 Hello everybody. Thank you for joining us at the Ethanal Homestead Museum. My name's Angie Grove. I'm the Executive Director here, and thank you for joining us for our monthly lecture series. So we have a couple of events coming up that I would like to announce and then I will get out of the way so that we can enjoy our program today. So first up, coming up is our, well first actually is our last day open for General Admissions, which is October 31st, and then we'll be kind of close for the winter. We're still open for a lot of behind the scenes work, but also private programming. So if there's field trips or private groups that would like to come visit, we can still do that over the wintertime. Our next event is on November 5th from 3 to 4 p.m. It will be located here in the Tavern, and that is a meeting of the Homestead Book Club, and the book we'll be discussing is My Bring Up by Shirley Hook. It's a memoir written by Anita Vermonter. After that, we have our last open to everybody lecture series and lecture program. That will be on a Saturday instead of a Sunday. That will be Saturday, November 18th, and that will also be online only. That will be a remote program on Zoom because we will be joined by an academic from the University of Edinburgh who will be in Scotland for the program. So you can join us on Zoom for that. Despite, this is Benjamin Anderson, despite Anderson's Scottish heritage, his research is on Vermont allegiance during the Revolutionary War. So he will be speaking on who chose to be a loyalist and who chose to be a patriot and why. General monthly lecture program. But we do have our first ever members only lecture program, and that will be on Sunday, December 3rd. That will be on site here in the Tavern, and I will actually be presenting a talk called Ethan Allen, an Infernal Villain. So if you want to attend that talk, please consider buying a membership. Memberships also help sustain our small non-profit museum. It's really easy to purchase a membership. You can visit the front desk on your way out the doors today, and there's a one page form to fill out. Okay, so those are the special programs we have for the rest of this calendar year in 2023. If you'd like to see us do any new programs in 2024, or you have ideas for guest lecturers for our lecture series, please let me know, or John Devonau, he's our volunteer lead of the lecture program as well. Lastly, I'd like to thank the sponsors of our community enrichment programs. They include M&T Bank, North Country Federal Credit Union, and AARP Vermont. Without their sponsorship, we would not be able to bring this program to you. So please say thank you next time you visit one of those organizations. Okay, so I am going to step aside and let our board president and the volunteer lead of our lecture series, John Devonau, do an introduction to this month's speaker. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome everybody. I'm going to be watching and take a lay on YouTube. Thank you for coming to today's talk. This is our 161st talk in the series. I'm wondering, has anybody been here for all of them? If you did, I was going to ask you to name the first one, which was back in 2007, I believe, so it's really, we go back quite a long time. You know, we hear a lot today that we're a divided country. How many of you raise your hand if you think we are somewhat of a divided country today? Yeah, I think we all kind of feel that way, right? But we know we were not a united country back in the Revolutionary War days, right? About a third of the country was Tories, and we never really talked much about that. I just ran across a video, which I would suggest you should look it up. You can Google just the American Nazi Party, 1939, Madison Square Garden. Have any of you seen that or heard about that? I didn't think garden. Yeah, Madison Square Garden, New York City. Can you tell us a little bit what that was? Well, the thing I saw was like a seven minute little walking video, and it was basically Nazi party. And one guy, I forgot his name, Greenblatt, rushed the stage. He was Jewish, and he was beaten. So just Google at some point, American Nazi Party, Madison Square Garden, 1939. It's chilling when you see that, right? And to think that that was then where we are today, and I think it's something to think about. Of course, the greatest divide was in the 1860s with the Civil War. And I know that there's many of you here that have a Civil War interest and about a show of hands. I know some of you are wearing some Civil War pair of alien today. And we have Rob Greenchamp with us. Rob is no stranger to the homestead. He was on our board for several years. He's the author and award-winning author of over 15 books on American military history. He earned his master's degree from Rhode Island College, and he's now a senior analyst with the federal government. He currently resides in Jericho Center with his wife, Elizabeth, and their three children. When I first knew Rob, I believed he had one child or one on the way at that time. None. None. Time does fly. So please join me in welcoming Rob to our room. Thank you. Happy to be here, Rob. Thank you. Good afternoon. It's great to be here today. And it's also great to be here to be talking about my favorite topic, the Civil War. I've talked here at the homestead, I think, about five times over the last six, seven years. And I've talked about the American Revolution. I've talked about the militia in the revolution, the guns