First Defenders, Allen Infantry

THE ALLEN INFANTRY IN 1861.

A SKETCH.

By James L. Schaadt, of Allentown, PA.

Source: "The First Defenders" by Heber S. Thompson (1910).

On the 13th of April, 1861, being the day following the bombardment of Fort Sumter and two days previous to the call of President Lincoln for 75,000 volunteers, the citizens of Northampton and Lehigh counties called and held a public meeting in the square at Easton "to consider the posture of affairs and to take measures for the support of the National Government." Eloquent and patriotic speeches were made and the First Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers was formed as the result of the meeting. There was then in existence three military companies at Allentown--the Jordan Artillerists, commanded by Captain (later Major) W.H. Gausler; the Allen Rifles, organized in 1849 and commanded by Captain (later Colonel) T.H. Good, and the Allen Infantry, organized in 1859 and commanded by Captain (later Major) Thomas Yeager. The Artillerists and the Rifles consolidated and became Company I, of the First Regiment, and with the other companies of the regiment were mustered in on April 20th, 1861, Captain Good having been chosen lieutenant colonel of the regiment. Captain Gausler was selected to command Company I.

No sooner had the news of the attack on Fort Sumter come to Allentown than Captain Yeager, of the Allen Infantry, hurried to Harrisburg and tendered the services of himself and his command to Governor Curtin. He received one of the first, if not the first, captain's commissions issued for the Civil War, and with it in his pocket hurried back to Allentown and called upon his company for volunteers to defend the National Capital, then threatened by the Secessionists.

The company had been organized in 1859, held regular drills, and had arrived at a fair stage of efficiency in Scott's Tactics. The uniform was gray cloth, with black and gold bullion trimmings. The company paraded for the first time in the new uniform on Washington's Birthday, 1861, at Philadelphia, on the occasion of the raising of the flag over Independence Hall by President Lincoln, and with the Allen Rifles and the Jordan Artillerists accompanied the President to Harrisburg. The men of the Allen Infantry carried old-fashioned flint-lock guns with bayonets. The guns were generally ineffective and unreliable: "They kicked and spit in our faces," as one of the survivors says. The company was not otherwise equipped for the field, the men having neither great-coats nor blankets, knapsacks nor canteens. The meeting and drill room was in an upper story of what is now No. 716 Hamilton street, Allentown.

On coming back from Harrisburg on the evening of the 16th of April, Captain Yeager opened the roll for volunteers in the company's armory and called upon the members of his command to enlist for the service of the United States. Men, especially young men, left furrow and workshop and office in obedience to the call, and by noon of the next day 47 had signed the roll. The excited populace crowded the armory and the streets; but Captain Yeager determined to go that afternoon without waiting for more signers. The citizens packed a box with necessary articles of clothing; charged themselves with the care and support of the families of the departing men, and prepared a farewell dinner at the Eagle Hotel, Market (now Monument) Square, placing under each plate a five dollar note, contributed by citizens. Unfortunately, these notes, being issued by local State banks, had no purchasing power when afterwards presented in Washington, though always good in Allentown. What with excitement, what with tears of parting, the dinner stood untasted, and at 4:30 o'clock on the afternoon of the 17th of April the gallant band of volunteers, headed by Capt. Yeager and surrounded and followed by a shouting, cheering, crying crowd of citizens, marched down Hamilton street, lightly covered with snow, to the East Penn Junction and took train to Harrisburg. Most of the volunteers then regarded the journey as a pleasant change from daily occupations, a picnic and agreeable visit to the National Capital; a very few, more serious, realized it was the beginning of a war, with it's horrors, cruelties and privations.

Those who signed the roll on that memorable day in April were:
1. John E. Webster

7. William Ruhe
2. William Kress

8. Henry Storch
3. Solomon Goeble

9. Daniel Kramer
4. Joseph T. Wilt

10. Charles A. Schaffer
5. Jonathan W. Reber

11. John Hock
6. Samuel Schneck

12. David Jacob

13. Nathaniel Hillegas

31. George Hoxworth
14. M.W. Leisenring

32. William Wagner
15. Edwin Gross

33. John Romig
16. George S. Keiper

34. Charles A. Pfeiffer
17. Franklin Leh

35. William Wolf
18. Charles Dietrich

36. Ignatz Gresser
19. James Geidner

37. James Wilson
20. Ernst Rottman

38. Lewis Seip
21. M.R. Fuller

39. Milton Dunlap
22. Gideon Frederick

40. William G. Frame
23. Allen Wetherhold

41. Edwin Hittle
24. Edwin H. Miller

42. Wilson H. Derr
25. Norman H. Cole

43. Joseph Hettinger
26. George W. Rhoads

44. William Scott Davis
27. Benneville Wiegand

45. Joseph Weiss
28. William Early

46. George F. Henry
29. M.H. Sigman

47. Conrad Shalatterdach
30. Darius Weiss

Click here to read why Charles W. Abbott's name doesn't appear on the initial roster.

