4. Winter of '62: ‘it takes but little to make us comfortable’

[Previous chapter]

In the age of modern conveniences “winter quarters” sounds like a peaceful rest with little toil or danger. Although neither army in the East sought a battle during the winter of 1861-62, the hiatus was anything but restful for the men of the 5th New Hampshire Volunteers.

Eldad Rhodes, postwar photo

To read this fourth installment of the diaries and correspondence of Cutler Edson and Eldad Rhodes of the 5th is to understand the labor and resourcefulness required to achieve basic creature comforts in the mud and snow. It is to realize how eager the men’s commander, Col. Edward E. Cross, was to teach then to march and fight and endure. Cross also made foraging a key part of their work. From the countryside around them, in competition with thousands of other soldiers, he expected them to find and take what they needed to eat, sleep and shelter themselves well.

Later in 1862, after the regiment had been tested in battle, Cross gave this account of winter in the hilly countryside three miles west of Alexandria, Va., known as Camp California: 

“The regiment soon commenced doing picket and outpost duty at the front, and established the first line of pickets on the line fronting the enemy at Fairfax Court House. In the intervals of picketing and scouting, whenever the weather would allow the men were thoroughly drilled, not only in regimental but brigade drill, also in the bayonet exercise. The commissioned officers were also drilled in the practical part of this duty.

“Schools were established by the Colonel and Lieut. Colonel, for the instruction of officers and sergeants during the winter evenings. A ‘common school,’ for such of the boys in the regiment as needed instruction in elementary branches, was also put in operation, the necessary books being donated by the Sanitary Commission.

“All through the winter my regiment furnished heavy details to build roads, repair bridges, and cut timber. The pioneers were also instructed in making gabions, fascines, and other engineering work. The good effect of this drill and instruction has since been apparent to officers and men on many trying occasions. ”

This chapter of the 5th New Hampshire story told through the diaries and letters of the bugler Edson and Sgt, Rhodes begins with a letter from Edson to his pastor’s wife back home.

January 19, 1862: Cutler Edson letter

[To Mrs. Horace F. Folsom, a fellow member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Enfield, N.H. The letter is datelined Camp California, the 5th’s base in Volusia, Va., during the winter of 1861-62.]

We have had a very unpleasant time on picket on account of the weather. When we started last Wednesday, there was about 2 inches of snow but the ground not being frozen it soon became soft and muddy as it was quite warm and rainy. We marched from Camp Sumner on Edsel’s Hill, the headquarters of the Regt when we are on picket.

and now sister imagine for a moment our situation and comforts. We were marched in to the edge of an oak grove and halted (all but 2 co. which went on to the old line that we occupied when we were here 6 weeks ago) and ordered to  make our selfs comfortable. Raining stedy, mud about 2 inches deep, not a board to cover our selves with nor a tent except a little one for each co. for the officers. our overcoats wet nearly thru and our selves weary with our march carrying our knapsacks with our blankets.

but this is no time for yankeys to sit down and fold their hands, but they went to work with one mind, some shopping wood, some clearing away the snow and preparing for camp fiers. Some went about ½ a mile to the railroad and stripped boards from the fenced and luged them on ther sholdors to build us sheds. others went still farther to a corn field and got corn stalks  and came to a hay stack and got armes full of hay to sleep on and in the coars of 2 or 3 hours we had good fires started, our shanties built and began to feele quite our selves again.

Ira McC. Barton, later in the war

it takes but very little here to make us comfortable if we can only think so. On Friday there was a scouting party of about 40 men under Capt Barton of our co. sent out to reconoitor. We went to Burks Station which is about 10 miles & very near the Rebbel pickets. Here we took 1 horse and 10 head of cattle & a lot of Ducks and Chickens. It was this mans daughter that gave the signal out of the window to the Rebbels when some of our troops were passing quietly that way by the house and 6 of our men were taken prisoners. He has a nice house and plantation which will all probably be confiscated to the union.

We have had a very wet muddy time but we are flattering our selves that we have bin here on picket duty for the last time as we are expecting to make an advance soon.

You spoke of sickness and death at your place. We are having a great deal of it here. 6 died since we left last Wednesday, making 18 in the whole since we left N.H. There is a good many sick now. Many refus to go in to the army for fear of being shot but I think that we shal loose many more by sickness than we shall by the hand of the enemy.*

The whole Regt is expecting to go out on a forreiging expedition this week in the direction of Fairfax court house. We expect to start Wednesday.

Had a very good prayer meeting although but very few in. Thank God there is some faithful soles here in the armey.

[*The 5th New Hampshire in fact earned its nickname, the Fighting Fifth. It lost 295 men killed or mortally wounded in battle, the highest total of any of the estimated 2,000 Union infantry regiments that fought in the war. The death toll from illness was 135.]

Eldad Rhodes diary

Sunday Jan. 19, 1862: Was cold and rainy as usual  We were relieved by the Penn Regt. about noon  We marched back five miles on the Rail Road to camp  Many men were down at the heels before we got back  All were tired and glad.

Monday 20: We had a funeral today and layed a soldier in his narow house with his Martial Cloke around him. Did not drill on act of the rain.

Tuesday 21: did not drill to day on account of the mud. I wrote a letter to Geo Stockwell to day at Lancaster.

Thursday 23: Weather much improved. We went over the line after brush for our tents, had dress parade in the Evening, had orders to be ready to march at fifteen minutes warning; –  presume we shall leave soon.

Friday 24: We had a skirmish drill in the fore noon under Crafts* and a battalion drill in the after noon in which all the Regiments in the brigade participated.

[*Welcome Crafts, first lieutenant of Rhodes’s Co. B of the 5th New Hampshire.]

Saturday, Jan. 25, 1862: Weather stormy and cold.  did not drill to day; had dress parade in the Evening; I have the teeth ache these times; wrote home to day; Every thing is prosperous.

Sunday 26: e went out on inspection in the forenoon; had no grate excitement; I went up to the second tent to day as Sargeant of the tent.  two men died today in camp.

Monday 27: we had a good drill to day by Batallion under Howard*; I acted as second Sargeant in the forenoon and third in the afternoon.

[Brig. Gen. O.O. Howard, the brigade commander.]

Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1862: We drilled to day, Brigade drill under Howard. had a good display and all the Regts manuevered well. heard heavy firing on the lower Potomac at night.

Wednesday 29: I was Sargent of general police to day, and did not drill. I drew wood for the Hospital today.