of the American Revolution, why John Burgoyne's campaign failed, what type of uniforms Burgoyne's army wore. And to be honest with you, I've run out of topics to talk about regarding the American Revolution. So it's great to be here talking about something near to dear for my heart, the Civil War. But in Vermont, in particular, we do have a very proud Civil War heritage to be proud of in this state. And especially for Vermonters. This week, October 19th, really marks probably Vermont's greatest day in Civil War history. It was the day that the only time in New England that the Confederates attacked, believe it or not, we did have a Civil War battle fought here in Vermont in St. Albans. Kind of a minor little thing when you compare it to Gettysburg or Antietam, but something that us Green Mountain folks should be proud of. We had the Civil War touch our front door. Meanwhile, 500 miles to the south in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the old Vermont brigade literally saved the day. And at the end of the day, they launched the Union counterattack that decided the fate of the Shenandoah Valley and ultimately the reelection of President Lincoln at the Battle of Cedar Creek. So a very important week in Vermont Civil War history. But the Civil War, there are a lot of topics to talk about. We talk about the causes of the war, slavery being the cause of that conflict, the tactics of the war, the generals who fought in it, and the men who took part in it. And the Civil War really comes about in American history, really at the time of the Industrial Revolution where all these decades of change, where American military technology is going from smoothbore flintlocked muskets right up through to the apex of the muzzleloader, developing into a rifle musket that is now capable of killing men at 400 and 500 yards. Combined that with massed artillery firepower during the Civil War, you produce a conflict that recent scholarship has recently uncovered killed probably 750,000 Americans, numbers up quite significantly. More so in Vermont, one in five men who leave this state don't come back. 35,000 Vermonters go off to war, about 7,000 of them die in it. So quite a bloodbath when you think about it. But the weapons that were used in that war, and the men who went to that war, they are citizen soldiers for the most part on the Union side that I'll be talking about. For the majority of them, these are farmers, mill workers. A lot of them had never even picked up a firearm or a cannon in their life. They might have seen something at the local Fourth of July parade in their childhood. But now they find themselves leaving their farms, leaving their shops, and going down south to take part in a conflict that Abraham Lincoln wrote would decide the last best hope for mankind. And so the tactics that this war is fought in, and really when you look at it, is the last of the old wars and the first of the new wars. It's the first of the new wars in that we now have technology that is able to bring the war to the enemy farther than we had ever known it before. But it's the last of the old wars because the tactics don't catch up to those new technologies. Men are still marching shoulder to shoulder in line of battle, advancing into massed artillery, and infantry must get fire. So indeed, that's why our casualties are so heavy in this conflict. But the tactics that are used, you know, we often when we read about the war, it's the infantry's out there doing their thing. The artillery is out there doing that thing. The cavalry, they're out there riding on their horses. But as the war progresses, union commanders are really able to harness that new technology as their soldiers become veterans of the conflict. They're able to amass that firepower and are able to effectively use it for the betterment on the battlefield, indeed contributing to the union victory. And so they become really in effect combined arms where you're taking the different sections that you have on the battlefield, massing them together and advancing towards victory. And so I'm going to talk today about two particular organizations that I've done significant research about and how those two organizations were able to work together to ensure union victory in the later stages of the war. Vermont, this little state back then about 130, about 330, 335,000 people, again, sends about 35,000 men to war. That's over half of the men who are eligible to go, go. And Vermont, you know, as Civil War historians, we really have this debate whenever you read each other's books that, you know, this regiment was the best one. This regiment was better than that one. And I'll admit, as a historian, I'm guilty of it myself that, you know, being a native Rhode Islander, I always throw out, well, the Rhode Islanders were the best. But you go back and you read the period accounts, the period newspapers in particular, the diaries that are kept by the men. And you'll notice one thing time and again during that conflict, the Vermont troops really were the ones that shined. Not just by the standards that we might apply to them today, but even by the standards of the period. It was the Vermonters time and again that really made the difference on the battlefield. During the war, Vermont is going to send 17 regiments of infantry, one regiment of heavy artillery, a regiment of cavalry, three batteries of artillery, three companies of sharpshooters, and a few other smaller units. And Vermont does a number of