126th New York At Gettysburg

By Kerry Lippincott, Executive Director

(Warning – I’m not a military historian.  What follows is my small attempt to commemorate the 150^th Anniversary of Gettysburg and the role played by the 126^th.  For more information, I recommend Written in Blood: History of the 126^th New York Infantry in the Civil War by Wayne Mahood and The Redemption of the Harper’s Ferry Cowards: The Story of the 11^th and 126^th New York State Volunteers Regiments at Gettysburg by RL Murray.)

Every family has that place where you visit on a regular basis.  It’s a place where even though you know the lay of the land, you may still “discover” something new.  For my family one of those places is Gettysburg.

In 1989 we made our first we made our first visit and over the years we’ve been back too many times to count.  While on our first visit, my brother Matt and I actually thought that the body of Jenny Wade (the only civilian killed during the battle) was in the basement of the Jenny Wade House.  As our parents toured the house, Matt and I stood at the basement’s entrance warning people not to go down.  (Twenty-three years later I finally overcame my fear and re-visited the house.  And yes, the “body” is still there).  On another visit Matt and Dad roamed Little Round Top looking for a marker for the 20^th Maine while Mom and I suggested that perhaps we all should stay on the nice trail created by the National Park Service. Eventually they stumbled upon the statue of Joshua Chamberlain.  In 2008 I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the Shriver House as it tells a side of the Civil War that often gets forgotten – the effects of a battle and its aftermath on civilians.  

Last summer our “adventure” was searching for the 126^th New York monument.  My parents had read about the regiment so they wanted to know where the monument was located. Whether we will admit it or not, my family has a ritual at Gettysburg.  On our first night we simply drive around the battlefield.    After a good thirty minutes or so, we found the monument in Ziegler’s Grove on Hancock Avenue.  If you are familiar with Gettysburg, the monument is near the old Visitor Center.  At the time I knew the 126^th had some connection to Geneva.

On June 15, 1862 the 126^th New York Infantry Regiment was organized in Geneva by Eliakim Sherrill (who would become the regiment’s commanding officer).  The regiment consisted of men from Ontario, Seneca and Yates Counties.  Company E was made up of men from Geneva and Rushville.    During their first engagement, the regiment surrendered to the Confederates at Harper’s Ferry earning them the nickname “Harper’s Ferry Cowards.”    The regiment was quickly paroled and spent several months at Camp Douglas in Chicago waiting to be exchanged.  It goes without saying that the men of the 126^th had something to prove and Gettysburg was their chance.

In late June 1863, the 126^th was on garrison duty around Washington, DC when they were transferred to the Army of the Potomac.  The regiment arrived in Gettysburg on the early morning of July 2 (the second day of the battle).  For two days, the regiment played an important role in defending the Union lines, particularly during Pickett’s Charge.  Of the approximately 455 men from the 126^th at Gettysburg, 40 were killed (including Sherrill), 181 were wounded and 10 went missing.  Only three other Union regiments had more men killed, wounded or captured – 24^th Michigan (272), 111^th New York (235) and 151^st Pennsylvania (223).  Three members of the regiments (George H Dore, Morris Brown, Jr. and Johnny Wall) would receive Medals of Honor for capturing Confederate flags.

For the next two years, the 126^th fought in battles in Virginia, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and Petersburg.  To honor the men of the 126th, the State of New York dedicated a monument at Gettysburg on October 3, 1888.

New York City Draft Riots

By Alice Askins, Site Manager of Rose Hill 

In July of 1863, Congress created a military draft and New York City men rioted in protest.

Most of the rioters were working-class Irishmen.  They were angry about several things:  they resented being required to go to war; they resented that wealthier men could pay a $300 fee and hire a substitute for the army; they feared having to compete with freed slaves for jobs; and they were aggrieved because black Americans (who were not considered citizens) were not subject to the draft.  The draft protest soon turned into an ugly race riot.  The police were overwhelmed.

President Lincoln sent several militia and volunteer regiments to control the city.  Unfortunately the soldiers did not arrive until the third day of violence, when mobs had looted and destroyed fifty public buildings, churches, and houses.  Rioters especially targeted black peoples' homes and the properties of abolitionists.  Nobody knows the numbers for sure, but at least 100 African Americans were murdered, and at least two thousand people were injured.  The rioting started on Monday, July 13, and was finally put down by the arriving troops on Wednesday and Thursday.

Here in Fayette, Robert Swan wrote to his father Benjamin  in New York on July 27, 1863, about the draft. 

The Draft has taken place in Auburn Cayuga Co. for this District & quite a number of my neighbors have been drawn, vz Mr. Faster & his hired man, two of Mrs Stacey’s sons, William & George, one of James Rogers sons, & one of the Kimes boys & both of Mr Noyes hired men.  There was no disturbance all was quiet down at Auburn.  At Seneca Falls they were beginning to be very noisy & they sent for the Sheriff & his posse who went down & soon made order and good feeling.  The Draft in Ontario Co at Canandaigua takes place for the Town of Seneca. . .they have a good military force stationed at Canandaigua to repress any disorder that may arrise & which ought to have been the case in the City of N. Y.  No one on this farm was Drafted.

