'Ho! For Old Kentucky!!': Rewind through Recruiting

From What a Boy Saw in the Army

Time constraints limit me from making a post out of every little news item related to the Lancaster County Regiment that I run across, so here's a list of items that I won't have time to discuss in detail.  I also recommend listening to Tim Orr's presentation, "Enlistment in the North and South During the Civil War," for a more general look at how Civil War regiments came into existence.  Compared to what happened elsewhere, the recruiting process was relatively tame in terms of partisan politics, presumably because Col. Hambright's stature as a military hero and proficient leader earned him bipartisan support. 

Here are a variety of references to news items from the Daily Evening Express, with the notations referring to the newspaper edition in which they appeared, ranging from September to November 1861.  

• Capt. Duchman's company, later Company B, is mustered in on September 5. (9/5)  Praise for Capt. Duchman. (9/10)
• Recruiting for Col. Hambright's regiment is "looking up."  (9/10)
• Battalion parade through streets of Lancaster with 400 men and visit by Brig. Gen. James S. Negley. (9/13)
• "Ranks Rapidly Filling Up" for Col. Hambright's Regiment. (9/17)
• Arrival of Capt. McBride's company, later Company D. (9/18)
• Sword presentation to Lieut. David Miles. (9/18)
• Arrival in Lancaster of Capt. McNalley's company, later Company C, 77th Pennsylvania. A scandal over the company's departure from Harrisburg ensued.  (9/20,25)
• Regiment is "nearly full." (9/25)
• Sword presentation to officers of Company F. (9/25)
• Capt. Wickersham's company filling up with many "school teachers and men of education." (9/25)
• Clothing distributed to Col. Hambright's regiment. (9/27)
• Officers of Col. Hambright's regiment entertained at N. Queen St. saloon and serenaded by Fencibles Band. (9/27)
• Report that Gov. Curtin assigned Hambright and his regiments to Negley's Brigade. (9/30)
• Dinner for volunteers in southern Lancaster City held by patriotic citizen Samuel Cormany. (10/1)
• Regimental parade on Center Square. (10/3)
• Controversy resulting from Capt. M. D. Wickersham unsuccessful recruiting visit to town of Christiana during which Wickersham's commitment to war was questioned based on his helping a stranded Southern female student at the Millersville State Normal School. (10/3,7,8)
• Fencibles Band concert to support Patriot Daughters of Lancaster. (10/4)
• Recruiting editorials: "More Union Men Wanted" and "Your Country still Calls," including announcement of company recruited by Frederick Pyfer and Benjamin Ober.  This company was recruited for Col. Hambright's regiment but later became Company K, 77th Pennsylvania. (10/10)
• Recruiting appeal: "Be in time, Young Men!" (10/17)
• Deserters from Col. Hambright's Regiment. (10/18,19)
• Capt. Foreman's grievances from a failed attempt to recruit a company for Col. Hambright's regiment. (10/20,22)
• Update on Pyfer and Ober's company. (10/22)
• Poem: "The Lancaster County Volunteers." (10/22,23,26,29;11/11)
• Presentation of sword to Capt. Wickersham. (10/30)
• Recruiting appeal: "More Men Wanted for Active Service in Kentucky." (11/2)

Advertisement for Capt. Pyfer's company, appearing in November 1861 editions of the Express.

Recruiting Update: "Now or never is the time"

From What a Boy Saw in the Army

Our best views into the 79th Pennsylvania's recruiting process--how and why men enlisted--come from contemporary newspaper appeals.  We've already seen some about how they enlisted.  Basically, men with some military or business or educational background (or, perhaps just some plain ambition) arranged with Col. Hambright to recruit a company for his regiment.  These soon-to-be captains set up recruiting offices in Lancaster city or villages in the county, and appointed soon-to-be lieutenants to help them in the process.  As a result, many of the companies tended to have clusters of men from the same hometown (group of men from Marietta in Co. F, Mountville/West Hempfield/Millersville in Co. E, Gap in Co. C, etc.)  We also see accounts of captains traveling to patriotic events across the county, say a flag raising, and giving speeches to attract men to join the ranks.  As we'll see below, a young man could even all-but-enlist just by sending his name to the Daily Evening Express office. 

