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

CHAPTER TWO. And the War Came, 1860–61

{ 41 c h a p t e r t w o And the War Came 1860-61
 The Republican victory in Connecticut and Abraham Lincoln’s election as president were not inevitable. Each was the result of carefully coordinated campaigns and the marshaling of voters into the anti-Southern, Republican camp. Nor was war certain. Some believed that talk of secession was merely a Southern bluff. South Carolina had made the same threat during the 1832–33 Nullification Crisis when the residents of that state refused to pay tariffs, announcing that they would secede if the federal government tried to force them. President Andrew Jackson stared down the “Nullies,” as he called them, and the whole affair melted away. Still, the idea of secession as a state’s right never disappeared. When Lincoln became president at the head of a decidedly sectional party, South Carolina once again led the way. This time, many of her sister states followed. Yet even with this outcome, many Northerners assumed that if war came, it would be brief. The South, after all, had virtually no industry and a decidedly smaller population than the North. Moreover, slavery had corrupted the region’s self-reliance. Sturdy Northerners—free labor—would force the South to capitulate in a matter of months. Such views shifted rather quickly. After taking a beating in the first major battle of the war, Bull Run (also known as Manassas), Northerners gave a collective gasp. The initial year of the war, 1861, was an unwelcome wake-up call. Residents of Connecticut learned quickly that war was hell; that the conflict would require incredible military, economic, and medical resources; and that those at home were as instrumental to the effort as men in the field were. Republicans realized the importance of maintaining political control within the state. Not all of their fellow citizens supported Northern “aggression” against the South. A significant Democratic peace movement sprang up in towns and cities across the state. Overall, however, Connecticut heeded the call for commitment to the Union and war against Governor William A. Buckingham. Courtesy of the Museum of Connecticut History, Connecticut State Library And the War Came, 1860–61 { 43 the South, though the first months of the war caused some to question what the aim of the conflict should be.  After Republicans took control of the state in 1858, with the election of Governor William A. Buckingham, they focused intently on maintaining that control all the way through the 1860 presidential contest. Connecticut held its state election on the first Monday of April, which made it one of the earliest of Northern states to vote and something of a bellwether for the November presidential contest. If Democrats could reassert control in Connecticut, they might turn the tide in New England and the North. Thus for Republicans, winning the state, and perhaps the nation, required keeping Buckingham in office. One could not happen without the other. All eyes were on Connecticut. The New Haven Register declared: “A nation is waiting in almost breathless suspense to hear the results.”1 The 1860 gubernatorial contest was sure to be a close one. Democrats nominated Thomas H. Seymour, the popular former governor. Seymour had served as a major in the Mexican War and led a famous charge at the battle of Chepultepec, earning promotion to colonel for his heroism. He was Connecticut’s governor from 1850 to 1853 and served as President Franklin Pierce’s minister to Russia from 1853 to 1857.2 Seymour had steadfastly argued throughout the 1850s that the North was constitutionally bound to support the compromises that had created the nation, including the acceptance of slavery. Democrats charged that a vote for Buckingham was tantamount to abolitionism and, further, would destroy the state’s important commerce with the South. Republicans countered with their consistent free labor arguments, insisting that, “destitute of any great issue that will seize the attention of a young laboring man, they [Democrats] try to fill the ears with shouts of ‘Chepultepec,’ and call upon him to look rather at the past glories of the Mexican hero, than the present and future interests of himself, his friends, and his country. They think that the smoke of the gunpowder of a successful war, will call off the attention of the laboring man from the fact that he is shouting and voting, simply to assist our proud, overbearing, southern slaveowners, to carry...