Thursday 30: did not drill at all as I and the orderly were in the Captains* Tent writing some of the time to day.

[The captain of Company B was 40-year-old Edmund Brown of Lancaster. Col. Cross dismissed him from the regiment a few days later.]

New Hampshire Gov. Nathaniel Berry

Saturday Feb. 1: Mr. Libby from Whitefield was here to day; – he was after the Body of Parker* from Whitefield.

[Bailey A. Parker, a 20-year-old Company B private from Whitefield, had died of disease on Jan. 18.]

Sunday 2: Weather rather pleasant.  we had a Brigade inspection by Howard to day. Gov Berry and Lecretius Tenney were here to day from N. Hampshire. they reviewed us on dress parade.

[Gov. Nathaniel Berry, a Republican, had assumed office in June 1861. Allen Tenney was New Hampshire’s secretary of state.]

Tuesday 4: We had a Batallion drill under Howard, was put over the road in good style. after drill in the afternoon we buried (Morse)* from our Co. who died saturday.

[*Aurin B. Morse, an 18-year-old private from Randolph, N.H.]

Wednesday 5: We went on a Napsack drill out toward Edsels Hill 3 miles from camp; we got back about noon. soon after my Brother* arrived in camp from the second NH Regt. was glad to see him I assure the public.

[*This was the wonderfully named Freedom Rhodes, a sergeant in the 2nd New Hampshire, which had fought at Bull Run in July in the first major battle of the war. Freedom was two years older than Eldad.]

Freedom Rhodes

Thursday, Feb. 6, 1862: Weather cold and stormy. I and Freedom were up until a late hour in the Capt and Adjts tents on Wednesday eve last; – he left for Alexandria early this morning in order to take Boat for Washington at 7 OC.

Friday 7: we drilled in forenoon. Company drill likewise in the afternoon. had good news in the evening from Fort Henry*. it was taken with 25 cannon 17 mortars 2 Brig Generals, Cols and Capts & c

[*Forces under Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took Fort Henry on the Tennessee River on Feb. 6. It was the first big victory for Union forces in the West.]

Saturday 8: We had Company drill in the forenoon, went after Brush in the afternoon. Frank Cross arrived from Lancaster.

[Francis L. Cross, an 18-year-old volunteer from Lancaster, was Col. Edward E. Cross’s brother. He served as a private in Company D until mid-1862.]

Monday 10: I was Sergt of the guard to day. our brigade went on nap-sack drill out toward Fairfax Court House. I do not fancy guard deauty much.

Tuesday 11: I did not drill in the forenoon. had bayonet drill in the afternoon. nothing further occured to mar the harmony of Camp life.

Wednesday, Feb. 12, 1862: Weather very fine. drilled all day. had good news in the Evening from the west. heard that Price* was taken and all his forces. do not put much confidence in it.

Gen. Sterling Price

[*Confederate forces in Missouri under Brig. Gen. Sterling Price were bent but not broken at this time. The Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862 ended Price’s hopes of mounting a new offensive in the state.]

Thursday 13: in the eve I went over to the Brigade Hospital, after a hard days drill; – had good news in the evening from Fort Donalson Ky.

[Grant’s troops were attacking Fort Donelson on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. The fort surrendered on Feb. 16. The taking of Forts Henry and Donelson opened the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers to Union forces.]

Saturday, Feb. 15, 1862: We were unable to drill on account of the Snow. we went into the woods afternoon Valley Forge like; – Storm on, oh peevish nature, hide thou from sight this black land of slavery by thy virgin mantle.

Sunday 16: we had an inspection and went into the woods after brush and small trees. it bids fare to storm tomorrow.

Monday 17: we did not drill on account of the Storm. had very good news from the west – Fort Donelson.  the Band came out and gave a serenade and Cheer after Cheer ran the whole length of Regt.

Next: Signs of a spring campaign

3. I should like to go to Charleston and drive out the rebels

The winter hut of the 5th New Hampshire's lieutenant colonel, Samuel Langley, at Camp California (James Larkin photo) 

[Previous chapter]

The 5th New Hampshire Volunteers moved from Camp Casey in Maryland to Camp California near Alexandria, Va., in early December 1861. At this large encampment the New Hampshire men began to train in earnest for the long marches and great battles that lay ahead. They also camped for the first time with their comrades in the division of Brig. Gen. Edwin “Bull” Sumner.

Clouds Mill at California (James Larkin photo)

Sumner, born in 1797, was the oldest field commander in the Civil War. He had been in the regular army since 1819.

Among Sumner’s troops was the Irish Brigade, alongside whom the 5th New Hampshire would fight in many of the largest battles in the East. The brigade consisted of three New York regiments and a fourth from Massachusetts. Almost all were Irishmen. Their brigadier general, Thomas Francis Meagher, was as colorful and fiery as the 5th’s Col. Edward E. Cross. Cross considered Meagher a blustering drunkard.

Perhaps a bit too glowingly, Col. Robert Nugent of the 69th New York, Meagher’s original regiment, described Camp California in these terms: “We are located on a very fine hill, overlooking a magnificent valley, studded with white tents, and presenting a view of some ten miles in every direction. The location is exceedingly healthy, the soil is dry, firewood abundant, in fact inexhaustible, and the men getting wise by experience, have not only put up their tents scientifically, cut drains round them, but have been able to put in substantial floors, and glean as much straw in the neighboring fields as to make themselves beds.”

Arrow points to site of Camp California. Above arrow is Clouds Mill, which was photographed by the 5th's James Larkin.

As we will see, the bugler Cutler Edson and the soon-to-be sergeant Eldad Rhodes of the 5th New Hampshire were less romantic in their views of Camp California. Rhodes, who lived in Lancaster in the state's North Country, arrived there after New Year’s Day as a recruit to a regiment that had already lost many soldiers to illness.

There is a gap in Edson’s diary from late November 1861 into February 1862. The 5th fought no battles during this period. It did make festive Thanksgiving plans, which were canceled because of preparations for the regiment’s move to Virginia and the failure of turkey and other victuals to arrive on time from New Hampshire. The men made up for this with a big Christmas party, which is described here.

This third chapter of the story of the 5th New Hampshire’s early months consists of a letter home from Edson and the first word from Rhodes as he prepares shortly after the first of the new year to leave Concord for the regiment.

Among the images made by James Larkin at Camp California was this one of U.S. regular army troops in a stand of trees. 