At Reading, Adolphus and Enville Schadler, and at Lebanon, John E. Uhler, joined the company. They did not sign the roll, but their names appear on Bates' Official Roll.

At Harrisburg, Captain Yeager, strict disciplinarian that he was, expelled one of his men for disobedience. "I stripped him myself in the middle of the street, taking the whole uniform from him and left him naked except pantaloons,stockings and shirt, and took all his money that he received at Allentown except ten cents." So wrote Captain Yeager about this two days later. The total number of men who marched on April 18th with Captain Yeager through Baltimore was 49.

The railroad journey from Allentown to Harrisburg was marked by no incident, except the gathering of crowds at the different stations along the road, and their cheering. The company arrived at Harrisburg about 8 P.M. and bivouacked at the old Pennsylvania depot with the Ringgold Light Artillery of Reading; the Logan Guards, of Lewistown; the Washington Artillerists and the National Light Infantry of Pottsville. At 1 o'clock in the morning of Thursday, April 18th, General Keim ordered Captain Yeager to go on immediately to Washington with loaded guns. Upon the captain's objection that the guns were not in proper condition, had no locks and no flints, the General remarked that they would be good for clubs. No one in the company except Captain Yeager anticipated the startling experience they were to pass through that day. Early the same morning, after breakfast furnished through the generosity of Rev. Jeremiah Schindel, Senator from Lehigh, the five companies were mustered into the service of the United States by Captain Seneca G. Simmons, Seventh Infantry, and with a detachment of fifty men of Company H, Fifth Artillery, under command of Lieutenant Pemberton (later the general commanding at Vicksburg and after the war a resident of Allentown), embarked at 8:10 A.M. on two Northern Central trains of twenty-one cars for Baltimore, where they arrived at 2 P.M., again without incident, except that the loyal cheers which greeted their train were more frequently mixed with unfriendly greetings from the believers in the doctrine of State's rights, who resented the passage of an armed force without permission as an invasion of their beloved State of Maryland. But the train arrived near the city without any overt acts of hostility beyond the waving of rebel flags at a College for Women.

Information of the leaving of the troop train had been telegraphed from Harrisburg to Baltimore, and when the news became generally known large crowds assembled on the streets and the greatest excitement prevailed. The crowds spent the hours of waiting for the arrival of the train in singing "Dixie" and noisily cheering for the Confederacy. At 9 o'clock a meeting of the military organization known as the Maryland National Volunteers was held and inflammatory speeches made. Sentiment in Baltimore was divided; there were Union men, and there were Southern sympathizers. All were, however, equally infuriated by the announcement that Northern troops were actually invading "The sacred soil of Maryland." The Mayor of Baltimore at the time was George W. Brown, and the Marshal of Police, George B. Kane; both men of determined courage and inflexible honesty; and to them, notwithstanding their strong Southern sympathies, and to the Police Department, must be awarded the credit of safely conducting the five companies without loss of life from one depot to the other, a distance of between two and three miles, through the streets of a city filled with an excited mob.

Arriving at Canton, a suburb of Baltimore, the regulars and the volunteers disembarked. The workmen from a foundry in the neighborhood and a crowd of about a thousand collected in the twinkling of an eye, and cries of "fight! fight!" drew the attention of our volunteers, who were still of the opinion that they were on a pleasure trip; and, bent on enjoying every sensation of the journey, eagerly looked for the fight they supposed was going on in the crowd. But Captain McKnight, of the Ringgold Artillery, a veteran of the Mexican War, at once recognized the animus of the crowd to be directed against the new arrivals, and he ordered the soldiers back into their cars, the regulars alone remaining on their ground. In a very short time Marshal Kane appeared, with a large force of city police to escort the soldiers to Bolton Station. The devoted band, now first realizing that their trip was not going to be altogether a picnic, formed in close column of two with the regulars at the head. According to Bates, the Allen Infantry held the center of the column; according to their survivors, they were the rear company. Captain Yeager was without lieutenants, and he detailed Privates William Kress and William Ruhe, two of the tallest men, to protect the rear of the company. The mob, on seeing the formation of the column, and the march begun, were driven into a frenzy. At every step its numbers increased, and when Lieutenant Pemberton and his regulars left the head of the column and filed off toward Fort McHenry the mob lashed itself into a perfect fury. Roughs and toughs, 'longshoremen, gamblers, floaters, idlers, red-hot secessionists, as well as men ordinarily sober and steady, crowded upon, pushed and hustled the little band and made every effort to break the thin line. Some,mounted upon horses, were prevented with difficulty by the policemen from riding down the volunteers. The mob heaped insults upon the men, taunted them, cursed them, called to them "Let the police go and we will lick you," " You will never get back to Pennsylvania," "Abolitionists, convicts, stone them, kill them," "What muskets, no locks, no powder," "Abe Lincoln's militia, see their left feet," "Hurrah for Jeff Davis," "Hurrah for South Carolina." Bolder ones among the rioters got some of the soldiers by the coat tails and jerked them about, hissed at them, spit upon them and even struck them with their fists. No picnic now. It was a severe trial for the volunteers with not a charge of ball or powder in their pouches, a fortunate circumstance, as it proved in the end, for a single shot would have raised the twenty thousand rioters into a uncontrollable fury, and in spite of police protection not one of the 476 volunteers would have escaped with his life. They pushed steadily forward, with their useless firearms at the support, and, obedient to the command of their officers, answered not a word to the galling insults. The policemen flanking the column held the mob in check and saved several of the soldiers from becoming its victims.