things very right compared to other Union states. At the beginning of the war, Governor Erastus Fairbanks, who is the governor during the initial stages of the war, followed by Frederick Holbrook later on, Holbrook being the governor that most Vermonters will volunteer under. These governors are really active in the affairs of Vermont. They really have to manage two ways. They have to keep the little state running here on the home front, keep the dairy farmers, the manufacturing industries going. But at the same time, they have to support almost 35,000 men that leave this state and go south. So really, Vermont governors do a tremendous job during the Civil War of working on both fronts. And the governors of Vermont who are responsible for raising these units, ultimately, the buck stops with them, putting men into command them, outfitting them, they really do an absolutely excellent job of this. And what makes the Vermont soldiers different? What makes these men really ones that when the going gets tough there, the ones that the Union counts on, time and again? Well, you really got to say it starts with the Vermont work ethic. A lot of these were farm boys. A lot of them grew up in, you know, World of Vermont. They grew up learning to hunt, how to shoot, and early age. They knew firearms. They knew how to load and work a gun under fire. They had a good work ethic. You know, they, okay. That's fine. You know, these Vermont boys, you know, they have a strong work ethic. They, you know, takes a lot to roll out of bed when it's 30 below zero to go out there and milk some cows. They're used to hard work. And all of these traits go into making a good soldier. You know, these Civil War regiments, at the beginning of the Civil War, the United States Army existed. It was about 16,000 men. Most of them were Irish and German immigrants. The enlisted men, for the most part. The officer corps, largely West pointers. They're mostly out on the Western frontier. And while some of them will come back East to fight in the Army of the Potomac, the main union army that fights in the East, for the most part, the regiments that are raised in the North are volunteer units. They're raised specifically to fight in the Civil War. And these regiments, if you can imagine, they're numbered and they also are the state. So we have the 2nd Vermont, the 5th New Hampshire, the 7th Rhode Island, et cetera. And these union regiments, they comprose of 10 companies. And the companies are raised in individual communities. For example, company I of the 6th Vermont is mustered out of Willis-Denney. Essex, company C of the 1st Vermont. Calvary is out of Washington County. Company D of the 4th Vermont is out of Barton, Vermont. So you get the idea, men come from the same communities that go off to fight in that war. And when you're marching in that line of battle, quite literally the man on one side of you could be a brother. Your father could be on one side of you. All around you are people that you've known your entire life. So really that ethic, they bring that to the army. Because you have to remember, you're marching into battle. You know, you've got folks all around you. If you break and run away to the rear, everybody back home in Barton or Jericho or Williston is going to know that you didn't do your duty. You didn't do your job that day. And the belief at the time among these soldiers, it's better to stand there. It's better to stand there and die and take a bullet rather than show the white feather. And because of that ethic, these Vermonters, when other union regiments run away, indeed the Battle of Cedar Creek, it will be said, don't run until the Vermonters do, and then you can do the same. So these Vermonters bring a strong work ethic into their fighting. And I think the greatest testament to these Vermonters was paid by General Martin McCann. He was a staff officer from New York. And what he was writing to and tribute was to the old Vermont Brigade. And this is the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth Vermont regiments, later reinforced by the 11th Vermont Regiment as the war went on. And what McCann wrote of the Vermont Brigade is indeed a great tribute to them. They were honest farmers turned vagabonds. They were simple countrymen changed into heroes. They were quiet townsmen that became rovers. They stole ancient horses and bony cows on the march. They pillaged moderately in other things. They swept the dairies clean and chased rabbits when they went into camp after long marches. And they yelled like wild Indians when neighboring camps were silent through the night. They were ill-disciplined and familiar with their officers. They were swaggering in a cool, impudent way and looked down with the patronizing, Yankee coolness upon any regiment that was better drilled and upon the part of the army in general that did not belong to the Vermont Brigade. They were strangely proud, not of themselves individually but of the brigade collectively for they knew perfectly well they were the best fighters in the known world and together they honestly believed they could defeat all the enemies of the Union. And these Vermonters knew they were the best fighters in the world and time and again when the going gets tough you're going to call in the Vermonters. So as we mentioned that work ethics also important to them but also Vermont does something that a lot of other Union states don't do during the war. A lot of Union states that sent regiments off to