Dec. 1, 1861: Cutler Edson letter

[To Mr. and Mrs. Horace F. Folsom. The Folsoms and Edson belonged to the same Methodist Episcopal church in Enfield, N.H. Theirs was the largest Protestant denomination of those that eventually merged into the Methodist Church in the United States. Horace Folsom was a manager in the Methodist Episcopal district of Claremont, N.H. On Aug. 12, 1862, he enlisted as a private in the 11th New Hampshire Volunteers at the age of 43. He survived the war and lived until 1878. Cutler Edson datelined the letter excerpted here ”Camp Californy, Oswegotown, Fairfax Co. Va.” The Folsoms had asked him several questions about army life in a recent letter, and he set out to answer them.]

I am one of the privileged caracters that go from Co. to Co. all over our camp. When I am not on duty which is only from 4 to 6 hours a day and then not very hard, I usually run over to see Bro Strong* 1 or 2 times a day and have a chat with him. He seems to be getting along well, gets out to social meetings when he can, learns his cookery.

I run in to our Chaplin occasionally. Like him very much, he is good in social meetings, he is a Soldier every bit of him.  It looks a little curious to me to see a minister armed with a sword by his side and a revolver fastened to his belt. But this is the way they do it out here in the rebels land.

Maj. Gen. Bull Sumner, the 5th's new division commander

I see our chief Bugler several times every day as we give our general calls. The buglers generally all assemble in one place. He is rather a wild young man but I have an idea he will get tamed down some before he gets home.

You asked how the rigeur of going south suited me – think I should like it very much, should like to go to Charleston S.C. and drive out  the rebels and stop there till next spring and then go home, but don’t know as we shal have the privilege. I think we have some thing to do here in Virginia before we go much further south, but we can’t tell what it is for us yet. Probably you get us much war news as I can tell you.

You wanted I should give you a little sketch of camp life. We have enough to eat but not always so palatable as we could desire but I don’t feal to complain but recv what I have with thankfulness. It is as good as we could expect under the circumstances. We have just as good beds as we can make out of leaves, cedar boughs, etc. Some times we get a little straw which is a great luxury but I usually sleep very well. Have not had the Rheumatism but once, then it only lasted me 2 or 3 days.

We had rather a hard time when we went to Marlboro but nothing to what others have endured. I did not faint by the way but someone did.

Our Sundays here are not much as they are at home. We have a certin round of duty to perform which takes up a good deal of our time. Our religious services don’t generly last more than 10 or 15 minutes after we are on parade. Some are off gathering wood and chopping, some fetching water, others cleaning there guns &c.

All is life and --- in camp. My charge is much easier than a privates. I have nothing to do but attend to my playing and am very well contented with the situation. I miss a writing table and chare to sit in but I do the best I can. For a seat I fold up my blankets and sit on, for a writing table I found a small piece of board that I hold in my lap. So when I make some crooked marks and some blots, think it not strange. My pen and ink are getting rather poor and I don’t know as you can read it. If you cant please carry it to my good Wife for she can read most any thing.

Our colonel told us to-day that we were very near 150,000 rebels and that we were lible to be attacked by them any day and to keep our selves in readiness for a battle. We have 4 Regts in our Brigade with a Christian man at the head, General Howard. We are now in General Sumners division, 4 Brigades in a Division. Ours occupies the right wing and our Regt the extreme right, a very honorable position.

[*Private Lewis J. Strong of the 5th’s Company C was a Canadian by birth but had enlisted from Enfield in August. He was later discharged for disability and went home.]

Eldad Rhodes’s diary

Wednesday, Jan. 1, 1862: New years morning pleasant, and a mild day ensued. I was quite unwell with a cold, am preparing to go to the war tomorrow; – Mrs Hartwell called in the evening. – also Mrs Baker. Am in hopes I may be better soon.

Thursday 2: Weather very cold and blustering. Started for Concord in the morning. Arrived without accident at about 300 P.M. found Crafts* wateing at the Depot; went down town in the Evening was not very well.

Welcome Crafts

[*The ambitious Welcome Crafts, from Milan, also in the North Country, was first lieutenant of the 5th’s Company B. He had his ups and downs as a soldier, but late in the war, as a lieutenant colonel, he became the regimental commander.]

Friday 3: Weather cold and windy. I was at my boarding place at Wheeler nearly all day. Went down town in the Evening and changed boarding places. took up quarters at the Columbian Hotel Concord NH.

Saturday, Jan. 4, 1862: Weather very cold all day. I went up to the State House in the Morning and was mustered in to the service of the U.S. and recieved my uniform with the rest of the men, had my ambrotipe taken to send home; went up to the State house in the Evening.

Sunday 5: Rather cool but pleasant – went to the lower part of the city with Bickford and Andrews* after some recruits. we went to hear a lecture in the Unitarian Church in the Eve, had a full house &c.

[Nathan Bickford, 21, and Samuel A. Andrews, 24, men of the state’s North Country, had mustered into the 5th’s Company B with Rhodes the previous day. Bickford stayed with the regiment for 13 months. Andrews was wounded at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, and killed at Cold Harbor on June 7, 1864.]

Monday 6: Weather cloudy and some snow; –  was busy arranging for our departure for the seat of War tomorrow for the defence of our homes and Alters; and may the God of Battles prosper the right and bring a speedy peace to our dismembered Nation &c

Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1862: Started from Concord 7 1/2 OC (AM) reached Boston at 11 1/2 OC left B at 5 1/2  reached Newport at about 9 PM and then started out on to the sound, for New York. Slept until 1 OC (AM). Went on deck.

Wednesday 8: Arrived on the Wharf at NY at about 10 OC (AM). Marched to Park Barracks and were kindly recieved by the Massachusetts Boys; left NY at 6 OC (PM) for Washington; reached Philadelphia at about 11 OC (PM). All is well; still going.

Thursday 9: Weather very damp and foggy, arrived in Washington at 7 in the Morning; we marched to a campground, took breakfast, and marched around the city untill noon and then went aboard a steamer for Alexandria reached A at (8 OC) and marched to camp very tired.

Friday, Jan. 10, 1862: had a good nights rest in Camp. very muddy. did not drill on account of it; wrote a letter home &c; am in hopes the weather will brighten up soon; and make our dreary camp life more cheery.

Saturday 11: underwent an examination in the forenoon. Went out in the afternoon and procured brush for our bed. had dress parade in the Evening. was not very well to day.

