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 4 Recruiting Wars F a l l 1 8 6 1 Competitors and Complainers The days of the Ashtabula County fair of 1861 represented high times in Jefferson. At last the folk of the village had something to crow about. The Giddings Regiment was off to a rousing start. When the Jefferson company and those of many of its neighbors were excluded from the ninety-day war, the residents had felt besieged. Now they could stand straight up and answer, “Please announce, Mr. Leader [a rival newspaper], that Jefferson, in the county of Ashtabula with less than three hundred voters, has now in the tented field seventy-three men, being one-fourth part of its voting population.”1 Not all these men had made their way into the Twenty-Ninth Ohio, although a fair number had. But there was a worm turning in the apple of the people’s hope that their regiment would be filled quickly. The first three companies already at the fairgrounds had come in only partially filled, and none of the many promised companies had appeared yet. That recruiting might prove difficult was not yet generally admitted, but Maj. Thomas Clark had sensed the approach of the problem even during the euphoria of the fair. He reported to the state adjutant general that the Giddings Regiment was not filling as rapidly as he had anticipated.2 Some of the problems standing in the way of completing the regiment were beyond the Jefferson group’s control, and some could be laid at their doorstep. Just as the Twenty-Ninth Ohio’s recruiting campaign was getting underway, an observer in Ashtabula city surveyed the level of interest in enlistment and remarked, “The war spirit here is gradually dying out, and although there are plenty of chances to enlist, still the rolls are empty. A patriotic few endeavored to instill into the somewhat dormant minds of our citizens a little patriotic fire, but the reports of many of the three months men cooled it, in a much less time than it took to get it up to the sticking point.”3 A man named Gifford had recruiting orders to raise forty men for Captain Kinney’s battery in the town of Ashtabula, but after days of trying to persuade men to join, he had yet to enlist so much as one man.4 John F. Morse was trying to get up a company for the Giddings Regiment in Painesville . He didn’t get far into his recruiting speech when former soldiers of the Seventh and Nineteenth Regiments stood up as a group and began loudly denouncing the government for failing to pay them.5 Morse had been embarrassed by the outburst and his meeting nearly ruined. There were many more veterans lounging on the streets outside the hall complaining of unfair treatment. Morse estimated that there were several hundred ninety-day soldiers hanging around Painesville, and if they were allowed to continue spreading their discontent at this crucial time, recruiting in these parts would drag to a full stop. Mustering and pay officers were already in Painesville doing their best to get things moving, but it would take a while. Morse would succeed in filling up his company, despite 40 Recruiting Wars the griping of the ninety-day men, and would take it into Camp Giddings as Company F, but his road would be rockier on their account. Even after the veterans were paid off, they did not stampede into the Twenty-Ninth Ohio. The regiment’s founders had thought every Reserve veteran of the Nineteenth Ohio would be inspired by the chance to right the wrongs done them and rushed to enlist in their outfit. They did not. Ultimately, only one hundred veterans of the Nineteenth Ohio enlisted in the Giddings Regiment, every one of them a valuable commodity and appreciated, but hardly in numbers the promoters had expected.6 For those who did join the Giddings project, it was a quick turnaround from their old outfit into the new, just enough time for them to visit home and say hello and goodbye to the folks before hurrying off to the rendezvous at Jefferson. With the fair in full swing, the Nineteenth Ohio’s soldiers were paid at last, and in bright new gold pieces.7 The mayor of Ashtabula had anticipated that ready cash and soldiers might not mix, and he ordered the saloons and groggeries closed until the soldiers left town. Many veterans had gathered in...

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