war they look quite literally let them bleed dry. Give you a very good example. My native state I'm a Rhode Islander by birth. Rhode Island like a lot of Union states found that it was easier to just raise new regiments to go to war instead of sending men to the old regiments in the field. My great great great uncle served in the 7th Rhode Island during the Civil War and my hometown company of that regiment Company H out of Warwick, Rhode Island after the Battle of Cold Harbor had one man left. The entire company had pretty much been used up at the Battle of Sposalvania and Cold Harbor. But Vermont doesn't do that. They don't bleed their regiments dry. The Vermonters believe very much that it's a lot easier that if you join up out of Jericho let's send you to a unit in the field that has a lot of Jericho men in it. You very quickly will become adopted to the customs of the army, learn the drill, learn the tactics, and be a good soldier. So Vermont does a very good job of keeping its veteran regiments in the field with four or five hundred men throughout the war unlike a lot of other Union states that by the by the middle of 1864 some of those units are down to barely 50 or 60 men. The Vermonters are continuously able to put three, four hundred into the field. The officers that lead the Vermont regiments are also very competent. The beginning of the war, Vermont had a very good state militia system sort of as after John Brown's raid in 1859 when everybody knows the Civil War is on the horizon. Vermont's militia basically think of it as the National Guard of the time really reactivates itself out of a slumber from the 1840s. Men start drilling, forming companies throughout Vermont. So your initial Vermont regiments go to war very well officered. Likewise as those officers become casualties go home sick, die, resign, etc. Vermont doesn't just find new officers without military training back in Vermont. They promote veteran men from the field. So time and again these Vermont regiments are not only well led, they're bravely led. Vermont officers continuously are killed and wounded at very alarming numbers during the Civil War indicating how well led they were. So all these factors, good training, good discipline, work ethic, go into making the Vermont soldier one of the best in the Union Army even recognized at the time in the 1860s. And Vermont's regiments really fight all over the place. You have two regiments, the 7th and the 8th Vermont. They fight down in Louisiana and Mississippi. You have other regiments such as the 9th Vermont that fight in North Carolina. But for the most part your regiments are going to be fighting largely with the Army of the Potomac. And the Vermont unit that does the most fighting again is that old brigade, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and eventually the 11th regiments. And they get their start early on in the war. They are baptized to the battle of Lee's Mill in April of 1862, sort of a suicide mission. They go out two regiments, the 3rd and the 6th on a reconnaissance mission across a dam near Lee's Mill near modern-day Newport News, Virginia. They go in there to look for the Confederates. They get caught in a crossfire and lose severe casualties trying to recross a swollen creek. But that really establishes the temperament of the Vermonters that, you know, the Union generals knew it was going to be a hard mission but they chose the Vermonters and the Vermonters proved themselves in that first battle. Likewise during the battles of the Seven Days in late June of 1862, at the Battle of Savage Station, as the rest of the Union army is retreating, the Vermont brigade is put into position and basically holds back the entire Confederate army while the rest of the Union army continues its retreat back down the Virginia peninsula. Vermonters are largely in reserve at the Battle of Antietam, Battle of Fredericksburg later in 1862. May of 1863, the Vermonters, again, saved the day for the Union at the Battle of Chancellorsville where they find and hold a Ford, Bank's Ford, that allows the Union army to retreat after the Battle of Chancellorsville. Gettysburg is very interesting because it brings into account the new or second Vermont brigade. The old brigade, the original fighters, these are men who joined up for three years but the new brigade under George standard, these are new regiments, the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th that joined up for nine months. The idea was you can enlist after one harvest in the fall of 1862 and be ready to come home in the summer of 1863 to resume farming, resume going back to school and allowed men to serve who would be willing to join the army for a lot less than the three years that most Vermonters enlisted for. Well, on the afternoon of July 3rd, 1863, there's this little thing called the Battle of Gettysburg going on and in the middle of it is Pickett's Charge. Well, three regiments, the 13th, 14th, and 16th Vermont, they had joined up in September and October of 1862 and they've got just days left on their enlistments. A lot of these guys had never seen any action of any sort and here they are in the biggest battle ever fought on the American continent in the last days of their enlistment and on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee launches what of course becomes Pickett's Charge directed right at the Union Center and lo and behold the Vermonters are right in the thick of it. They perform an amazing maneuver