Sunday 12: the Col inspected our armies to day. had divine service in the forenoon; wrote to Mrs Underwood to day; Va. is a splendid country.

Monday, Jan. 13, 1862: I was promoted to Sargeant on dress parade this evening; – Cold & clowdy

Tuesday 14: The ground was white with snow in the morning, a cold wintery day ensued – it was pay day and money was flush in camp at Evening; we were busy preparing for picket duty tomorrow; A cold, winters night ensued.

Wednesday 15: We were up by times, and off to our deauty as soon as possible. we took one days rations in our haversacks 40 rounds of cartridges & Blanket to each man, very cold & rainy; marched to Edsons hill and built our camp as best we could. Slept on our armes all night, had a hard time.

Thursday, Jan. 16, 1862: Very pleasant weather; we were busy felling trees and bringing them to camp for our fires; – this is my 21st birth day; I hope that my next birth day will find our "glorious union" restored and peace and prosperity prevailing everywhere; Crafts came to camp today.

Friday 17: we drilled in the forenoon. Crafts went out with about a dozen men on a scout, came in at dark. we heard heavy firing on the Potomac; we are to go to the front tomorrow; – all quiet.

Saturday 18: Very drizzly and cold; we started on our march at 10 OC. we got our several posts picketed by noon, – rain fell more or less all day. the night was dark and stormy  I stood my turn on guard five hours.

Next: Long marches and a trying winter   

2. Making camp in Maryland, and a first march

Lithograph of Camp Casey shows the tents of the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers and the 5th New Hampshire Volunteers.

[Previous chapter is here]

On Nov. 1, 1861, the 41-year-old  bugler Cutler Edson awoke covered with frost. His regiment, the 5th New Hampshire, had reached its first camp near Bladensburg, Md., but had yet to pitch tents. The men had slept on their blankets after a meager meal.

This second chapter of the regiment’s story told through the diaries and letters of Cutler Edson and Eldad Rhodes covers the first three weeks of November 1861. Rhodes’s voice is still absent; he did not join the 5th until January 1862.

Brig. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard

Because of the Baltimore mob’s attack on Massachusetts soldiers six months earlier, the men knew about the divided loyalties of the people of Maryland. The 5th’s first long march and mission, described in Edson’s diary, concerned keeping the peace at an election in Marlboro, Md.

The camp where Edson and the 5th found themselves on the morning of Nov. 1 was named after the regiment’s division commander, Gen. Silas B. Casey. Edson called it “Camp Cacy” in his diary. Casey’s age and appearance disappointed him. The 54-year-old general had been in the army since graduating from West Point in 1826.

Along with the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers and two Pennsylvania regiments, the 5th was part of Casey’s first brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. O.O. Howard, a Mainer. Edson appreciated Howard’s devout Christianity and went to the general’s tent for services whenever he could.

Howard reported to his superiors about the brigade’s early November excursion, which included ideological reconnaissance as well as the policing of the Marlboro election. “Throughout Calvert County I found very warm receptions from Union men and others,” Howard wrote. Only in Prince Frederick, Md., did his men face violent resistance, including a confrontation with Augustus R. Sollers, a former congressman.

Col. Thomas Welsh of the 45th Pa.

“He used the most violent and treasonable language, drew a large knife and cut to the right and left,” Howard wrote. “He was secured and brought in by Colonel Welch [Thomas Welsh of the 45th Pennsylvania] to Lower Marlborough where he was taken so ill with gout that I could not bring him but left him on his parole to report at Washington as soon as he is able to move.”

Howard described the mission as a 27-mile march over bad roads, difficult for new men. Because oats were in short supply, it was also hard on the horses. The general wrote that Col. Edward E. Cross of the 5th New Hampshire “did his duty well in marching and disciplining his command.”

Despite the threats from Southern sympathizers, the election in Marlboro ran smoothly except for the antics of several drunken men. The soldiers arrested them, but they were later released.

Here is how Cutler Edson experienced his regiment’s time at Camp Casey.

Cutler Edson’s diary (continued)

Friday Morning, Nov. 1:  arose this morning covered with a heavy dew and frost but he that never slumbers nor sleeps watched over us for good. we have bin very buisy to-day pitching our tents and getting redy for house keeping. we went about ½ a mile and gathered cedar boughs that we covered the bottom of our tent. then we went to a corn field where we got a few husks for husking which made us a very comfortable bead.

Saturday, Nov. 2: this is a very rainy day and the mud is so deep that it is hard getting around. in consequence we have not bin called on duty. at knight we had orders to take 2 days rations and make preperations for a march.

Sunday, Nov. 3: We started a march under sealed orders. where or how far we are going I know not but after commending myself to God I started. we started about 11 oc and marched 12 or 15 miles at what was called Oak grove where we camped for the knight, but being very tired and Rheumatism trubled me so that I got but little sleep.

Monday, Nov. 4, 1861: I am 42 years old to-day. We arose by day light this morning & traveled about 23 miles which made us very lame and tired. I thought at noon I must give out but after resting a while we went on and marched till after dark when we came to a grove where the Mass. Troops camped some time ago and left ther bow houses where we had a good knights rest.

Nov. 5, Tuesday: We remaned on the ground and rested us till Thursday morning 7th when we took up our march for Camp Cacy where we arrived Friday night pretty well jaged out but we accomplished our object and had great prais from the Colonel. the object of our going to Marlboro which was about 40 miles was to protect the Union men in there Election but they got along with out calling on us.* There was about 38,000 troops stationed along the line of the Potomac but the rebels did not dare venture over.

[Cross was indeed pleased with his men, writing to Gov. Nathaniel Berry of New Hampshire that they had done “nobly” on their first expedition.]

Saturday, Nov. 9:  we are not called on duty to-day and were having a good rest which is very acceptable. Friday night Nov. 8 we had Prayers in our tent for the first time which was a great blessing. thank God for religion which sustanes and comforts us under all circumstances.

Sunday 10: This has bin rather a solemn day in the Reg’t. 1 of our number died this morning and was buried to-knight. it was a young man about 18 years old, George Fifield. he used to be with the Shakers. Saw Bro Stubs on the parade ground to-day but had no chance to speak with him. I yet feele happy in God.*

[*The Enfield Shaker Village was founded near Mascoma Lake in Western New Hampshire during the 1780s. George Fifield, a private in Company C, was originally from Dorcester, N.H. Children came to the Shakers, who were celibate, by adoption, proselytization or indenture. “Bro Stubs” is possibly Rev. Robert S. Stubbs, a Methodist minister from New Hampshire who was a member of the U.S. Christian Commission. Stubbs had preceded the 5th’s Chaplain Wilkins as pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Manchester, N.H. In early 1861 he was a pastor in Claremont, N.H.]  

