Summer of ’63 rumor-mongers

Sometime during summer or autumn 1860, a crew employed by the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey secured this bench marker atop Schoodic Head in Hancock County. What does have to do with the Civil War? Read on! (Brian F. Swartz Photo)

Call them “the jitters of summer ’63”: From Pennsylvania to New England, civilian nerves trembled as rumor-mongers whispered, gossiped, wrote, and spoke. The Confederates are coming! The Confederates are coming!

The Johnnies are here!

Crossing the Potomac River at Williamsport and elsewhere, Confederate troops tramped north from the Shenandoah Valley and spread into the Cumberland Valley in southern Pennsylvania. Like “Sherman’s Bummers” fanning out from the March to the Sea in ’64, rumors flew far beyond the nearest Army of Northern Virginia formations in late June ’63..

Philadelphia was threatened! Baltimore was the target! The Johnnies aimed for Harrisburg (correct)! Washington, D.C. could fall (a perpetual Lincoln Administration fear)!

“Report That Hooker Has Been Whipped By Lee,” a Portland Daily Press subhead proclaimed on June 17. “Stuart’s Cavalry Expected in Harrisburg On Tuesday,” the same paper reported the same day, which happened to be the same Tuesday that Stuart’s would swarm into Pennsylvania’s state capital.

And from Pennsylvania northeast to Houlton and Mars Hill and Fort Fairfield on Aroostook County’s border with New Brunswick, men talked about the impending draft. Loyal Americans (including the so-called War Democrats) picked up chatter about people planning to resist the draft. The violent and race-driven New York City draft riots lay over the July horizon, but astute political leaders already sensed a latent internal threat across the Mid-Atlantic and New England states.

Rumors ran wild. In southern Pennsylvania and Washington County in Maryland, Confederates were reported here, there, and seemingly everywhere. Jeb Stuart unknowingly fed the rumor mill when his hard-riding cavalry pulled up eight miles shy of the D of C; some sharp-eyed Southern troopers even saw the unfinished Capitol dome in the distance.

And draft resisters started appearing here, there, and seemingly everywhere in the Loyal states east of the Ohio River.

With the cumulative news dispatches arriving at the Gardiner Home Journal on Saturday, June 26 came “terrific news” from West Cornwall, Connecticut. Writing “To the Agent of the Associated Press” on June 19, “Union Man” reported, “A company of men have established themselves in Goshen, Ct., who are reported to be deserters from the army, together with some disloyal men in that vicinity.”

Heavens to Betsy! Deep in the wooded hills west of Hartford (the very state capital!) army deserters had set up camp! Combat veterans and civilian Copperheads (the correct translation of “disloyal men”) had united! Torrington was endangered!

They are fortifying themselves with the supposed intention of resisting the draft,” Union Man wrote. “Their number is estimated at from 25 to 100. Great excitement prevails in that region.”

What, alas! is to become of our distracted country, if on every hand it meets with such resistance from enemies at home, and foes abroad?” asked Hiram Kelley Morrell, the Home Journal’s editor.

Smarter than the typical rumor-mongering “Union Man” (of which there were plenty that summer) and not easily panicked by every rumor flying over his transom. Morrell commented, “But the thought occurs, that perhaps there may be Union strength enough in Connecticut to resist even this fortified opposition.”

He glanced “two inches farther on” into the dispatch. Here the dateline shifted to New Haven, June 19.

Are these draft resisters holed up in the deep forest? Nope; several men from a British North American Boundary Commission survey crew pose in a clearing, with transit, marking the boundary line between Canada and the United States, along the right bank of the Moyie River in northern Idaho Territory. (Library of Congress)

The party of men reported in to-night’s [Associated] Press despatch to be encamped in North Goshen … and prepared to offer forcible resistance to the Federal authorities, are simply a party employed in prosecuting the operations of the U.S. coast survey bureau. The report that they are engaged in traitorous movements may bring undeserved odium upon this State[,] and the humbug [who started the rumor] should be exposed at once.”

We can imagine Morrell chuckling as he read the rebuttal to the “Union Man” rumor-monger. “Don’t we feel better now?” Morrell asked. “We yet have hopes in the republic, and rise with a profound feeling of gratitude to the operator who sent this last despatch.

Great is the telegraph, and may its shadow never be less,” Morrell said.

Source: Terrific News, Gardiner Home Journal, Friday, June 25, 1863

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If you enjoy reading the adventures of Mainers caught up in the Civil War, be sure to  get a copy of the new Maine at War Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg, available online at Amazon and all major book retailers, including Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble.

Passing Through the Fire: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Civil War (released by Savas Beatie) chronicles the swift transition of Joshua L. Chamberlain from college professor and family man to regimental and brigade commander.

Drawing on Chamberlain’s extensive memoirs and writings and multiple period sources, the book follows Chamberlain through the war while examining the determined warrior who let nothing prevent him from helping save the United States.

Order your autographed copy by contacting author Brian Swartz at visionsofmaine@tds.net

Passing Through the Fire is also available at savasbeatie.com or Amazon.

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Brian Swartz can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net. He enjoys hearing from Civil War buffs interested in Maine’s involvement in the war.

Brian Swartz

About Brian Swartz

Welcome to "Maine at War," the blog about the roles played by Maine and her sons and daughters in the Civil War. I am a Civil War buff and a newspaper editor recently retired from the Bangor Daily News. Maine sent hero upon hero — soldiers, nurses, sailors, chaplains, physicians — south to preserve their country in the 1860s. “Maine at War” introduces these heroes and heroines, who, for the most part, upheld the state's honor during that terrible conflict. We tour the battlefields where they fought, and we learn about the Civil War by focusing on Maine’s involvement with it. Be prepared: As I discover to this very day, the facts taught in American classrooms don’t always jibe with Civil War reality. I can be reached at visionsofmaine@tds.net.