was legal under the Constitution, and if abolitionists were muzzled, the country would be in much better shape. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 must be upheld and Southerners allowed to reclaim their property. Abolitionists were acting against the law by shielding runaways. However, the Democratic Party was beginning to splinter in 1860. The Democratic State Convention met in Reading on February 29 to select the delegation that would attend the national party’s April convention in Charleston, South Carolina. That delegation would pledge its support to the presidential candidate selected there. But the rancor and partisan bickering in Charleston derailed the selection of any candidate. The party’s leaders instructed delegates to reassemble in Baltimore in June to resolve this issue. However, this convention split into two factions, one of which nominated Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, the other Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Pennsylvania’s delegation reflected the national split between the two candidates.5 Editor Tate of the Columbia Democrat instructed his readers to cast their votes for Breckinridge, using two columns to provide a detailed list of reasons the Kentuckian was more qualified to be president than Douglas. Breckinridge was the “only candidate in the field worthy the confidence and support of the party; and the only one that can save the party from destruction...

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