 

Monday 11: commenced to-day to practice 4 hours a day.* went out and gathered grass for our bed.

[*Bugle practice.]

Tuesday, Nov. 12: this has been a very fine day. truly this is a beautiful country with a mild climit, but Oh! the curse of Slavery. if it was not for that it would be a good place to make a home. I attended a prayer meeting in the Chaplins tent to-knight. had a very good time.

Wednesday 13: this day seamed like a June day in N.H. & this Eve is very mild. J.P. Hale* was on the ground today.

[*John Parker Hale was an antislavery U.S. senator from New Hampshire.]

Nov. 15: the funeral of Mr. Heath* took place this after noon. it was a Solemn time. It is solemn to bury our friends at home but much more so in the Army. Oh! how I wish all this Reg’t war Christians. The to die would be gane.

[Pvt. Samuel A. Heath, 18, of Gorham, N.H., had died of disease the previous day.]

Nov. 16: this has bin a cold blustering day and it has dried up the mud of yesterday so that it is quite comfortable getting around. I have rec’d a letter from my dear wife to-day which has bin very comeforting to me. Oh! how good it is to have sympathising friends. I expect some day to go home to see them. my trust is yet in God.

Sunday, Nov. 17: this has been a good day for my sole. Had preaching in front of the Generals quarters by Bro Stubs from Acts 10-26 I also am a man. he preached good and to the point after which General Howard made a speech which was rec’d by the Christian Men in our Reg’t with gratitude. he is a Christian man and I believe his talk will do us much good. I hope his admonitions will be headid in the eve prayer meeting in the chaplins tent. it was crowded full and many standing with-out that could not get in. when our good General came along and invited us to his quarters and have a meeting there was about 20 of us when where we was provided seats in a larg room in the old Seresps house. the General took the lead of the meeting by reading the Scriptures singing and prayer. he was very faithful to the soldiers in encouraging them to meat there God and the necissity of attending to it now. Mr Young* our drummer arose and declaired his determinations to be a follower of Christ. I hope he will go on till he finds peace in believing and joy in the Holy Ghost. We spent about 1 hour to-gether after which the General pronounced benediction & we retired.

[*This was E. Woodbury Young, the 21-year-old Company E. drummer from Lisbon, N.H.]

Monday 18: it is one month since I enlisted but it seams a good deal longer than that probably owing to the many changes that have taken place since that period.

Gen. Silas Casey, who had fought in the Seminole and Mexican wars.

Tuesday 19: the weather has bin quite warm today. General Casey was on the ground to-day and reviewed our and the 4 R.I. Regts. he is an old man small of stature and very plain looking. went to prayer meeting to-knight and felt my self more at home in Christ than I have since I left home. I believe the Lord is doing a good work in the Regt.

Friday 22: went out to play for my co. for the first time. hope I shal make it go better next time.

Saturday 23: Saturday is a day for cleaning up and washing to prepare for Sunday. went out this after noon for a general review. Recd a letter from my good wife. thankful to here from home sweet home.

Next: Camp California

1. A story in two voices begins on 'one of the lovliest mornings that ever dawned upon New England Shores'

Neither Cutler Edson nor Eldad Rhodes lasted a year and a half with the 5th New Hampshire Volunteers, but they were among the regiment’s best diarists. Their diaries and letters convey what soldiers’ lives were like during the early days of the Civil War.

Cutler Edson

Edson was 41 when he enlisted as a company bugler. A Vermonter by birth, he lived and worked as a brick mason in Enfield, a western New Hampshire town notable for its thriving Shaker village. Rhodes, who joined the regiment three months after Edson, came from the New Hampshire North Country. He was born in Northumberland and was living in Lancaster when he enlisted at the age of 20. Lancaster was the seat of Coos County, the state’s northernmost, and had been the boyhood home of Edward E. Cross, colonel of the 5th New Hampshire.

The paths of Edson and Rhodes crossed in meaningful ways during and after the Civil War.

On Sept. 17, 1862, the 5th New Hampshire crossed Antietam Creek from its camp near the Pry house and marched to battle in the Sunken Road, now also known as Bloody Lane. Rhodes, a sergeant, was shot through the right lung there. Musicians like Edson often did double duty, burying the dead and tending to the wounded. After helping Rhodes from the battlefield to the Pry barn, Edson nursed him for weeks.

Though grateful to Edson, Rhodes had also been wounded at Malvern Hill 2½ months earlier and held surgeons in contempt. In hindsight, perhaps at Antietam their failure to probe his wound with a dirty scalpel saved his life. Eventually Edson took him to a military hospital in nearby Frederick, Md., where Rhodes’s brother Freedom, a captain in the 14th New Hampshire Volunteers, found him. Five months after the battle, Eldad was discharged. He went home to live northern New Hampshire but later moved to Claremont.

Edson stayed with the 5th but fell ill. In January 1863, he was discharged at the age of 43 and also wound up in Claremont.

On the surface at least, the two veterans’ postwar connection was a happy one. In 1882 the farmer Eldad Rhodes, then 41, married 26-year-old Abigail Edson, one of the five children of Cutler and Louisa Hoyt Edson. Cutler had died the previous year, but most likely this union would have pleased him. Edson was a Methodist Episcopalian, Rhodes a Congregationalist. Unlike most northerners who volunteered for the war, both men were also abolitionists. Cutler had been especially religious and often wrote in his diary of his love of God and his hope for the destruction of slavery, which he considered a national evil.

Eldad Rhodes (postwar photo), possibly on his wedding day.

Today the diaries and letters of these two soldiers are in the hands of their descendant, Fred Goodwin of Nampa, Idaho. He lent them to me, and I told the story of the Rhodes brothers, Eldad and Freedom, in Our War. The back-story of that chapter is here.

Together, the Edson-Rhodes papers follow the 5th New Hampshire’s fortunes from its formation in Concord in 1861 through early 1863. This includes the regiment’s role in Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula campaign – the trip by steamer to Fortress Monroe, the siege of Yorktown, the building of the Grapevine Bridge over the Chickahominy River, the battle of Fair Oaks and the Seven Days battles. Edson and Rhodes were both at Antietam, of course, though not at Fredericksburg with the rest of the 5th.