where they counterattack onto the basically swinging like a gate onto the flank of the Confederate army. Any chance that Pickett's Charge had of succeeding was ended by the second Vermont brigade. Fast forward to the spring of 1864, the Vermonters fight at the Battle of the Wilderness. This time the old brigade, those five initial regiments where they quite literally saved the Union army from being split in two. A week later the Battle of Spotsylvania, there's some of the only Union troops to successfully push through and break Lee's defensive lines. Throughout the summer of 1864, they'll see service of the Battle of Petersburg followed by action in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of in the fall of 1864. The spring of 1865, they'll go back to Petersburg, Virginia where on April 2nd they will literally lead the Union attack that breaks Lee's line once and for all leading to the surrender at Appomattox. So just a little brief background into the Vermonters and what they did during the war, what made them such an effective force. But the Vermonters suffered a lot of casualties. As I mentioned in the beginning, one in five men who leave this state don't come back. And the Vermonters who fight in those five initial regiments, the old brigade, they use those mass infantry tactics where they are just marching out in full battle line against the Confederates and just slamming it out until one side breaks. And because of that strong Vermont work ethic that you're not going to run away, the Vermonters lose heavily time and again. But those Vermonters just couldn't do it on their own. They're out there, they're fighting in the fields with muzzle loading, muskets, good weapons but they needed some support. And where were they going to find that support? Well that came from their friends in Rhode Island and that comes from the first Rhode Island light artillery. And Rhode Island is a really interesting state with their malicious system. During the war Rhode Island sends 10 batteries. Battery is a unit of artillery typically, six cannon and about 150 men. So Rhode Island sends eight of these units to war in the first Rhode Island artillery and two more independent batteries. So 10 of these batteries all together. And what Rhode Island got right in keeping their batteries in the field was much like Vermont had a superb pre-war malicious system that allowed them to get competent officers, competent men to go into their initial regiments. Rhode Island has a fantastic pre-war artillery system and they have a unit called the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery. And the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery gets its start in 1801. Thomas Jefferson is the president. We have this little thing going on in the Middle East called the Barbary Wars, the shores of Triple-A if you might recall from the Marine march. And a lot of ships sailing out of Rhode Island were attacked by these Barbary pirates. They had no defensive weapons on board. So the idea is let's start arming these merchant sailors with cannons and they can fight it out with the pirates. So that's where the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery gets their start. After the Barbary Wars they became one of these marching organizations that would march out on the 4th of July and fire their cannons around Providence. Typical of the militia units at the time, men would quite literally drink a toast on the 4th of July to the president and then every state in the Union. Quite some inebriation going on at the time. But by the 1840s this really changes. You know the idea of an organization where you're drinking at that time like 30-something states at the time. So the PMCA, the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery, PMCA changes with the times. And they had given up the idea of being shipboard canoneers and they switched their attention to a land-based organization. And there were some entrepreneur-ing West Point graduates that were tinkering around with cannon. And before this cannons were pretty much these large weapons really difficult to maneuver, really difficult to place on the battlefield. Once you got into a position you really didn't want to move that cannon anywhere. They're heavy, they're made out of cast iron, oftentimes under prolonged firing. They had a bad habit of exploding, killing their crew members. So now as the 1840s progress as we're headed towards the Mexican War, some young West Point artillery officers really get the idea, let's make smaller artillery pieces that can be pulled by horses that can maneuver around the battlefield. And this idea catches on in the small United States Army at the time and indeed during the opening battles of the Mexican War, the battles of Palo Alto and Risac de la Palma in May 8th and 9th, 1846. It's the American artillery that defeats the Mexicans in those two battles. And time and again during the Mexican War it'll be that American artillery. It's called flying artillery by the newspapers at the time where these smaller light artillery pieces, generally firing six pound cannonballs like this, are able to get in there, get into position, fire at the Mexicans and before the Mexicans really know what hit them. They're able to limber up the guns, reconnect them to their horses, pull out and go to another position. So these Rhode Islanders read about what's going on down in Mexico with the flying artillery. I really don't want this to roll on my foot. I think