As the column neared its destination the rioters fired bricks and stones, brandished knives and pistols, and it required all the efforts of the policemen to keep them in check. The painful march finally came to an end, wonderful to relate, without any fatalities, although numbers of the men bore bruises on their limbs and bodies. Privates Hittle and Gresser were seriously lamed; Private Jacobs, while going into the car, was struck upon the mouth with a brick and lost his teeth and, falling unconscious, fractured his left wrist. Private Derr was struck on the ear with a brick and is deaf to this day from the blow. He, however, returned the compliment to his assailant by striking at him with the butt end of his gun or lock, which tore off the latter's ear. Fortunately, the cars into which the infantry clambered were box or freight cars not furnished with seats, but whose wooden roof and sides protected the volunteers from the shower of cobbles and bricks now rained upon them by the rioters, more than ever infuriated at seeing their prey escape. Powder had been sprinkled by the mob on the floor of the cars, in the hope that a soldier carelessly striking a match in the darkened interior of the freight car might blow himself and his comrades to perdition. They escaped also this danger, and finally after a conflict between the engineer and some of the rioters, the train moved off, passing over the Pratt street bridge, which had been set afire, and at 7 o'clock in the evening landed the infantry with the other four companies at Washington to the great joy and relief of the President and all loyal men.

Although the five companies numbered nominally 530 men, actually 476, the morning newspapers of Washington by the dextrous use of an additional cipher made the number 5300, sufficient to deter the rebel soldiers, drilling on the opposite bank of the Potomac, from their design to seize Washington and the Capital building, and by the time rebel spies and sympathizers in the city communicated the real number of the Capital's defenders, other volunteers, notably the Sixth Massachusetts, arrived in sufficient numbers to prevent the capture of the city.

The five companies were quartered in the Capital, the Allen Infantry being assigned to Vice President Breckenridge's room, leading off from the Senate chamber. The buildings were at once barricaded on the inside with 30,000 barrels of flour, contraband of war, seized by order of the President, which were piled at doors and windows; on the outside, with barrels of cement, iron pipes and boiler plate, two entrances being left open. The Pennsylvanians were at once visited by Speaker Galusha A. Grow, Secretary of War Simon Cameron, Editor Philadelphia Press Colonel John W. Forney, Member of Congress Hon James H. Campbell, of Pottsville, and other Pennsylvanians living in the city, all of whom were proud that the soldiers of the Keystone State were the first to arrive for the defence of the National Capital. On April 19 the men of the Allen Infantry were provided with minie muskets from Harper's Ferry Arsenal and ball ammunition, and were visited the same day by President Lincoln, who shook hands with every man, and by Secretary of State William H. Seward. The President personally directed an army surgeon to attend Privates Jacobs, Gresser and the other injured men and requested them to go to a hospital, but they all refused, preferring to stay with their company. Washington doctors and a Miss Bache gave them attention and medical supplies. At first provisions were short, but Senator Schindel, of Lehigh county, came to their relief. The men were also without change of underclothing, the box containing the necessary things which had been purchased for them at home at Renninger's store by citizens having been stolen at Baltimore by the mob. The ladies of Allentown learning of their need in this respect shipped a large box of shirts, underclothing and socks to the company during the next ten days. The men settled down and prepared to make themselves as comfortable as possible in their quarters in the Capital building. Two large bake ovens were erected in the basement and 10,000 loaves of bread were baked every other day. But in the twelve days they occupied the Capital the men of the infantry never lived quite comfortably. Provisions were scarce, meals meagre, fresh meat and vegetables were wanting, the pork furnished was green and unpalatable. All the more welcome, therefore, were the supplies which came from home, as the apples and the fresh country eggs sent them (among others) by George Roth, grandfather of George R. Roth, of the Leader, a farmer and ardent Union man of North Whitehall township. Water connections were made with the river and waterworks. They stayed in these quarters until the 1st of May, drilling daily, guarding the Capital and preparing for the siege, daily expected to be begun by the rebels.

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