I have arranged the material chronologically. These posts will not include every diary entry and the letters will be excerpted, but all that is substantive is here. Without omitting the flavor of camp life or its quotidian nature, I have cut repetitive material. I have added or fixed punctuation in some cases for clarity but otherwise left the papers as the Rhodes-Edson descendants transcribed them. I have written contextual material and personal identifications where I thought them helpful, but my purpose is to leave it to Edson and Rhodes to tell the story.

The account begins in Concord, New Hampshire’s capital, as the 5th New Hampshire, 1,000-plus men strong, prepares to cross the Merrimack River from its training camp on Concord Heights to downtown Concord. There they will board a train south. Col. Cross, a hardcore Democrat, had thumbed his nose at the Republican establishment by naming their first encampment Camp Jackson, after Andrew Jackson.

From Cutler Edson’s diary:

Sunday, Oct. 27: this has bin a very buisy day in camp. it has not seemed like Sunday. this evening went in to the Chaplins* tent and had plenty of singing and he offered prayer. it was realy reviving. probably the last that we shal here on this encampment. I yet feel it good to trust in God.

[*Elijah R. Wilkins of Lisbon, N.H., was the 5th’s chaplain.]

Monday Oct. 28: at about 5 oc A.M. we left Camp Jackson for Concord Citty where we ware quartered for the knight, Some in one place and some in another. it was my lot with about 20 others to be quartered in the mayors office in the citty hall where we had a very comfortable place and got a very little sleep.

Tuesday Oct. 29: arose at 4 oc and made preparations for a start. every thing being put to rights, we ware marched to the Depot where we ware comfortably seeted in the cars and in the midst of Thousands of Spectators who wished us all success and prosperity and asked the blessing of God upon us. it was one of the lovliest mornings that ever dawned upon New England Shores. about ¼ before 8 we started with all our luggage horses waggons and all in the whole making between 30 and 40 cars. the most of our boys were in good spirits but there ware some that ware sorry they had enlisted. We went as far as Atkins point in Coneticut in the cars where we took a steam boat and went threw long I. sound.

We pased N.Y. Citty to our right and landed at Jersey Citty a little after sunris.

Lithograph of the Cooper Shop in Philadelphia

Wednesday the 30: We left this place about 10 oc in the cars and arrived at Philidelphia about 6 where we had the grandest reseption that we rec’d in all our journey. They have an institution here called the Cooper Shop institution* where they feed all the soldiers that go threw here whether to or from the war. we were provided with plenty of Bred cold meat pickels and coffee which we rec’d with thankfulness. I never shal forget the kindness that we rec’d there and the sympathy they seamed for us.

we ware in the citty till about 12 oc befor we got our luggage re-loaded and redy for a start and there ware thousands in the streats at that late houre, men women and children bidding us Gods spead, the women taking us by the hand and cautioning us to be carefull of our selves, and the kisses we rec’d from little girls maid me think of those I left behind. the people of Philidelphia seam to realise for what we have left our quiet homes and come off down here.

[*William M, Cooper, a Philadelphia merchant, conceived of this friendly way-station for soldiers. It opened on May 26, 1861, at Cooper’s storefront on Ostego Street. Its formal name was the Cooper Shop Volunteer Refreshment Saloon. Cooper ran it throughout the war.]

Thursday, Oct. 31: we got into Baltimore about 8 oc this morning. saw the bullet holes in the roof of the Depot where the Mass Boys shot at the rebels when they pas threw.* there is now a gard stationed in the depot to protect our troops and likewise there is picket guards placed all along the rail rode from there to Washington and troops also for our protection. We arrived at Bladensburg Md about dark, where 6 miles this side of Washington on the same ground where the NH 2nd were drilled here.

we left the cars and marched on to the ground and commanded to halt and make our selves comfortable as we could for the knight without any supper with out any covering but the Blue sky and nothing beneath but the Cold earth. but in this I complaned not for it was the best accomedations  we could have under the circumstances.

we found 3 Regiments stationed here, 1 from R.I., one from Michigan, 1 from Wisconsin. the R.I. boys made us some coffee and gave us what Bread they had left for there suppers which cheared us up and maid our boys feel more recconciled to there lot. we then spred down our blankets and laid down for the knight.

[*On April 19, 1861, in a skirmish with an antiwar, pro-Southern mob, the 6th Massachusetts Volunteers lost four men killed, the first casualties in hostile action of the Civil War. The incident became a flashpoint for regiments passing through Baltimore.]

Next: Camp Casey 

New project and the 300 club

A group of 4th New Hampshire veterans at a reunion at the Weirs on Lake Winnipesaukee

I have begun work on a string of blogposts from the diaries and letters of two Civil War soldiers with both wartime and postwar connections. It's an exciting project because by placing their diaries and letters in chronological order, I can let them tell the story of the first 15 months of the existence of my favorite regiment: the 5th New Hampshire Volunteers.

Meanwhile, I'll post when I can about a range of subjects. Recent posts about World War I have gained wide readership, including one on the list below -- What was Thomas Hardy like? -- based on the observations of two major figures from World War I.

In the past I periodically posted the 25 most popular posts on this blog on the basis of pageviews. This list is slightly different. There are now more than 300 posts, and the pageview count is approaching 80,000. So here are all the posts -- 40 of them -- with more than 300 pageviews. The No. 1 post has had 1,357 pageviews, and the numbers scale down from there.

