Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice, and Survival

Epilogue

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 Connecticut’s experience during the Civil War offers a window into a remarkable period in the state’s history. Perhaps never in Connecticut’s long past was there a time that revealed more division and more commitment. The war represented a national rift, which also played itself out within the state and its towns and cities. Connecticut’s citizens both reviled the war to preserve the Union and reveled in it. Their disagreements were often violent. In the end, the state’s support for the Lincoln administration depended upon the often narrow success of the Republicans and their critical attention to party politics. The most serious events were the elections of 1860 and 1863, in which a loss by Governor Buckingham could have spelled disaster for Connecticut’s involvement in the war. The voting revealed the harrowing, razor-thin margin of support for the war. For those who did come to the Union standard, the war demanded a striking degree of commitment and sacrifice. On both the military and home fronts, the people sacrificed for the nation. When President Lincoln calledmentoarms,Connecticutquicklyorganizedthreefullregiments,not just the one he had requested. In all, the state provided thirty regiments, along with cavalry and artillery units. Almost half—47 percent—of men between the ages of fifteen and fifty served in the military. They fought, bled, and died in every major battle of the war. They served valiantly at Bull Run and covered the Union retreat there, battered down the seemingly impenetrable walls of Fort Pulaski, suffered horribly at Antietam and Fredericksburg, gained victory and redemption at Gettysburg, and drove the Confederacy to a slow, merciless death at Cold Harbor and Petersburg. The men who fought the war—men like Samuel Fiske, Fred Lucas, and John De Forest—left us an important legacy: they wrote a constant stream of letters home, telling of the shock of battle, the misery of war, the importance of duty, the frustration with those at home, and the hope for peace. Not all survived or returned home uninjured. Fiske died—surrounded by his wife and family—at Cold Harbor. Lucas received a bullet through his leg that glanced off the bone and left him hobbling for months. He survived the war, returned home, and married Jennie Wadhams. They had corresponded for more than two years, since Jennie handed Fred 220 } Connecticut in the American Civil War a “testament” when he enlisted in 1862 and marched from Litchfield to the regimental encampment on the edge of town. De Forest survived the war uninjured and presented his experiences in a novel, Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty, which described warfare in all its horrible reality. His book, no doubt, was as cathartic as it was literary. Nor was it merely men who fought the war. Women coordinated a massive home front operation. They created the nation’s first soldiers’ aid society in Bridgeport and formed others throughout the state. They provided a steady stream of every conceivable item, from linens, blankets, and shirts to food, books, and writing paper. It is no exaggeration to say that the war could not have been waged without their extraordinary efforts. They also received and cared for the flood of wounded and dead. Connecticut’s industry also poured forth a steady stream of support, from the deadly war materiel produced by Colt, Sharps, and the Eli Whitney Company to the patented artillery projectiles of Hotchkiss and Company, gunpowder from Hazardville, and ships from Mystic and New London. There was also less lethal production from the brass and rubber industries, as well as plenty of textiles for uniforms. All of this revealed an impressive industrial capacity that continued well after the war.  Those who sacrificed themselves “that the nation might live”—as Lincoln first said in the Gettysburg Address—represented a potent symbol of American nationalism. Their commitment to the Union’s survival did more than anything else to carry the war forward. And the Civil War they fought defined our nation. It sealed the Union’s permanence. It also sealed the fate of slavery, ending the peculiar institution forever. Yet we should not take the confluence of the nation’s survival and slavery ’s death to mean that the nation somehow aligned those two objectives during the war. As I have tried to make clear throughout this book, slavery was amazingly controversial in Connecticut. Milo Holcomb’s letter in 1860 advocating slavery throughout the North; the Free Soil, Free Labor arguments...