Chapter XVII: The Muster Out and Home Again

On the 14th of May we received orders to proceed to Harrisburg for muster out. There was, of course, great rejoicing at the early prospect of home scenes once more. We walked on air, and lived for the next few days in fond anticipation. We were the recipients of any amount of attention from our multitude of friends in the division. Many were the forms of leave-taking that took place. It was a great satisfaction to realize that in our comparatively brief period of service we had succeeded in winning our way so thoroughly into the big hearts of those veterans. The night before our departure was one of the gladdest and saddest of all our experience. The Fourteenth Connecticut band, that same band which had so heroically played out between the lines when the Eleventh Corps broke on that fateful Saturday night at Chancellorsville, came over and gave us a farewell serenade. They played most of the patriotic airs, with "Home, Sweet Home," which I think never sounded quite so sadly sweet, and suggestively wound up with "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Most of the officers and men of the brigade were there to give us a soldier's good-by, and Major-General Couch, commanding our corps (the Second), also paid us the compliment of a visit and made a pleasant little speech to the men who were informally grouped around head-quarters, commending our behavior in three of the greatest battles of the war.

It had been our high honor, he said, to have had a part in those great battles, and though new and untried we had acquitted ourselves with great credit and had held our ground like veterans. He expressed the fervent hope that our patriotism would still further respond to the country's needs, and that we would all soon again be in the field. Our honors were not yet complete. General French, commanding our division, issued a farewell order, a copy of which I would have been glad to publish, but I have not been able to get it. It was, however, gratifying in the extreme. He recounted our bravery under his eye in those battles and our efficient service on all duty, and wound up by saying he felt sure that men with such a record could not long remain at home, but would soon again rally around their country's flag. Of General Couch, our corps commander, we had seen but little, and were therefore very pleasantly surprised at his visit. Of General French, bronzed and grizzly bearded, we had seen much; all our work had been under his immediate supervision. He was a typical old regular, and many were the cuffs and knocks we received for our inexperience and shortcomings, all, however, along the lines of discipline and for our good, and which had really helped to make soldiers of us. These incidents showed that each commanding general keeps a keen eye on all his regiments, and no one is quicker to detect and appreciate good behavior than they. We felt especially pleased with the praises of General French, because it revealed the other side of this old hero's character. Rough in exterior and manner of speech, he was a strong character and a true hero.

His position at the breaking out of the war will illustrate this. He was a Southerner of the type of Anderson and Farragut. When so many of his fellows of the regular army, under pretext of following their States, went over into rebellion and treason, he stood firm and under circumstances which reflect great credit upon him. He had been in Mexico and had spent a life on the frontier, and had grown old and gray in the service, reaching only the rank of captain. When the war finally came he was in command of a battery of artillery stationed some three hundred and fifty miles up the Rio Grande, on the border of Mexico. He was cut off from all communication with Washington, and the commander of his department, the notorious General David E. Twiggs, had gone over to the Confederacy. He was, therefore, thoroughly isolated. Twiggs sent him a written order to surrender his battery to the rebel commander of that district. His characteristic reply was, that he would "see him and the Confederacy in hell first;" that he was going to march his battery into God's country, and if anybody interfered with his progress they might expect a dose of shot and shell they would long remember. None of them felt disposed to test his threat, and so he marched his battery alone down through that rebel country those three hundred and fifty miles and more into our lines at the mouth of the Rio Grande, bringing off every gun and every dollar's worth of government property that he could carry, and what he could not carry he destroyed. He was immediately ordered north with his battery and justly rewarded with a brigadier-general's commission.

Early on the morning of the 15th we broke camp and bade farewell to that first of the world's great armies, the grand old Army of the Potomac. Need I say that, joyous as was our home-going, there was more than a pang at the bottom of our hearts as we severed those heroic associations? A last look at the old familiar camp, a wave of the hand to the friendly adieus of our comrades, whose good-by glances indicated that they would gladly have exchanged places with us; that if our hearts were wrung at going, theirs were, too, at remaining; a last march down those Falmouth hills, another and last glance at those terrible works behind Fredericksburg, and we passed out of the army and out of the soldier into the citizen, for our work was now done and we were soldiers only in name.

As our train reached Belle-plain, where we were to take boat for Washington, we noticed a long train of ambulances moving down towards the landing, and were told they were filled with wounded men, just now brought off the field at Chancellorsville. There were upward of a thousand of them. It seems incredible that the wounded should have been left in those woods during these ten to twelve days since the battle. How many hundreds perished during that time for want of care nobody knows, and, more horrible still, nobody knows how many poor fellows were burned up in the portions of those woods that caught fire from the artillery. But such is war. Dare any one doubt the correctness of Uncle Billy Sherman's statement that "War is hell!"

