THE TOWNS VIE WITH EACH OTHER.

53

town. East Haddam sent twenty-five men. Torrington voted four thousand five hundred dollars for equipments and soldiers' families. Canterbury voted to raise a company, and equip it. Norwalk raised a volunteer aid-fund, from which every man was paid ten dollars on enlistment, and five dollars a month during service. In Hartford, the fund reached thirty thousand dollars by voluntary subscription before the city assumed the responsibility.

In many towns, as in Hartford, even after a liberal subscription had been commenced, it was deemed best to do the work by a regular appropriation from the town treasury. Waterbury voted ten thousand dollars; Bridgeport, ten thousand; Meriden, five thousand; Torrington, four thousand five hundred; and many other towns in a ratio equally liberal. Thus, by contribution or town vote, generous provision was everywhere made for volunteers and all dependent on them.

In Salisbury, George Coffin offered one hundred tons of iron to the government, to be made into cannon-balls; and other citizens manifested equal zeal and liberality. A large meeting was held in Litchfield on the 22d, and measures taken to assist in the prosecution of the war. In this work, Hon. John H. Hubbard took an active part. The Rockville Guard voted to go to the war, and offered themselves to the governor. Sixteen hundred dollars was raised to equip them; and the citizens went earnestly at the work. Milford, at a special town-meeting, voted a bounty of ten dollars to every unmarried, and fifteen dollars to every married volunteer; and agreed to insure the life of each to the amount of one thousand dollars. At Farmington, a meeting was held on the 23d, at which W. M. Wadsworth presided; and a full company of men enlisted for the war. East Hartford voted to pay a bounty of ten dollars, and ten dollars a month to each man while in service. Woodbridge raised forty men under Capt. Farren Perkins. From Unionville, one-tenth of the legal voters volunteered. Canterbury voted to raise a company, and subscribed two thousand dol

lars to equip it. In North Branford, the people raised a noble hickory, the gift of an old Jackson man, Capt. Jonathan Rose; and unfurled a handsome flag on the identical spot, where, in 1776, after the Sabbath service, Parson Ells called the young men of his congregation together, and led them to the war. These uprisings all over the State but illustrate the spirited resolves and earnest action of every community.

The sons of Connecticut out of the State were also prominent and active in similar patriotic demonstrations.

The great mass-meeting in Union Square, of New York, had its initial movement in a preliminary meeting at the residence of that true man and patriot, Robert H. McCurdy, formerly of Lyme, but long a merchant in New York, a brother of the well-known Judge McCurdy of our State. This gentleman sallied forth in the rain, rallying his neighbors, who assembled at his house the same evening, and there organized. A committee was appointed to issue a call to the citizens of New York. The following day, this was done; and, on the last of that week, that immense uprising of tens of thousands in Union Square was a fact accomplished and memorable. Nowhere on this continent, before or since, has there been seen such a mighty host swayed with but one earnest purpose. We find prominently associated with Mr. McCurdy the names of other true sons of our State, Gen. Prosper M. Wetmore, William C. Gilman, S. B. Chittenden, and others to whom reference is made as we proceed in the narrative. It will be shown how they permanently organized; also the efficiency of their labors, and their great liberality and personal sacrifices and constant sympathy with the soldiers of our State.

In nearly all the cities of the West, we were represented in these uprisings. Soon after the attack on Sumter, the organization of the first Loyal League Club was formed, so far as known, at the city of Louisville, Ky.; and chief among those who organized this society, which afterwards spread over the entire North, and was not unknown in

many portions of the South, was Ledyard Bill, a citizen of Connecticut, at that time a resident of Kentucky.'