Introducing the Fencibles Band

Band of the 8th New York State Militia, which the Fencibles Band would have resembled.
Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-02779

While the 79th Pennsylvania resembled other three-year volunteer regiments in many regards, a couple things about the regiment made it unique, such as fighting in the Western Theater, having almost all soldiers coming from the same mid-sized city, and possessing various idiosyncrasies related to Pennsylvania Dutch Country.  One other unique attribute was that the regiment had a supposedly really good band, the Lancaster Fencibles Band.  The Fencibles Band had achieved local celebrity status well before the war had started, bringing an air of excitement to all sorts of civic occasions, and traveled with the 79th Pennsylvania to Kentucky, Tennessee, and beyond.

The Fencibles Band had gone off to war with the Fencibles and Jackson Rifles as part of the Three Months' Campaign in 1861, where it earned a reputation as "the very best in the whole volunteer service" (Intell, 6/25/1861).  A month or so after returning from that campaign, the band--joined by the regiment's glee club--treated the citizens of Lancaster to a performance at Fulton Hall on the evening of August 30, 1861.  From the August 29, 1861, Daily Evening Express: (alternate link)



Three weeks later it became official that the Fencibles Band would be joining Col. Hambright's regiment, as the band was sworn in on September 19, 1861.  They accompanied the regiment throughout the war, except for a nine-month period mid-way through the war when army policy temporarily disbanded regimental bands. From that day's Daily Evening Express: (alternate link)



Soldiers of the 79th Pennsylvania often remarked on the band, and I'm sure I'll be posting stories related to the band over the next couple years. It also appears to have been used pretty regularly as outreach to the civilian population near where the regiment was camped. Some sneak peaks from the diary of William T. Clark, Co. B, 79th Pennsylvania:

• 10/19/1861: At 7 a.m., the fog having disappeared, we again moved down the [Ohio River by steamboat]. In passing Wheeling our band struck up attracting the attention of the people of the town & soon there were several hundred persons upon the shore & upon the splendid wide bridge spanning the Ohio there listening to the music as it echoed on the shore. This is a splendid moonlight night.
• 9/17/1863: 1st Brig, takes advance at 6 A.M. We are rear guard. Our Regt. rear of all wagon trains. Cross creek at sawmill.. Left camp at 9½ A.M., roads good. March slow. Cross Ala. & Ga. line, band playing Dixie, at 12 M.
• 3/14/1865: Wrote to Father a brief sketch of our campaign. We have been out 54 days & marched 395 miles. Lieut. James H. Marshall, Major Locher & some Officers from Brig. Hd. Qrs. took the band & serenaded Gen. Sherman, who said, among things, that in 3 days we would connect with Gen. Schofield.

Recruiting Update

"Recruiting in New York, August 1861" Harper's Weekly September 7, 1861

It's been a couple weeks since my last update on recruiting for Colonel Hambright's regiment, so let's go back a little to an update that appeared in the August 26, 1861, Daily Evening Express. (alternate link) For those unfamiliar with how Civil War armies were structured, a regiment was the basic unit of operation on the battlefield with an ideal strength of 1,000 men. It was comprised of ten companies with 100 men each. Companies were the basic unit of recruiting, and men from each company tended to be from the same hometown or from two or three villages.



And from the August 27, 1861, Daily Evening Express: (alternate link)



Here are some company-by-company notes about the regiment:

• As mentioned in the article, Captain Kendrick's company was filled largely with men from the Jackson Rifles.  More on Captain Kendrick in the future and his company, which became Company A.
• Capt. Seaver never went off to war, but his company of German-speaking men going off to fight under Lieut. Klein as Company F.  According to the article, both of the officers fought in the failed Revolution of 1848 under later Union General Franz Sigel.  Seeing the company described as the "German Sharpshooters," I wonder if they had any connection to popular German shooting clubs of the 1850s and 1860s that occasionally were mentioned in newspapers. 
• The company mentioned being recruited by Capt. Haines might have ended up going off to war with the 45th Pennsylvania led by Col. Thomas Welsh of Columbia. 
• Lieut. Michael Locher, operator of a billiard saloon on Centre Square, ended up leading Company H.
• Capt. Duchman's company later became Company B.
• The other companies mentioned did not end up joining the 79th Pennsylvania, and that's another story for another time, probably related to the article's last couple paragraphs about the chaotic process of organizing companies and assigning them to regiments.

So, as of August 27, we're looking at the origins of four of the companies of what would become the 79th Pennsylvania being accounted for.  More updates to come.