Reaching Washington, the regiment bivouacked a single night, awaiting transportation to Harrisburg. During this time discipline was relaxed and the men were permitted to see the capital city. The lieutenant-colonel and I enjoyed the extraordinary luxury of a good bath, a square meal, and a civilized bed at the Metropolitan Hotel, the first in five long months. Singular as it may seem, I caught a terrific cold as the price I paid for it. The next day we were again back in Camp Curtin, at Harrisburg, with nothing to do but to make out the necessary muster rolls, turn in our government property,--guns, accoutrements, blankets, etc., and receive our discharges. This took over a week, so that it was the 24th of May before we were finally discharged and paid off. Then the several companies finally separated.

If it had been hard to leave our comrades of the Army of the Potomac, it was harder to sever the close comradeship of our own regiment, a relationship formed and cemented amidst the scenes that try men's souls, a comradeship born of fellowship in privation, danger, and suffering. I could hardly restrain my tears as we finally parted with our torn and tattered colors, the staff of one of which had been shot away in my hands. We had fought under their silken folds on three battle-fields, upon which we had left one-third of our number killed and wounded, including a colonel and three line officers and upward of seventy-five men killed and two hundred and fifteen wounded. Out of our regiment of one thousand and twenty-four men mustered into the service August 14, 1862, we had present at our muster out six hundred and eighteen. We had lost in battle two hundred and ninety-five in killed and wounded and one hundred and eleven from physical disability, sickness, etc., and all in the short space of nine months. Of the sixteen nine-months regiments formed in August, 1862, the One Hundred and Thirtieth and ours were the only regiments to actively participate in the three great battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and we lost more men than either of the others.

I should mention a minor incident that occurred during our stay in Harrisburg preparing for muster out. A large number of our men had asked me to see if I could not get authority to re-enlist a battalion from the regiment. I was assured that three-fourths of the men would go back with me, provided they could have a two weeks' furlough. I laid the matter before Governor Curtin. He said the government should take them by all means; that here was a splendid body of seasoned men that would be worth more than double their number of new recruits; but he was without authority to take them, and suggested that I go over to Washington and lay the matter before the Secretary of War. He gave me a letter to the latter and I hurried off. I had no doubt of my ability to raise an entire regiment from the great number of nine-months men now being discharged. I repaired to the War Department, and here my troubles began. Had the lines of sentries that guarded the approach to the armies in the field been half as efficient as the cordon of flunkies that barred the way to the War Office, the former would have been beyond the reach of any enemy. At the entrance my pedigree was taken, with my credentials and a statement of my business. I was finally permitted to sit down in a waiting-room with a waiting crowd. Occasionally a senator or a congressman would break the monotony by pushing himself in whilst we cultivated our patience by waiting. Lunch time came and went. I waited. Several times I ventured some remarks to the attendant as to when I might expect my turn to come, but he looked at me with a sort of far-off look, as though I could not have realized to whom I was speaking. Finally, driven to desperation, after waiting more than four hours, I tried a little bluster and insisted that I would go in and see somebody. Then I was assured that the only official about the office was a Colonel----, acting assistant adjutant-general. I might see him.

"Yes," I said, "let me see him, anybody!"

I was ushered into the great official's presence. He was a lieutenant-colonel, just one step above my own rank. He was dressed in a faultless new uniform. His hair was almost as red as a fresh red rose and parted in the middle, and his pose and dignity were quite worthy of the national snob hatchery at West Point, of which he was a recent product.

"Young man," said he, with a supercilious air, "what might your business be?"

I stated that I had brought a letter from His Excellency, Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, to the Secretary of War, whom I desired to see on important business.

"Where is your letter, sir?"

"I gave it up to the attendant four hours ago, who, I supposed, took it to the Secretary."

"There is no letter here, sir! What is your business? You cannot see the Secretary of War."

I then briefly stated my errand. His reply was,--

"Young man, if you really desire to serve your country, go home and enlist."

Thoroughly disgusted, I retired, and so ended what might have saved to the service one of the best bodies of men that ever wore a government uniform, and at a time when the country was sorely in need of them.