12

Already the national flag had come to have a new and strange significance. When the stars and stripes went down at Sumter, they went up in every county of our State. Every town, from Thompson to Greenwich, suddenly blossomed with banners. On forts and ships, from churchspires and flag-staffs, from hotels, store-fronts, and private balconies, "the old flag" was flung out; and everywhere it was hailed with enthusiasm; for its prose became poetry, and there were seen in it a beauty and a sacred value which it never before possessed. Loyal women wore miniature banners on their bonnets, and, with untiring ingenuity, blended the colors with almost every article of dress; and men carried the emblem in pins and countless other devices. The patchwork of white, blue, and red, which had flaunted in our faces for generations, without exciting much emotion, in a single day stirred our pulses with an imperative call to battle, and became the inspiration of national effort. All at once, it meant the Declaration of Independence; it meant Lexington; it meant Bunker Hill and Saratoga; it meant freedom; it meant the right of a majority to elect their president; it meant the honor and the life of the Republic. So a great crop of splendid banners came with the spring roses; and hundreds of youths donned the blue uniform, and advanced to the line of battle, impelled not more by a conscious hatred of treason than by the wonderful glory that had been kindled in the flag.

NOTE TO PAGE 52. — Mr. Griffin was a loyal Irish-American of wealth and influence in Middletown, and he gave all his efforts to the work of prosecuting the war. He incited a spirit of patriotism by personal appeals in the street and in the workshop, gave freely of his money and his time, and zealously promoted the work of organization and equipment for the front.

12 See Abbott's Civil War, vol. i. p. 144.

CHAPTER IV.

The Volunteers uniformed and equipped. - Response of Wealthy Men and Institutions. Patriotic Work of the Women. - Another Revolutionary Sunday. - Call for Second and Third Regiments. - The Troops at Rendezvous. - Outfit completed. — In Camp. Rations and Beds. - Contributions flow in. - Drill and Discipline. - Sage Advice. -Departure of the Three Regiments.

HE volunteers who, in these first memorable days, rallied with patriotic impulse around the national standard, were simply men in citizen's dress. Few had either uniforms or arms.

Gov. Buckingham, as early as Jan. 17, had wisely ordered the purchase, on his own responsibility, of knapsacks, cartridge-boxes, bayonets, and every thing belonging to the full equipment of five thousand men. The State owned one thousand and twenty United-States muskets of the latest pattern, and more than two thousand percussion-muskets not very serviceable. It was thought that these would be sufficient for any temporary service, and that the rifle factories of the State could speedily furnish other weapons for five thousand men if required. For this reason, and apprehending that the purchase of muskets might create premature excitement, Gov. Buckingham did not then. increase the supply of arms.

But when the actual call came, on Sunday night, April 15, he at once resolved to discard all smooth-bore weapons, and arm the troops of Connecticut with the best rifles. With this intent, he decided to go on Monday morning to the Thames Bank, and ask a loan of fifty thousand dollars, and pledge his private fortune for payment.

PRIVATE BENEFACTORS.

57

But others were also thinking of the money needed. E. C. Scranton, president of the Elm-city Bank in New Haven, was early at his post. Thomas B. Osborne, vicepresident, came in. There was a brief consultation. Before Gov. Buckingham left his house to go to the Thames Bank, he received a telegram, tendering a loan of fifty thousand dollars, from the Elm-city Bank, for the emergency. The Thames Bank immediately offered a hundred thousand dollars. Almost simultaneously, the Pahquioque Bank, of Danbury, tendered fifty thousand dollars; Mechanics' Bank, of New Haven, twenty-five thousand dollars; Fairfield-county Bank, of Norwalk, thirty thousand dollars; Danbury Bank, fifty thousand dollars. The banks of Hartford united to offer the State a loan of five hundred thousand dollars, onetenth of their capital; and the New-Haven banks soon after voted the same proportion,- a total of more than a million dollars.

Of private benefactors, one of the earliest and most thoughtful was Thomas R. Trowbridge of New Haven, who, before a company was yet formed, offered five hundred dollars for the support of the families of volunteers; thus beginning a course of unstinted liberality, which he continued. throughout the struggle, and initiating that great patriotic charity, which, continued by private individuals, and finally adopted by towns and the State, extended a hand to all the families of absent soldiers. David Clark of Hartford rose in the first war-meeting, and pledged himself to give two hundred and fifty dollars to every company which the city should send; and Hawley's company received his check on the spot. The next day, he offered to support one hundred families of volunteers during the war. This work was virtually taken off his hands by a vote of the town soon after; but the impulse continued active in that and similar channels, until, directly and indirectly, he had given the sum of sixty thousand dollars to the work of prosecuting the war. With still greater ardor, the women rose up to do their share in the great work of preparation. By Friday, April