Benjamin Lincoln Swan, ca. 1863

Robert Sawn

It is difficult to decide exactly what Robert thought about the Civil War, from what he said about it in a letter to his brother Edward in February of 1861:

. . . I think the South has committed wrong and is doing all she can, yes more than all the Rabid Abolitionists, to free their slaves and to improve themselves. . .  Mr. Lincoln will be inaugurated on the 4^th of March next and then we will see what they will do.  Already the Northern rodes and cities are being benefitted by the insane and suicidal policy of the Seceding States, poor and starving, making war upon the Federal Government is all nonsense and it really makes me vexed to see Northern men go on and make such fools of themselves about the South. . . [Southerners] are not honest or they would have like men stated their grievances and taken a constitutional mode of redress.  No it is the slave trade. . . they are after, and that the border states know and will never, no never permit. . .

 The best interpretation might be that Robert saw faults on both sides of a complicated issue, and that he assumed that Edward would follow his thinking even if he (Robert) did not explain himself with careful clarity.

150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information 

Lincoln and his cabinet at the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, July 1862. U.S. Senate Collection

A little over one-hundred fifty years ago, on September 22, 1862, President Lincoln took a step he had planned for months and proclaimed that as of January 1, 1863 “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.…” This marks a watershed moment in our nation’s history, when the country began a long march toward practicing the ideals that are enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. The importance of the Proclamation is undeniable even though it did not actually free anyone. It only applied to the slaves in the Confederate States, which were not under federal control. Yet, it marked a realization on Lincoln’s part that the Union could not be preserved with slavery intact and that emancipation was essential to winning the war.

The proclamation was welcomed by the enslaved, free blacks, and abolitionists. The Republican Geneva Courier gave full support to the President’s announcement. The editors had supported abolition at least since October 1855, when the newspaper’s masthead began sporting the motto: “No More Compromises With Slavery—No More Slave Territory—No More Slave States.” The Proclamation incensed Confederates and Union Democrats. The Democratic Geneva Gazette suggested that Lincoln’s move was unconstitutional and that he had given in to pressure from the radicals in his party. The editors believed “there has been no such staggering blow against the fabric of our Union since the outbreak of the rebellion.… It will swell the ranks of the rebellion…it [will] dishearten if not to paralyze the efforts of our devoted Union army….” The Irish working class was a major component of the Democratic Party in New York and Gazette articles also played on their fears of losing jobs to black workers. A notice that a Philadelphia hotel had fired all of its white workers and hired black workers was concluded with: “Thus it is that Emancipation is coming home to the doors of the ‘poor whites.’ Hereafter we will have it—‘no whites need apply.’

Geneva Gazette, October 3, 1862

It is difficult to overstate white Americans’ inability or unwillingness to imagine a way for millions of formerly enslaved black people to live freely in “their” country. Lincoln was actively considering ways to have freed slaves colonize land in the Caribbean, South America or Africa (see this blog by scholar Phil Magness). Even many abolitionists simply could not imagine a world in which freed slaves could live peacefully among their former masters. Some, including Lincoln, feared the freed people would be subject to violent reprisals, others thought they would take vengeance on their former masters, still others thought they were incapable of supporting a democratic society. State Assemblyman Albert Andrus, who “despise[d] the institution of slavery,” could also state in 1862, “For surely no one could think of turning this black population loose upon the whites of the South, nor does any one wish them sent among us at the North.” He looked for God to deliver the nation from the slaves, “then may these States live together in peace and harmony, as one great family…”

A speech by New York Assemblyman Gilbert Dean reprinted in the February 27, 1863 Gazette is typical of the racist opinions most white Americans had: “[Soldiers]…have hearts and brains; and if you tell them that this war is to be perverted from the object for which it was undertaken, that it is now to be prosecuted for the purpose of making eleven States…a jungle like those of Africa…. I ask you to make enquiry of the returned volunteer…—ask him if you could induce him to go into this war for the extermination of the white men of the South, and the enthroning there a negro [sic] power. …[P]rogress is with our race—while the African is necessarily dependent, and that never has the negro race been capable of supporting a civil government.”

What is undocumented, however, is what the African-American community in Geneva thought about the Emancipation Proclamation, though we can assume that like Frederick Douglass, they would “shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree.” Perhaps like Douglass and many abolitionists, the local black community recognized the significance of this move, which according to Lincoln, transformed the war into a war “of subjugation” in which “The South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.”

In the end, the North won the war, and this is what happened. Unfortunately, the nation did not truly fulfill the promise of emancipation until the African-American community stepped forward in the 20th century to demand its fulfillment. On this year’s 150th anniversary of the Proclamation, we are still dealing with the legacy of slavery in the United States and searching for ways to move closer to the promise “that all men are created equal.”