on their country's altar, in battles fought far from the borders of their native State by the army of the nation.

Both the living and the dead, who marched and battled in this corps of brave men, have a history proper to be written. It is the purpose of this work to supply a public demand, by preserving in proper form, a complete record of the entire organization, containing the names of all the officers and privates, their services, promotions and destinies, from the date of their enlistment into the State service to the day of their muster out of the service of the United States; accounts of the marches they endured, the camps they occupied, and the many battles in which a haughty foe was made to recoil before the power of their arms. The History the Reserve Corps has made, the author has written. It commends itself to every Pennsylvanian on account of the great merits and patriotic devotion of the men whose acts it records.

CHAPTER I.

introduction.

Threats of Southern leaders—Secret preparations for war—Treachery of Buchanan's Cabinet—Conduct of Floyd—Shipment of arms and ammunition to the Southern States—Seizure of Government property by the rebels—Dispersion of the Navy—Secession of South Carolina—The Government in possession of the Conspirators—The inauguration of President Lincoln—Official declaration that force will be used to defend public property—The conspirators attack Fort Sumter—The effect in the South—The uprising of the North—The condition of the War Department—Response to the call for 75,000 troops—Washington threatened--Treachery of Virginians—Harper's Ferry and Gosport Navy Yard destroyed—Riot in Baltimore—The route to the Capital re-opened.

The political leaders in the Southern States had so frequently threatened secession and the dissolution of the Union, that the people of the North heard with indifference the menace repeated at the return of each presidential election. During the administration preceding the inauguration of President Lincoln, the Southern leaders openly prepared for war. Military companies were organized, equipped and drilled, at the expense of the government, and the communities of the South Atlantic and Gulf States were put on a war footing. No tocsin of alarm was sounded. The work of preparation went on quietly and stealthily, it is true, but vigorously, and with organized system. In the spring of 1860, the conspirators, emboldened by their previous successes, declared openly, that unless they were permitted to choose for the succession, a man for President of the United States, committed to their own peculiar principles, they would secede from the Union and establish a confederacy of the Southern States, wherein the slaveholder might enjoy the rights and privileges of his domestic institution, unmolested by external interference. The extreme ignorance of

the lower classes of the white population in the slave States, placed them wholly in the power of those who plotted treason against the government. They were taught to believe that the greatest calamity that could befall them and all the inhabitants of the Southern States, would be a government administered by a "Republican" President, and that the only means of escape from this was secession and the establishment of an independent Confederacy. Though the leaders thus taught the people, they at the same time diligently labored to ensure the election of the Republican candidate; and having succeeded in this, they called on the ignorant and misguided masses to take up arms and resist the authority of President Lincoln. During the administration of James Buchanan, the traitors occupied the fortifications, barracks and arsenals of the army; seized the yards and docks of the navy; plundered the mints and cus tom houses; sent abroad the ships of war; corrupted the regular army; bankrupted the Treasury; destroyed the credit of the United States, and so completely demoralized the National Government, that but for the virtue and latent patriotism of the loyal people in the Northern States, the free institutions of America would have been irretrievably lost. Not only had the leaders labored to disarm the people and demoralize the government by seizing the forts, arsenals and treasure, by dispersing the fleet and disorganizing the army, but they had placed in the several departments at the National Capital, men on whom they could rely for assistance. They were equally diligent in garrisoning the fortifications on the Southern coast with men of their own choosing, and in marshaling armies for the field. For, however short-sighted and blinded by treason, these men were not without serious apprehensions of a sudden uprising of the people in defence of the government and the honored flag of the country. To armies hastily organized and indifferently armed, they had prepared to oppose companies and regiments and batteries familiar with the evolutions on the field and skilled in the manual of arms.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States on the 7th day of November, 1860, but would not enter upon the duties of that office until his inauguration on the 4th day of March, 1861. In the mean time, James Buchanan, who had been elected to his office, openly pledged to pursue the general policy of the slaveholders, administered the affairs of the nation. The government was virtually in the hands of the conspirators, and they had yet four months in which to mature their nefarious schemes. Never was time more industriously employed. The members of the President's Cabinet were among the boldest of the conspirators, and unscrupulous and dictatorial, they enthralled him by superior councils, and involved him in a policy which, though he knew was disastrous to the Nation, he had not power to change. His advisers watched him keenly as do beasts of prey their victim, and, with commendations or threats, moulded him to execute their will. Howell Cobb, a slaveholder and leading conspirator in Georgia, was Secre tary of the Treasury; he employed the powers of his official position to destroy the credit of the Nation and leave an exhausted treasury to the new Administration. Jacob Thompson, of Mississippi, was Secretary of the Interior, and, though a weak man, he served as spy and informer to the conspirators, and in Cabinet meetings voted with his associates in treason. John B. Floyd, of Virginia, Secretary of War, having greater power for evil, outstripped all others in crime against the government he had sworn to defend. He scattered the standing army of the United States in remote fortresses, in the far west, and left the forts in the Southern States ungarrisoned. He disarmed the Northern States by emptying their arsenals and sending the arms into the Southern States, where they could be seized and used by the insurgents. One hundred and fifteen thousand stand of arms were taken from Springfield, Mass., and Watervliet, N. Y., and distributed throughout the slave States. A vast amount of heavy ordnance and ordnance stores were transferred to the disaffected States; cannons, mortars, balls,

shells, powder, and all the materials of war, were shipped in large quantities to rebel storehouses. Having thus depleted the War Department, over which he presided, Floyd re signed his office as Secretary, and at once joined the rebel army, in which he received a high commission. Isaac Toucy, of Connecticut, a pliant tool in the hands of the conspirators, was Secretary of the Navy. Including vessels of every class, the United States Navy consisted of ninety vessels carrying about two thousand four hundred guns.

It was of the utmost importance to the conspirators, that this arm of the Nation's defence, should be rendered powerless at the hour it would be most needed by the government. The gallantry and high-sense of honor, that obtained among the officers of the fleet, and the pride with which each commander regarded his vessel and the flag it bore on the high seas, rendered hopeless the traitors' schemes of corruption, so successfully plied against the officers at Washington. If the fleet commanders could not be converted to plots of treason, it was essential to the purposes of the conspirators, that the fleet should be dispersed in a manner that would render it unavailable for defence. Accordingly, it was dispersed. In the report of the new Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, made July 4th, 1861, it is stated that five war vessels were sent to the East Indies, three to Brazil, seven to the Pacific Ocean, three to the Mediterreanean, seven to the coast of Africa and others to other distant waters, so that of the whole squadron, but two vessels, carrying twenty-seven guns and two hundred and eighty men, were left at home in Northern ports, and available to the government at the time of the attack made by the rebels on Fort Sumter. Earnest men in the North regarded this unprecedented dispersion of the fleet of the Nation, with suspicion and alarm, even before the facts were published in the official report of Secretary Welles. The House of Representatives appointed a select committee of five, to examine into the condition of the navy, and to inquire into the conduct of Secretary Toucy. This committee reported to the House on the 21st of Febru.