Thanks so much for your continued readership,

1. Killing the Southerners with kindness (1)

2. The long American tradition of racist speech (2)

3. A Gettysburg veteran who knew the battlefield by heart (4)

4. Did Abraham Lincoln really free the slaves? (6)

5. Why couldn’t Franklin Pierce just keep his mouth shut? (5)

6. Urgent! Telegram from Gettysburg (3)

7. The rise and fall of James Willis Patterson (10)

8. One school’s proud Civil War heritage (9)

9. Farewell, my teacher (7)

10. Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville (13)

11. The Civil War: ‘It was not my fault,’ Buchanan insisted (15)

12. Exeter’s Civil War general (8)

13. A Gettysburg journal (part 3) (10)

14. A Gettysburg photo album (16)

15. Elias Nason’s diary (1863): Bloody fields of conflict (25 tie) 

16. Unpacking the new ‘Gettysburg’ (11) 

17. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part I (14)

18.  Gallery: Faces ofthe Fighting Fifth (part one) (19t) 

19. The Civil War created a boom for Yankee’s circus (21)

20 (tie). ‘The reputation of a regiment if always made bythe worst men in it’ (22t) 

20 (tie). Gallery: Old soldiers (2), a New England brigade (18)

22. A Confederate captain’s war diary, part 3 (25t)

23. What was Thomas Hardy like? (new to list)

24. A Gettysburg Journal, part 4 (22t) 

25. The soldier’s story behind the love story, Part II  (19) 

26. A nasty scrap with Cross’s brother (new to list)

27. Standing proudly before a fate unknown (21t)

28. A mother’s dying wish, a son’s destiny (new to list)

29. Together again: They rode with Cross at Gettysburg (25t)

30. How Napoleon B. Perkins lost his leg (new to list)

31. Elias Nason’s diary (1861): The war changed everything but life went on (new to list)

32. Gallery: What the rebels won at Gettysburg (25t)

33. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth, two (new to list)

34. A gift from the heart (24)

35. Captain Gordon’s war: ‘More fighting to bedone, and many lives will be lost’ (new to list)

36. From Fredericksburg to the Crater, Pvt. Don E. Scott thought God was by his side (new to list) 

37. Carleton at Gettysburg: ‘It would be a pleasure to linger here a while’ (new to list)

38. The monument is wholly like any other on the ground (new to list)

39. Richard Ager, storyteller (new to list)

40. A souvenir from Harpers Ferry (new to list)

What was Thomas Hardy like? Two post-WWI sketches

The poet Robert Graves introduced T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) to Thomas Hardy. From a nearby Tank Corps camp, Lawrence visited Hardy several times in Dorcester during the summer of 1923. He wrote Graves: “T.H. is an experience that a man must keep to himself.”

Thomas Hardy portrait, 1923

Fortunately neither Graves nor Hardy followed this dictum. Both left portraits of the venerable Hardy, who was 80 when Graves met him and 83 when Lawrence wrote his letter.

During World War I Graves survived a wound so severe that his commander confidently wrote his parents that he had died in transit to the hospital. The war office confirmed his death in a telegram. Graves also suffered from shell-shock (post-traumatic stress disorder) but was kept out of further fighting because his wound had damaged a lung. He attended Oxford after the war and lived nearby with his wife, Nancy Nicholson, and their two small children.

In 1920 the couple took a bicycle trip. They packed up a few things and pedaled across Salisbury Plain by moonlight. As Graves wrote later from notes he made at the time, they saw Stonehenge and a more recent, if less durable, landmark: deserted wartime army camps vast enough to quarter a million men.

When they realized they were near Dorcester, they veered off to visit Hardy. The old poet lived with his second wife, Florence, at Max Gate. Hardy was the son of a stonemason and had been an architect early in life. He had designed the house and written several novels and much of his poetry there.

Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's home on the outskirts of Dorcester.

Graves knew many poets of his own generation. He had saved Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow officer, from the consequences of an antiwar manifesto Saasoon wrote and allowed to be published in 1917. He had met and corresponded with Wilfred Owen. Near Oxford he shared a neighborhood with Edmund Blunden, John Masefield and others.

When Hardy came to Oxford to receive an honorary degree in 1920, Graves found him confused in speech and thought. Now, at Max Gate, Hardy was welcoming, engaging and charming.

“We took tea in the drawing-room, which, like the rest of the house, was cluttered with furniture and ornaments,” he wrote in his 1929 memoir, Goodbye to All That. “Hardy had an affection for accumulated possessions, and Mrs Hardy loved him too well to suggest that anything should be removed.”

Robert Graves, an officer and a poet

In the garden after tea, Hardy asked to see some of Graves’s poems. When Graves showed him one, Hardy suggested he remove the cliché “the scent of thyme.” Graves declined, saying Hardy and his generation of poets had so thoroughly banished the cliché from their work that it was no longer a cliché.

Hardy inquired about Graves’s writing habits. Graves replied that the poem he had given him was in its sixth draft and would be finished in two more, Hardy replied: “Why! I have never in my life taken more than three, perhaps four, drafts for a poem. I am afraid it would lose its freshness.”

Hardy told Graves he could write novels methodically but preferred poetry because it “always came by accident.” He had enjoyed writing certain chapters of his novels but in general disliked them.

Once, while pruning a tree, Hardy had conceived a novel in his head but had nothing to write the idea down on. When he finally went in, the idea had vanished. He advised Graves always to carry pencil and paper and added: “Even if I remembered that story now, I couldn’t write it. I’m past novel-writing. But I often wonder what it can have been.”

When Hardy complained about “autograph fiends,” Graves told him: “A mythical secretary should reply offering his autograph at one or two guineas, the amount to be sent to a hospital – ‘Swanage Children’s Hospital,’ he put in – which would forward a receipt.” Hardy liked the idea.

Graves could not help him with his other complaint. “He regarded professional critics as parasites, no less noxious than autograph hunters, wished the world rid of them, and also regretted having listened to them as a young man,” Graves wrote. At the critics’ behest Hardy had stopped using dialect that lacked good English equivalents in his early poems, but the critics had not let up. When he wrote, “he smalled in the distance,” a critic complained about it. What else could he have written? Hardy asked Graves.

To avoid the stigma of coining words, he had taken to looking them up in the dictionary, but even that could be problematic. He had lived long enough that sometimes he would find that an odd usage was sanctioned but on reading further discover that the “sole authority” for it was his own use of it in a long-ago novel.

Three years later, D.E. Lawrence wrote Graves a letter about his visits with Hardy, contrasting the sage of Max Gate with the raucous life in the Tank Corps camp where Lawrence then served as an officer.

T.E. Lawrence, a/k/a Lawrence of Arabia, 1918.

“Hardy is so pale, so quiet, so refined into an essence: and camp is such a hurly-burly. When I come back I feel as if I’d woken up from a sleep: not an exciting sleep, but a restful one. There is an unbelievable dignity and ripeness about Hardy: he is waiting so tranquilly for death, without a desire or ambition left in his spirit, as far as I can feel it: and yet he entertains so many illusions, and hopes for the world, things which I, in my disillusioned middle-age, feel to be illusory. They used to call this man a pessimist. While really he is full of fancy expectations.

