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1 Introduction BY THE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, NORTHERN MEN ANSWERED the call to arms during the Civil War, moved by patriotism, a sense of duty, idealism, peer pressure, or—sometimes—just a longing for adventure or a desire for the hefty bounties paid to some volunteers. Most were young men, with twenty-five as the mean age for more than a million Federal soldiers. However, the largest age classes were those just eighteen, followed by the nineteen-year-olds.1 As a youth of eighteen in 1861, Edward Woolsey Bacon was not unusual in leaving his home in quiet New Haven, Connecticut, to serve his country. Few, however, of any age or position experienced such a panoramic exposure to the conflict as Bacon. In the navy, he chased Confederate commerce raiders around the Caribbean and down to South America, endured boring blockade duty, and took part in riverine warfare on the Mississippi. As an infantry officer, he perspired near Charleston, South Carolina, fought and shivered in the trenches on the Petersburg-Richmond front in Virginia, and chafed at occupation duty in “wretched” Texas. He emerged unscathed after shore batteries targeted his ship, when a Confederate ironclad shot up his Mississippi squadron, and when mortar and artillery shells, snipers, and ordinary enemy riflemen sent missiles his way in Virginia. With a candor and honesty not often found in Civil War letters, he confessed his fear during battle in letters to friends (though not to family). More agreeably, during his naval service he strolled the streets of colorful foreign ports, attended fetes with English officers and their ladies, met diplomats , and chatted with famous admirals and captains. Hundreds of men served in both the army and the navy during the war, though most had first joined the army as ordinary soldiers. Some volunteered for naval service, thinking they would have an easier time of it aboard ship, enjoying three good meals a day and a comfortable bed every night; many more found themselves involuntarily transferred to sea service when the navy ran short of sailors. Again, Bacon was twice over an exception: he entered the navy first and he was a captain’s clerk, associating with officers and sometimes acting as one.2 2 Introduction The Rev. Leonard Bacon, his father, was a prominent New England clergyman and an abolitionist, albeit a moderate voice in that movement. In a compilation of his writings about slavery published in 1846, the elder Bacon asserted that if Southern slavery was “not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Abraham Lincoln famously repeated those words in 1864. Yet both Bacon and Lincoln placed the nation’s unity first and foremost. For them and most Northerners, preservation of the Union was the primary goal, contrary to the wishes of fervent abolitionists or the Radical Republicans in the Congress.3 Undoubtedly, the father’s thinking and stance on slavery and the war influenced the sons. Yet throughout the war, Edward W. Bacon never suggested he fought to free the slaves. He spoke of duty to the country, though he sometimes wavered on that score when he wearied of it all. Older brothers Theodore and Francis (Frank) answered Lincoln’s first call for troops, marching off with the 1st and 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Infantry regiments, both three-month units. Young Edward enviously watched them go. He had some military training at a private academy and drilled some Yale men when the war started. Probably his father and family curbed his initial impulses to somehow accompany his brothers, fearing that his health would suffer if he became a soldier. They thought sea service far more suitable and beneficial, apparently believing that would assure him plenty of fresh, healthy ocean air, dry quarters, and regular meals.4 Reality differed sharply from those expectations. True enough, plenty of fresh air circulated on deck at sea, but below, the ventilation was poor and the air was musty and damp, filled with many unpleasant odors. Sleeping on deck might be healthier, except when it snowed or rained or the wind blew spray everywhere. As for the food, generally the daily diet was more regular and better than a soldier’s fare. Still, scurvy often afflicted naval personnel because they lacked enough fresh vegetables or fruit to ward off that often deadly illness. While Bacon fared better as a captain’s clerk, meals aboard ship frequently were monotonous and uninviting.5 On the USS Vanderbilt, a large side-wheel steamer that scoured the Atlantic for Confederate raiders, a...

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