My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. This is the third section of Chapter I.

Early in May I left Baltimore entirely, and remained in Washington and its neighborhood. Until July my time was divided between visiting camps and forts, attending the sessions of Congress, and generally, in taking in the events occurring around and about me. The battle of Bull Run was fought, and I witnessed the wonderfull extremes. A few days before, and I saw the fine looking troops from the North: they were well fed, well dressed, full of fight, and they moved from the various camps in the city, over the Long Bridge and on to Arlington Heights, in time with the music of many gorgeously uniformed and well appointed bands. With virgin banners flying, and speeches from the Preisdent and the eminent Senators and Representatives from their several States, the various regiments and brigades marched gayly on to finish the war in sixty days.

I saw the retreat, and when the troops filed into the city I mingled my feelings with those who feared that the existence of the nation was in its greatest peril. To render it worse, that direful day was dark and gloomy, and it rained in torrents. The returning soldiers were dirty, and begrimed with the historic clay of Virginia; some were shoeless, many hatless — all minus something, and all but very few with any but drooping and dejected spirits. All will hurry-scurry, and to all appearances without any definite aim other than that of arriving at comfortable camping grounds. Then we were afraid that the rebels would follow up their victory and enter Washington. It was said by many that the Government were wholly prepared to flee, that the President had gone, and it was fully a week before the people were reassured of their immediate safety. The best conditioned of our troops had been left on the southern side of the Potomac, but what did we know of that? Besides, our Provost Marshal’s office had not yet been completely organized, our spies were not so diligent or numerous as those on the other side, and the city contained within its limits a vast number of those who thought the enemy would soon be at our doors, and with whom a wish was father to the thought.

However, the feeling of despair in time gave way to that of hope and confidence, General McDowell was superseded, and by and by General McClellan, the “great soldier,” the “young Napoleon,” the “savior of his country,” took command of our armies. Troops poured into the city by thousands, daily and hourly: fortifications rose as if by magic, and upon all the hills around the city were bristling cannon, while at the feet of those hills and all around them was a vast camp of armed men. From the Insane Asylum beyond the eastern branch of the Potomac river to Tennalytown on the Rockville Pike road, and around in a circle, were camps of infantry, cavalry, and batteries of artillery.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. This is the second section of Chapter I.

On Monday the city was calm. The hot blood had run itself down. Orders had been sent to the North from Washington, the country at large had got over the first scare, and in a day or two after, an Ohio regiment of infantry and some regular tropps entered the city, partially in secret, but with loaded cannons and muskets and fixed bayonets — indeed, in full fighting trim. They marched down from the Central Railroad depot to the Washington depot on Camden street. It was an impresssive sight. Dread determination was on each and every man’s face. There were closed ranks and generally true soldierly bearing and carriage. Every eye was fixed. Not a smiling countenance nor an answering cheer from the populace greeted them, and not handkerchiefs of fair ladies waved in welcome. The crowds on the sidewalks were dense, and kept a sullen silence. The silenve was almost painful. I remember that I heard the ominous, heavy, regular tread of the soldiers as they marched to the defiant rolling of the drums. There was no music save that, and, if it may be so called, an occasional dramatic blast of the bugle as changes in the direction of the column were announced. Then indeed the people begin to breathe free. The city had been controlled, troops had safely passed through, and the “seccessionists” and their allies, the mob, had alike been awed into submission.

The first regiment of loyal troops that I saw venture on the bloody route of the Sixth Massachusetts was, I think, from Vermont or Maine. They were uniformly tall, full-bearded, healthy looking men, and a jauntily attired vivandiere was with them. They did not ride in the cars from the President street depot to the Camden depot, as the gallant Sixth attempted, but, having formed near the depot, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, they wisely marched along Pratt street through the great crowds to the cars. Soon after that New York city sent some regiments, composed in part of what were then called toughs. They were firemen and of that class. It was expected by the Southerners that these troops would fraternize with them, but they did not, and that was the last of Baltimore’s prospects of ruin. She settled down to terrible hard times and the mortification of seeing United States enginineers surveying old Federal Hill, as a preliminary to the erection of a strong fort right in the city itself.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. This is the first section of Chapter I.

Chapter I: From the outbreak of the war until about June, 1862, and while, although I was not yet a soldier, I was much with the army, and in the field.

Riots in Baltimore

When the war broke out, say in the month of April, 1861, I was residing with my uncle in Baltimore and Washington; that is to say, business was done in the former city, while the residence was at the capital. On the 19th of that month occurred the bloody riot in Baltimore, during which six or seven men of the Sixth Regiment of Massachusets Infantry were killed or wounded. The next two days (Saturday and Sunday) were days of terror. No one knew what was to come next. Regiments were hastily formed out of workmen from the various shopes. “Ross Winan Guards” was the name of a battalion formed by the enlistment of men in the employ of the great inventor. That, and other regiments and companies paraded the streets in hastily manufactured uniforms of various colors and meterials, and armed with a great variety of weapons.

