With the country torn apart, the pro Union papers of the north, of which The Republican was one, had little taste for dissent, compromise or freedom of the press.
Civil War re-enactors on the march at Old Sturbidge Village.
Dissecting the debacle at Bull Run was still very much in the news as a hot July gave way to a sweltering August in 1861.
Enlistments were up for troops from throughout New England who signed on in April, and many passed through Springfield on their way home while recruiters were trying to fill new regiments with three-year commitments.
The Republican contained almost daily news of the local boys of the 10th Massachusetts Regiment that had been formed in Springfield at Hampden Park and was now encamped outside of Washington.
Dressed in new uniforms supplied by Springfield merchants, the Western Massachusetts soldiers had headed for the seat of war soon after the first Battle of Bull Run and arrived the last week in July on steamers from Boston. After the Union defeat in the first big battle of the war, more thought was given to how soldiers dressed.
Capt. Joseph K. Newel wrote on Aug. 4:
“New uniforms, gray pants and blue blouses were issued to the men, and they appeared in them at dress parade. The old gray uniforms made them look so much like the rebels that it was not thought advisable to wear them into service.”
There’s no record of whether the 10th Regiment troops were singing as they marched in dress parade with their new uniforms, but The Republican that week pointed out that the favorite song of the new volunteers “is a Negro doggrel in which John Brown is glorified as living in spirit in this campaign.”
It was while living in Springfield that the famous abolitionist formed many of his more radical views on how to end slavery. When he was hanged in 1859 after his failed attack on Harper’s Ferry Arsenal, the church bells of Springfield pealed in his honor. Most of the men serving from Western Massachusetts knew of, or had even met, Brown.
The newspaper printed the words to “John Brown’s Body” and added:
“It is a queer medley, but the soldiers like it and sing it with great energy. .. The Virginians will think John Brown is worshiped as the northern hero, in spite of all denials. ... So on all hands, Providence seems to be involving slavery with the war, not withstanding the most sincere efforts of patriotism and statesmanship to keep the constitutional lines distinct.”
On August 6, The Republican ran a small item that Mr. Thomas Thomas had been granted a license to open a restaurant and saloon on Main Street in Springfield. Thomas was a close friend of John Brown’s and was mentioned in his will.
It was also reported that the temperature broke the 100 degree mark and the water level in the Connecticut River was so low that passenger steamboats and freight barges were having a hard time getting up or downstream.
A portrait of John Brown
With the country torn apart, the pro Union papers of the north, of which The Republican was one, had little taste for dissent, compromise or freedom of the press. This observation is backed by a series of items that appeared in the paper’s pages in August of 1861. The first one appeared on the ninth under the headlines.
Mob Law and Bloodshed in New Hampshire. A SECESSION NEWSPAPER OFFICE GUTTED.
“The office of the Democratic Standard of Concord, N.H., was destroyed on Thursday afternoon by a mob composed of soldiers of the 1st and 4th New Hampshire Regiments. The Standard, which has been for a long time ‘secesh,’ had published an article reflecting severely on the soldiers. A crowd gathered around the office. The editors and the proprietors shook their pistols and dared the men. While the city authorities endeavored to quell the disturbance, the traitorous publishers fired, wounding two soldiers. The office was immediately gutted and the printing materials burnt. The publishers took refuge in the attic, where they were found and carried to the police station with great difficulty, so eager was the combativeness of the soldiers.”
A week later there was another report of a mob burning the Sentinel newspaper in Easton, Pa., for advocating “peace and compromise.”
On August 23rd, The Republican ran an article entitled “No Lynching at the North,” which quoted The Providence Journal as saying, in regard to the recent forcible suppression of treasonable newspapers:
John Brown's Song
“We abhor the sentiments of these secessionist editors as profoundly as anybody, but we also grieve to see them the victims of lawlessness.”
The Rhode Island paper suggested the withdrawal of advertising and boycott of subscriptions.
“We do not know one of these pestilent sheets that would not be speedily killed by the withdrawal of the patronage of all loyal citizens.”
Only three days later The Republican reported the federal government was cracking down on “certain disloyal New York newspapers” by suppressing their circulation through the mail of the United States.
In another measure to tighten security, on August 19th, the newspaper reported for the first time in its history that the United States would require passports from all people coming into and leaving the country. “This is to prevent the easy egress and ingress of rebel emissaries sent on traitorous missions.”
On the military front, readers of The Republican were surprised to see the announcement that Giuseppe Garibaldi, the liberator of Italy, had volunteered his services to fight for the Union and would be offered a major general’s commission.
“Did we need another proof that our cause is a just one, it is that Garibaldi is with us,” the story read.
The Garibaldi story was a bit premature, but it was true. Abraham Lincoln had instructed Secretary of State William H. Seward to begin direct communications with Garibaldi. With the war only a few months old, the president hoped to convince the most famous general in the world to fight for the United States and he actually wanted to do so, but he drove too hard a bargain.
Lincoln sought out Garibaldi in Italy
The official report back to Lincoln stated, “Garibaldi said that the only way in which he could render real service, as he ardently desired to do, to the cause of the United States, was as Commander in Chief of its forces; that he would only go as such and with the additional contingent power – to be governed by events – of declaring the abolition of slavery.”
Once again, the slavery question was in the forefront and was the deal breaker. Lincoln was not ready to make that commitment.
Recruiters were hard at work during the month in Springfield trying to fill new quotas that called for thousands of soldiers from Massachusetts. From Springfield, Col. James Barnes, an 1829 West Point grad who was in the same class as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, was putting together the 18th Massachusetts Regiment. Fellow Springfield resident, Col. Horace C. Lee, city clerk and treasurer, had been asked by the governor to recruit another regiment from Western Mass. that would become the 27th Massachusetts.
Col. James Barnes
The Republican ran an amusing tidbit on the recruitment effort that read:
“A numerous crowd, comprised mostly of Irish women, was assembled in front of the recruitment headquarters of the 18th regiment yesterday morning in search of their truant husbands, who had enlisted without their consent.”
In one week Dr. David Smith of Springfield, surgeon of the 18th Massachusetts, and Lt. James Orne enlisted 40 volunteers from the city. Among the recruits were eight men out of the house of correction where they had been confined for petty offenses such as drunkenness or fast driving.
“The appearance among the convicts of their first comrade recruit in his military uniform excited a lively degree of patriotic emotion, and the whole institution was eager to enlist,” the newspaper reported. “Only the choice ones, and those arrested for small offenses were permitted to do so, however.”
The regiment had taken out an advertisement in The Republican to fill the last 100 volunteers. Among other advertisements sharing the pages were four different notices for coffins, one of which promised to furnish caskets, coffins and burial clothing of all kinds on short notice.