it would hurt. Stay. Well, anyway, thank you. So these Rhode Islanders are like, oh, that sounds fun. And the Proms-Moyy Corps artillery had a lot of money invested in it by a lot of the shipping firms in Rhode Island, the Browns, the Spragues, the Ives, Gammels, etc. So they do what nobody else does in the country, even though they're a militia organization, they go out and buy their own cannons, buy their own horses. And by 1848, they're marching around the streets of Providence, practicing these light artillery tactics that had been revolutionized by the United States Army on the field of Mexico. And a lot of other states see this, what's going on, and they send their own officers to Providence to watch this, to train the Boston Light artillery out of Massachusetts. Units out of New York, units out of Ohio, all come to Rhode Island to learn artillery tactics. And so this goes into the Civil War in 1861, where you now have the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery has been perfecting these artillery tactics for almost 15 years. So when the Call to Arms comes, within 72 hours, they're able to put a fully equipped artillery battery into the field and go to war. And indeed, throughout the rest of the war, the men of the Providence Marine artillery, the ones that aren't seeing service at the front, some of the older members in the unit, they'll actually stay behind in Providence and provide basic training to men who go to their armory to enlist, providing them with training early on. And that's really what makes a difference time and again is the training. You have some units that receive no training at all during the Civil War. A good example of this is the 16th Connecticut at the Battle of Antietam. They were raised in Hartford, Connecticut. They were rushed south when Confederate Army invades Maryland in September of 1862. They're sent to the front. They aren't even taught how to load their rifles. They're thrown right into the Battle of Antietam and let's just say I didn't go too well for them that day. They break and run under fire losing over 250 men. So training really makes a difference. And so these Rhode Islanders take their training but they take it a step further. They adopt the new technologies. You know, these round cannon balls that I have up here, those are fired out of primarily a smoothbore cannon. So if you can imagine just basically a tube that can throw them about a mile. But throughout the 1850s, the early 1860s, again that new technology, a lot of these inventors are tinkering around with new ideas, rifled cannon. So now much like your Union infantrymen, like those Vermonters armed with rifle muskets that now are able to fire a projectile for 500, 600 yards, you now have rifled artillery pieces, rifling our grooves cut into the barrel of either the cannon or the rifle that puts a spin on the projectile. So our projectiles change as well. We now have a projectile that looks kind of more like a bullet. And we also now are able to create fused projectiles. Those two balls there, those are just big old chunks of iron. They're really good to punch a hole through something. They're really good to, if you've got masked infantry marching at you, well, you can fire that and you'll skip along the ground. It'll knock men out. But now the new technology coming in, we now have fused artillery rounds. So this has been deactivated, I promise I keep it in my kid's closet. We have no room in our house, but you notice in the front this little hole. So this is a cast iron projectile and it is filled with about a pound of gunpowder and a fuse. And these Civil War soldiers were a lot smarter than what we give them credit for. We think of the quaint old one room schoolhouse. Well, these guys are learning enough math to make them into mass killers because they're able to figure out, well, if I shoot this projectile so many yards, so if the enemy is over there, say 1200 yards away, it'll take X amount of time to fly that distance. So if I cut my fuse to the right length, when it gets to that position, it'll explode overhead and rain down little pieces of iron onto the enemy. So the Islanders early on adopt those rifled cannon and those rifled projectiles. So now you are able to not just be there with your artillery pieces right on the front lines with the infantry supporting them, you're able to be back up at a distance away and as the war progresses, these fuses become safer and safer. Early on there's an initial thought, you don't want to shoot over the heads of friendly infantry in case the rounds explode prematurely. But as time goes on, the fusing gets a lot better on these rounds. So now you're able to fire over the heads of your infantry. You're able to fire those projectiles and really from a modern take, soften up the position. So you're able to fire, break up enemy formations at a distance. So when your infantry closes in there, there's not going to be too many folks left by the time they get there. So again, those combined tactics, now our generals are understanding that let's have our artillery park at a distance away, shell the line and then by the time our infantry gets there, well, we're going to have a better day for them. So tactics change time and again as the war progresses. So during the war, the Rhode Islanders and the Vermonters really form an interesting bond. One of those batteries is Battery G, First Rhode Island Light Artillery and they are going to support the Vermonters and the