On Friday night a company of the 6th Maryland State Guard proceeded to the President street depot, and after compelling the men of an unarmed regiment (the Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania Colonel Stone) to retrace their steps to Philadelphia, the soliders of the Sixth Maryland Guard, accompanied by a large but well organized mob, proceeded to the Gunpowder river, where they set fire to and destroyed a railroad bridge, and I believe they also at the same time scuttled and sunk the great railroad ferry-boat “Maryland,” on the Susquehanna river at Havte-degrace. Besides this, all communication by telegraph between the city and the outside work was cut off, excepting a line to Harper’s Ferry, but that wire was kept open solely in the interest of those whose sympathies were against the Federal Govenment and in favor of the Southern people.

Saturday the city was altogether in the hands of the mob. Stores, especially such as contained arms and those holding provisions, were broken open and ruthlessly rifled of their contents. All kinds and descriptions were seized in the general levy. It was not unusual to meet a band of rag-a-muffins armed with single and double-barrled shotgus, rifles, long and short, and a variety of swords, sabres, and cutlasses all in one company. Few persons slept that night. Owners of houses, stocks of goods, jewellers, bankers, and all were alike in great fear for the safety of the valuables they were possessed of or had under their control. Sunday morning broke into a beautiful spring day. The sun shone warm and genial. Still there was no abatement of the excitement. The church bells rang incessantly, but not for the purpose of calling worshippers. All stated Divine services were suspended, and the wild clanging of the bells were but signals for all persons capable of bearing arms to assemble at the various places of rendezvous, and there be sworn in and armed as citizen soldiery. One Kane — he was styled “Marshal Kane” — seemed to be to be in the chief control, and, when I went to the police station, or other public building on Holiday street, I think, he was actively engaged in superintending the mustering of men and the issuing of arms to them afterward.

All the forenoon, the city was rife with rumors, “Troops from the hated North were at Cockeysville,” a town on the Central Railroad; “Regulars were advancing from Carlisle”; “The Yankees of the city were secretly congregating among the hills and valley of Druid Hill Park,” near the town, and all sorts of such exciting rumors were mouthed around by one crowd to another. About noon more soldiers came. These were from the adjacent counties and composed of the ancient militia, rejuvenated in flesh, but not at all in make-up or appearance. They were, each company, dressed in different costumes, but all held close to the original continental style, and I would not demand much for venturing the assertiong that many of the uniforms worn had been preserved from that period. It was said that the Governor had secreted his person, and therein he acted the part of prudence if he was in the city at all. One crowd were very desirous of hanging him for a “Union man”; another wanted him to issue a proclamation calling the militia into active service “to protect the soil of Maryland from the Northern invader,” while still another motley gang, composed of the “Anne Arundel Militia,” went to the Fountain Hotel, where the State Executive was supposed to be in hiding, and there clamored with drunken vehemence for authority to go and demand the evacuation by the United States forces of the neighboring Fort McHenry. Not succeeding in getting any such authority, the gallant troopers proceeded to the Entaw House, and from thence, having first got more gloriously drunk, they went on their self-imposed mission without a mandate. The expedition ended in a disgraceful retreat or a ludicrous farse — I do not know how to properly designate it. I saw the best of it, and have attempted to describe it in another place.

More information on these events: a contemporaneous account from the New York Herald.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. Here’s the preface.

Preface:

In writing the following narrative of my experiences during the troublous period embracing the years 1861 to 1864 I disclaim any intention of setting myself up as a historian.

The sphere in which I moved was not at any time so elevated as to enable me to form views of men and things of so extended a character as that they could have any general bearing or interest. It is extemely seldom that a person in the ranks of an army or in the mass of a political machine becomes acquainted with the springs of a movement until its object has been accomplished or defeated. As for the army movements by Geographical Divisions, momentous crises in Congress, the probable effect of defeat in the field upon the finances of the country, and the like, we never discussed nor, for my part, thought of them. So that if any one chance in the future to pick up this book in anticipation of receiving any valuable or important information from it having any bearing on either of these great questions he may in all probability be disappointed. That the regular historian will have to deal with those matter I have no doubt. In my narrative it will be found that I seldom travel very far beyond my actual and personal experience, it is my object to keep within the line strictly, and if now, after having made my disclaimer, I am asked for my object in writing the book at all, I will be compelled to admit that I can give none that is is to my mind a useful or practical one. It may, indeed, turn out that my story will partially corroborate some one who may hereafter venture an extended opinion as to the general character of the experiences of the private soldiers in our Civil War; it may be of some interest to the children of those who took part in the struggle, in showing the facts as they were, stripped of the inevitable romance with which such narratives have been clothed by writers who have shown a lack of power to resist the tempation. Whether or no, one thing occurs to me and that is this, if my account is preserved until he is grown, my son will not be confined to mere tradition for his information, as is the fact with the children of so many soldiers of former wars, and as will no doubt be the case with those of many of my comrades as well.

CHARLES LEWIS FRANCIS