A word now of the personnel of the One Hundred and Thirty-second Regiment and I am done. Dr. Bates, in his history of the Pennsylvania troops, remarks that this regiment was composed of a remarkable body of men. This judgment must have been based upon his knowledge of their work. Every known trade was represented in its ranks. Danville gave us a company of iron workers and merchants, Catawissa and Bloomsburg, mechanics, tradesmen, and farmers. From Mauch Chunk we had two companies, which included many miners. From Wyoming and Bradford we had three companies of sturdy, intelligent young farmers intermingled with some mechanics and tradesmen. Scranton, small as she was then, gave us two companies, which was scarcely a moiety of the number she sent into the service. I well remember how our flourishing Young Men's Christian Association was practically suspended because its members had gone to the war, and old Nay Aug Hose Company, the pride of the town, in which many of us had learned the little we knew of drill, was practically defunct for want of a membership which had "gone to the war." Of these two Scranton companies, Company K had as its basis the old Scranton City Guard, a militia organization which, if not large, was thoroughly well drilled and made up of most excellent material. Captain Richard Stillwell, who commanded this company, had organized the City Guard and been its captain from the beginning. The other Scranton company was perhaps more distinctively peculiar in its personnel than either of the other companies. It was composed almost exclusively of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad shop and coal men, and was known as the Railroad Guards. In its ranks were locomotive engineers, firemen, brakemen, trainmen, machinists, telegraph operators, despatchers, railroad-shop men, a few miners, foremen, coal-breaker men, etc. Their captain, James Archbald, Jr., was assistant to his father as chief engineer of the road, and he used to say that with his company he could survey, lay out, build and operate a railroad. The first sergeant of that company, George Conklin, brother of D. H. Conklin, chief despatcher of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, and his assistant, had been one of the first to learn the art of reading telegraph messages by ear, an accomplishment then quite uncommon. His memory had therefore been so developed that after a few times calling his company roll he dispensed with the book and called it alphabetically from memory. Keeping a hundred names in his mind in proper order we thought quite a feat. Forty years later, at one of our reunions, Mr. Conklin, now superintendent of a railroad, was present. I asked him if he remembered calling his company roll from memory.

"Yes," said he, "and I can do it now, and recall every face and voice," and he began and rattled off the names of his roll. He said sometimes in the old days the boys would try to fool him by getting a comrade to answer for them, but they could never do it, he would detect the different voice instantly.

Now, as I close this narrative, shall I speak of the gala day of our home-coming? I can, of course, only speak of the one I participated in, the coming home to Scranton of Companies I and K and the members of the field and staff who lived here. This, however, will be a fair description of the reception each of the other companies received at their respective homes. Home-coming from the war! Can we who know of it only as we read appreciate such a home-coming? That was forty-one years ago the 25th of last May. Union Hall, on Lackawanna Avenue, midway between Wyoming and Penn, had been festooned with flags, and in it a sumptuous dinner awaited us. A committee of prominent citizens, our old friends, not one of whom is now living, met us some distance down the road. A large delegation of Scranton's ladies were at the hall to welcome and serve us, and of these, the last one, one of the mothers and matrons, has just passed into the great beyond. Many of those of our own age, the special attraction of the returning "boys," have also gone, but a goodly number still remain. They will recall this picture with not a little interest, I am sure. If perchance cheeks should be wet and spectacles moistened as they read, it will be but a reproduction of the emotions of that beautiful day more than forty years ago. No soldier boys ever received a more joyous or hearty welcome. The bountiful repast was hurriedly eaten, for anxious mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts were there, whose claim upon their returning "boy in blue" for holier and tenderer relationship was paramount.

Amidst all these joyous reunions, were there no shadows? Ah, yes. In the brief period of nine months our regiment had lost forty per cent. of its membership. Company I had gone to the front with one hundred and one stalwart officers and men, and but sixty-eight came back with the company. Of the missing names, Daniel S. Gardner, Moses H. Ames, George H. Cator, Daniel Reed, Richard A. Smith, and John B. West were killed in battle or died of wounds soon after; Orville Sharp had died in the service. The others had succumbed to the hardships of the service and been discharged. Of the same number Company K took into the service, sixty-six came home with the company. Sergeant Martin L. Hower, Richard Davis, Jacob Eschenbach, Jephtha Milligan, Allen Sparks, Obadiah Sherwood, and David C. Young had been killed in battle or died of wounds; Thomas D. Davis, Jesse P. Kortz, Samuel Snyder, James Scull, Solon Searles, and John W. Wright had died in the service. The most conspicuous figure in the regiment, our colonel, Richard A. Oakford, had been the first to fall. So that amidst our rejoicings there were a multitude of hearts unutterably sad. Will the time ever come when "the bitter shall not be mingled with the sweet" and tears of sorrow shall not drown the cup of gladness? Let us hope and pray that it may; and now, as Father Time tenderly turns down the heroic leaf of the One Hundred and Thirty-second Pennsylvania Volunteers, let us find comfort in the truth,

"_Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori._"