“Then he is so far-away. Napoleon is a real man to him, and the country of Dorsetshire echoes the name everywhere in Hardy’s ears. He lives in his period, and thinks of it as the great war: whereas to me that nightmare through the fringe of which I passed has dwarfed all memories of other wars, so that they seem trivial, half-amusing incidents. . . .

“And the standards of the man! He feels interest in everyone, and veneration for no-one. I've not found in him any bowing-down, moral or material or spiritual. . . .

“He takes me as soberly as he would take John Milton (how sober that name is), considers me as carefully, is as interested in me: for to him every person starts scratch in the life-race, and Hardy has no preferences: and I think no dislikes, except for the people who betray his confidence and publish him to the world.

“Perhaps that’s partly the secret of that strange house hidden behind its thicket of trees. It’s because there are no strangers there. Anyone who does pierce through is accepted by Hardy and Mrs. Hardy as one whom they have known always and from whom nothing need be hid.

“For the ticket which gained me access to T.H. I’m grateful to you – probably will be grateful always. Max Gate is a place apart: and I feel it all the more poignantly for the contrast of life in this squalid camp. It is strange to pass from the noise and thoughtlessness of sergeants’ company into a peace so secure that in it not even Mrs. Hardy’s tea-cups rattle on the tray: and from a barrack of hollow senseless bustle to the cheerful calm of T.H. thinking aloud about life to two or three of us. If I were in his place I would never wish to die: or even to wish other men dead. The peace which passeth all understanding: but it can be felt, and is nearly unbearable. How envious such an old age is.”

Sources: Graves: Goodbye to All That; Lawrence: letters online at T.E. Lawrence studies. 

Armed with horn and drums, a father and sons go to war

Nathan W. Gove

Music filled the air as the 3rd New Hampshire Volunteers marched to the train station in Concord. The regimental band “was considered particularly fine, and had German silver, bell-back instrument.”

One of the tunes it played was “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” which thereafter became the standard for departing regiments. When a town band played “Auld Lang Syne” as the train prepared to pull out of the station, the 3rd New Hampshire’s horn players responded with “Sweet Home.”

Among the departing musicians was Nathan Webster Gove, a Concord man older than most of the volunteers – old enough at 44, in fact, to have brought his two young sons along as drummer boys.

The younger boy, Nathan Marcel Gove, was 11, and played his drum with the regimental band. The older, Charles, who was about to turn 14, served as a company drummer boy. Both had been born in Derry.

Nathan M. Gove

I could find almost nothing about the girl these musical soldiers left behind them. Nathan W. Gove, born in Chester, taught handwriting and worked as an accountant in Concord. He had married Mary C. Fisk, a girl from a large Concord family, in 1839 when he was 22 and she was 19.

Had they argued about whether such young boys should be exposed to the dangers of war? Had they considered the compromise of his taking one and leaving the other? It’s hard to imagine they hadn’t. Had he fully considered the burden he was placing on her? And what did she feel about the separation? Pride perhaps, but certainly also dread.

The 3rd was the first regiment whose men received a $10 bonus from the state for volunteering. Its training camp, named after the new governor, Nathaniel S. Berry, was set up across the Merrimack River below a plateau known as the Dark Plains (now Concord Heights). It was near the river nor far from the bridge in the south of town.

The officers had wall tents, but the men’s A-tents dominated the company streets. Their uniforms were gray, trimmed with blue. They wore gray caps with visors front and back, bore Enfield rifles and carried gray backpacks.

Three members of the regimental band would make names for themselves as chroniclers of the war: the reporter John W. Odlin, a correspondent from the front; John C. Linehan, whose Granite Monthly articles told the story of the men from Penacook (then Fisherville), a village in Concord; and Henry S. Hamilton, a native Englishman whose sprightly memoir has been the subject of earlier posts on this blog (here, here, here and here).

Moore's photo of the 3rd NH band. Nathan M. Gove (above and below) straddles his drum front and center. 

The regiment camped across the river for only a few weeks before it took the train south on Sept. 3, 1861. Two months later it was present at the taking, mostly by naval bombardment, of Port Royal, S.C. It spent much of the next year camped at Hilton Head. It was there that Henry P. Moore, a Concord photographer, set up shop in 1862 and made many pictures of the men, including the band.

On July 16, the 3rd first fought on James Island, in what was known as the battle of Secessionville. It lost 105 killed, wounded and missing. The bandsmen played a role, going onto the battlefield to collect the rifles of the killed and gravely wounded.

At around the time of this battle Congress ordered Union regiments to shed their regimental bands. In August Nathan M. Gove, the drummer in the band, fell ill with malaria. On Sept. 2, a year less a day since their departure from Concord, he and the other band members boarded the Star of the South, for the return voyage.

Much as most of the musicians hated to leave their comrades, they were also glad to be headed home. They were less pleased with their sleeping quarters, a smelly hold whose previous occupants had been horses. They worried about the sick Gove and did what they could to ease his journey.

Nathan M. Gove's drum (courtesy, N.H. Historical Society).

Both Nathan W. and Nathan M. Gove returned to wartime service. The father, then 47, went south in 1864 as principal musician of the 18th New Hampshire, the last regiment raised by the state. Its colonel was less than half Gove’s age. He was Thomas L. Livermore, who had served under Edward E. Cross of the 5th New Hampshire and risen to a staff position by Gettysburg, where he was head of the ambulance corps. Nathan M. Gove returned to the 3rd New Hampshire as a drummer in 1863 and served out the war. He was 15 years old when it ended.

Charles H. Gove remained with the 3rd throughout the war. Afterward he married, lived near Concord and was active in the Grand Army of Republic, the chief veterans’ organization. He died in 1917 and is buried in the Soucook Cemetery.

After the war Nathan W. Gove served as deputy secretary of state under Walter Harriman, colonel of the 11th New Hampshire during the war and later governor of the state. Gove was promoted to secretary of state but died on Aug. 8, 1871, at the age of 54.

Gravestone at Soldiers' Home Cemetery, Grand Rapids

Nathan M., his son, married Margaret Lewis in 1873. They lived in Concord but later moved to Detroit. Nathan joined the navy with the hope that a life at sea would improve his health, which had never recovered after his wartime bout with malaria. He applied for a pension in 1891, when he was 41 years old.

“Entering the army at 11 years of age as drummer my service for nearly four years cost me my health and education and changed the whole current of my life,” he wrote. “I have never been well since.”

He entered the Soldiers’ Home in Grand Rapids in 1912 and died there 10 years later.