See also:
It's Official: Raise a Regiment

It's Official: Raise a Regiment

Post-war image of Gen. Henry A. Hambright.  (Source) 

On the morning of Sunday, August 11, 1861, Henry A. Hambright returned to Lancaster from his trip to Washington having achieved exactly what he set out to accomplish: securing authorization to raise a new regiment.  Hambright--a veteran of the Mexican War and antebellum militia leader widely recognized for his military acumen--had just concluded three months' service with the "Jackson Rifles" (Co. K, 1st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry).  The Daily Evening Express ran the following announcement: (alternate link)



Other newspapers across Lancaster County and Pennsylvania picked up the announcement and added praise for soon-to-be Col. Hambright, who also held a regular army captain's commission.  It was rumored that, based on Hambright's reputation, returning volunteer companies from across the state were clamoring to be included in Hambright's regiment. Stay tuned for the chaotic recruitment over the next few weeks as Hambright tries to assemble the a regiment amid state and local pressures for deciding who's in and who's out...

Also, I'll append two news items related to the Jackson Rifles also appearing in the August 12 Express: (alternate link)

(Source)

Capt. Hambright goes to Washington

War Department Headquarters
By Wakely, G. D. -- Photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

On August 7, 1861, Capt. Henry A. Hambright left Lancaster to visit Washington and get authorization to raise a three-year regiment. The main issue to resolve was whether Hambright, who already had a relationship with the U.S. Army*, would take a command with the regular army, or raise a regiment of Pennsylvania volunteers.  Naturally, Lancasterians hoped for the latter outcome in which they could send off their volunteers under a trusted and well-respected military hero.

Attempting to support him was his father, Major (based on his position in the Pennsylvania militia of the 1840s and 1850s) Frederick Hambright, who arrived by train from Pittsburgh.  The elder Hambright had moved before the war from Lancaster to Pittsburgh, where his son-in-law had begun a brewery.  [See pg. 264 of Alexander Harris' A Biographical History of Lancaster County for a bio.]  Unfortunately, he was a day late and Henry Hambright had already left for Washington.

From the August 8, 1861, edition of the Daily Evening Express: (Alternate link)

*In the coming weeks, look for more biographical information about Henry Hambright.  I need to sort through a little more information to state precisely what Hambright's pre-war position was with the U.S. Army.

8/1/1861: 'A desire to raise a regiment'

Welcome to Lancaster at War blog.  Today marks the initial post focusing on the 150th anniversary of events in the life of the 79th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. 

At one o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, July 27, 1861, the Court House bell in Lancaster rang to announce the departure from Harrisburg of the two Lancaster companies returning home after brief service in the 1st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.  Militia companies and firemen led an "immense crowd" of people to meet the returning soldiers at the Dillerville Yard.  (Another crowd gathered in town at the train station was left disappointed.)  After taking time for personal greetings, they processed up James Street, down North Queen to Centre Square, and finally to Fulton Hall where they were dismissed.

Although their service in the "Three Months' Campaign" had completed, much work remained if the Union was to be restored.  Earlier that week, as a matter of fact, Union forces--not including any Pennsylvania units--met with disaster on the battlefield at Bull Run.  The prospect of a short war was extinguished, and the federal government revised old militia laws to allow President Lincoln to recruit regiments to serve for three years.  And almost all of the men of the two returning Lancaster companies--Capt. Emlen Franklin's "Lancaster Fencibles" and Capt. Henry A. Hambright's "Jackson Rifles"--intended their return to Lancaster to be brief, dictated only by the amount of time it would take Pennsylvania to authorize its three years regiments.

Accomplished militia commander Henry A. Hambright, widely praised for his proficient drilling and efficient management of the Jackson Rifles, had no intention of allowing any rust to accumulate on any of his soldiers' rifles.  Centre Square (now Penn Square) provided Hambright with his favored parade grounds for showing off his company and garnering praises from the city's newspapers, whose editors described "everything moving with greatest regularity, like a piece of splendid machinery."  (However one rifle did mistakenly go off, knocking off half a brick from the southwest corner of Centre Square.)

Another (unrelated) company of Pennsylvania volunteers in camp.
(Library of Congress)

On July 31, Hambright took his company out to the Lancaster Fairgrounds in order to have a little more space.  The Daily Evening Express' account of the event is presented below, presumably in the words of editor J.M.W. Geist.  At this point, people around Lancaster began to ask the obvious question of what role Capt. Hambright's next role would be, and whether it would be with the Regular Army or with volunteers from Lancaster.  They clearly preferred the latter, and as evident in this report momentum began to build for Hambright to command one of the new regiments.

Stay tuned for an introduction to Colonel Hambright, background information about Lancaster on the eve of the war, and information about the 1st Pennsylvania in the Three Months' Campaign.  

Daily Evening Express August 1, 1861
(alternate link)