Vermonters are going to support them. The relationship really begins in May of 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville, where Battery G is sent out early on and their job is to soften up the Confederate line before the Vermonters launch their attack against Mary's Heights during the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. Well, Battery G is sort of out there in the open and all the Confederate fire concentrates on them and they lose pretty heavily, but the Confederates don't see the Vermonters literally sneaking around their left flank and so the Vermonters are able to get up onto that hill because the artillery was out there distracting them long enough. And again, the Battle of Gettysburg as the Confederates are retreating out of Pennsylvania on their way back to Virginia, Battery G is able to go into position and soften up the Confederate position about five miles west of Gettysburg at Granite Hill on July 5th. And by the time the Vermonters and these New Jersey troops get to the Confederate positions, they're able to be pushed back and continue their retreat. And what I found several places, several of the battles that I've investigated with Union artillery, it's very interesting to look at the archaeological record because these shells, there's so many different types of artillery shells that are used by Union during the war that we've got. Parrot shells such as this, dire shells, hotchkiss shells, shankle shells. Name just goes on and on. If you invented something back then, you can name it pretty much after yourself. But when you look at the archaeological record of where these things were fired, it's amazing to see what they were able to do and it supports the written word of these soldiers. And so at the Battle of Granite Hill and later on in the summer of 1864 at the Battle of Cool Spring in Northern Virginia, I've been able to observe artillery shells fired from Battery G at the Confederate positions and that have been found by archaeologists. And it's just amazing because they found them exactly where the Union soldiers from Vermont said they landed. It's quite amazing to actually see that. So the relationship between Battery G and these Vermonters continues throughout the summer of 1864 at Spotsylvania where they're going to fire quite literally every single round in their ammunition chest supporting the Vermonters in their attack against Lee's mule shoe on the afternoon of May 12, 1864. But the Rhode Islanders had always helped the Vermonters and the Vermonters were grateful for that but the relationship was going to come really around full circle in October of 1864 at Cedar Creek. And at that battle the Vermonters and the Rhode Islanders will really show what a combined arms operation was capable of during the Civil War. Early on the morning of October 19th this is in Cedar Creek, Virginia. It's about 15 miles or so south of Winchester on the Valley Pike. The Union Army under Phil Sheridan had fought a number of battles in the preceding weeks against Jubal Earley's Confederate army. And by this point Sheridan thought pretty much he had destroyed Earley's army. The Confederates were nowhere to be seen after great Union victories, the Battle of Opecan, the Battle of Fisher's Hill. And so Sheridan was going to rest his army for a few weeks before he took it south again to support Grant's main force at Petersburg. So Sheridan is up in Winchester at a conference. He had left General Horatio Wright sort of in charge at things at Cedar Creek. But Earley had just kind of retreated south. He gathered his forces, got some reinforcements, and was really ready for a massive counter-strike. He thought with Sheridan gone, well this is my one and only chance to try to destroy the Confederate, the Union Army in the Shenandoah Valley. So early on in the morning of October 19th he leads a force of about 15,000 Confederates in the darkness to attack the Union position. Now one of the soldiers of Battery J was James Barber. He left behind an absolutely remarkable diary of his military service at Brown University. And Barber, like many of these volunteers, he's a fisherman before the war. He had never dreamed that he'd ever be in the military be a soldier. He had been a fisherman ironically in Westerly Road Island of all places. So he's there, he's sleeping in his tent, and he hears off in the distance, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. This is about 6 o'clock, 6.30 in the morning or so. You notice early on when you study the Civil War for any length of time, nobody got the time right. Literally time and again, you read accounts of the battles and the timing sometimes is off by up to an hour. Folks just kept their watches wound by whatever time they wanted at the time. It makes for an interesting reading when you're looking at times for Civil War battles. But Barber hears this popping in the distance and he doesn't think anything of it. You know, this is a guy, he's a veteran of 20 battles by this point. And he thinks it's some nervous recruits firing at some noise or shadows they had heard in the distance. Then he hears a clap, a boom, almost like thunder. And that lets this veteran know something's going on. The boom that he heard was about three miles to the south, the men of the Eighth Vermont Regiment. This regiment before this had served in Louisiana of all places. They had been severely reduced by disease, by illness. They only have 160 men that morning. And these Vermonters, they