Howard Coffin - Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Todays Vermont

Something Abides

Discovering the Civil War in Todays Vermont

The Countryman Press

A division of W. W. Norton & Company

Independent Publishers Since 1923

Civil War Graves, Vermont Veterans Home Cemetery

Dedicated to my wife, Susan Coffin, who was ever helpful in completing this book, and to the Civil Warera women of Vermont, without whom Vermont could not have done its full duty, 18611865.

In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, former commander of the 20th Maine Regiment, speaking October 3, 1888, at the dedication of the Maine monuments at Gettysburg

Contents

Julian Scotts The Mounted Sentry , in the Cedar Creek Room of the Vermont State House.

Theres no better place than Vermont, where we care so deeply about our land and its history, to still see the America of the Civil War era. And now, as we mark the wars 150th anniversary, this remarkable book, Something Abides, appears, identifying more than 2,500 Vermont sites associated with that terrible conflict. I dont know of any book like it, anywhere.

In his three previous books Howard Coffin rediscovered Vermonts Civil War history by describing its outsized contribution to Union victory. More than 34,000 men went to war from an 1860s population of just 315,000. Vermonters were key to Union victories at Gettysburg and at Cedar Creek, made a heroic stand at the Wilderness, and led the attack at Petersburg that finally broke Robert E. Lees lines.

But Vermonts Civil War story is far more complex. Its war effort was sustained by a quietly determined people here at home who sent an unending supply of necessary items to soldiers and hospitals and kept homes, farms, and factories going despite the absence of many ablebodied men.

The story that emerges in Something Abides is full of discoveries and surprises. I had no idea, for instance, that in a Cavendish building that still stands the abolitionist John Brown once spoke, or that in a well-preserved building in West Fairlee, a woman ran a knitting business that provided much-needed income for local women.

This book reveals in great depth the complete Vermont Civil War experience. Identified here are places where families learned of the death of loved ones and welcomed home the broken and emaciated bodies of their boys from battlefields and prisons. The houses where women made goods for the war effort and the halls where abolitionists spoke and war meetings took place are all given their place in the landscape. Also included are buildings associated with the Underground Railroad, fields and streets where troops drilled, churches where antislavery societies met and where soldier funerals were held.

Anyone who takes this book in search of Civil War sites or just takes the time to read it cannot help but be touched by the sadness, the glory, and the incredible resolve of those four momentous years. Though Vermont was 500 miles from the battlefields (save for the day in 1864 when Confederates raided St. Albans), we learn here that the state was nonetheless in the thick of the war. Perhaps that was destined to be from the time Vermont adopted the first American constitution outlawing slavery and chose as our motto the words Freedom and Unity.

I hope that people everywhere with even a mild curiosity about the past will explore Vermont history with this book. Seeking out our Civil War places will, I assure you, be an intriguing journey through a truly beautiful landscape. These sites are in our hill and valley villages, in our cities, on our farms, and in our fields and woods; along the Green Mountains and the Champlain Valleythey are everywhere. Even our State House is a Civil War site, displaying treasures that include one of the greatest of all Civil War paintings and a highly important bust of Abraham Lincoln.

So I invite you to seek out Vermonts Civil War past as we honor the conflicts sesquicentennial. All you need is a Vermont state road map and a copy of Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Todays Vermont. I think you will be amazed.

Vermonts contribution to the Union cause in the Civil War was greater, in proportion to its population, than that of almost any other Northern state. The first Vermont Brigade had more men killed and mortally wounded in action than any other Union brigade. Vermont was at or near the top among Northern states in the percentage of its men who served and the percentage of men of military age who lost their lives. Three of the eighteen elite sharpshooter companies in the Army of the Potomac were from Vermont. At a factory in Windsor, Vermont, that is today the American Precision Museum, some fifty thousand rifles were manufactured during the war, but even more important, about half of all rifles and revolvers for Union armies were turned out by machine tools produced in this factory.

Today we can visit many of the battle-fields in the South where Vermont soldiers fought. At Crampons Gap in Maryland, at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Winchester, Cedar Creek, and Petersburg in Virginia, and at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, we can see where Vermonters played key roles in achieving victory or preventing defeat for Union armies. Many battlefield guidebooks and maps help us to understand those battles. But until now there was no guidebook to take us to sites in Vermont itself associated with the Civil War. Howard Coffin has remedied that deficiency with this stunning volume. Nothing like Something Abides exists for any other state. It offers a cornucopia of historical riches for history tourists. It takes us to buildings where recruiting meetings were held, town squares where recruits were mustered, factories where war materiel was manufactured, hospitals and hospital sites where wounded soldiers convalesced, homes and homesites where soldiers of all ranks lived and some came home to die, cemeteries where thousands of Vermont veterans are buried, and much else.

In recent years a great deal of scholarship on the Civil War has focused on the home frontin the North as well as in the South. The impact of the war on families and communities, and the roles that the 90 percent of the population who were civilians played in the war effort are finally receiving their due from historians. But as with the stories of military campaigns and battles, merely reading about them is not enough. You have to go where they happened to understand and appreciate fully how and why they happened. In his writing Howard Coffin has taken us to Gettysburg and the Wilderness and Cedar Creek and Petersburg and other fields where Vermonters fought and died. And now he takes us to hundreds of places in Vermont where these soldiers came from and where their families and friends worked to support them and hoped, often in vain, that they would return home safely.