were on high alert. They thought something was going to happen. And next thing you know, literally the entire Confederate army is heading right at them. They managed to hold the Confederates back long enough to alert the rest of the Union army. They go in with 160 men, only 40 of them come out. But they stop the Confederates long enough for Barber and his artillery men to get ready. So it's a very foggy morning, if you can imagine. There's firing going on, all sorts of the places. Barber would write in his diary, men seemed scared out of their senses. He's, the Battery G at this point is camped in a little swale of ground together with Battery C of Rhode Island. Again, Rhode Island sending multiple batteries to the front. And they hear the Confederates, the rebel yell in the early morning fog directly to the front of them as Union soldiers, some of them barely dressed, are running for their lives, just trying to get out of there. Early thinks he's succeeded. He's driving the Union army back directly in front of them. So as this is going on, the Vermonters are camped about a mile to the rear of where Battery G is. And they're getting ready, they're getting formed up. Again, the attack of the Eighth Vermont, bored enough time for them to get ready. And the Confederates are just screaming into camp. So now is Battery G and Battery C of Rhode Island are in this swale of ground. Colonel Charles Tompkins, who's their regimental commander, comes galloping up. And he tells George Adams, who's the captain of the commander of Battery G, hold this position at all costs. Now, if you're a Civil War soldier and your commander rides up and says that you basically know, that's not going to go too well for me. And so Adams knows that with the Confederates directly in front of him, he has to buy time for the rest of the Union army's sixth corps to form up and get ready to attack. So they try dragging the guns out of this swale of ground. Next thing you know, the Confederates are right on top of them. They're shooting down men. They're shooting down horses because the only way these guns can move is by horse. So if you shoot the horses, you disable the battery. Finally, Adams manages to get two of these guns dragged up out of this swale. He looks through the fog of the battlefield, realizes there's no more Union infantry to his front. There's nothing in the front of his guns, but Confederates, he gives the order for double canister. Imagine a coffee can, if you will. And some of those, if you might have a home workshop, imagine filling that coffee can with scraps, nails, little bits of nasty stuff. Basically, he's going to turn that cannon into the world's largest shotgun. And you put two of those coffee cans down your cannon. As the Confederates are screaming into attack Adams' guns, he gives the order for canister. And Battery G's guns start firing back. Barber, who's watching this on, is absolutely mystified. The Alabamians in front of Battery G's guns literally turn into a pink mist in front of his eyes. Civil War combat, it was often romanticized by those who took part in it. These guys who survived later on, they're writing for an audience that didn't experience the war as they did. They often romanticized it. But when you read the period accounts for men who were actually there, accounts written on the battlefield, it was a horrible, nasty business. It truly was. These weapons of war do terrible things to the human body. Battery G puts up a one-mile fighting retreat, doing everything in their power to stop the Confederates. They finally get the guns on top of a light ridge of ground called Cemetery Hill. And it's almost as if one of these scenes you couldn't make up for a movie. The smoke of the wind kicks up, the smoke of the battle clears, and they're standing on Cemetery Hill, our 2,500 men from the Vermont Brigade, muskets pointed down at the Confederates. They fire a point-blank volley and charge down and stop the Alabamians right in their front. It's absolutely remarkable. And so Battery G is saved by the same Vermonters they had supported time and again on the battlefield. Long story short, the Confederates are stopped. They go back to the Union camps. A lot of these guys were starving, wearing rags. So they start pillaging the Union camps. The Union Army reforms on the high ground outside of Middletown, Virginia. Phil Sheridan gets on his horse, comes galloping down the Valley Pike. And the first men that he runs into are the Vermonters. And when he's at, when he asks what unit is that, he says the Vermont Brigade. And he's told, we'll be all right. And that afternoon he orders the Vermonters to lead the counterattack that will destroy Early's Army. If you've ever been to the Vermont Statehouse, the massive Cedar Creek painting in the room next to the governor's office, that's the Vermont Brigade launching the counterattack at the Battle of Cedar Creek. And in the disc, in the back of that painting in the distance, you'll notice Union artillery. That's Battery G of Rhode Island supporting them in their final attack at Cedar Creek that destroys Early's Army once and for all. So the combined arms, the Union artillery that was able to slow down the Confederates and the counterattack of the Vermont Brigade was able to win the day for the Union during that battle. Fast forward five months to the battle of Peter'sbury, April 2nd of 1865, you have the situation where Lee's Army has been entrenched before Petersburg all winter. And now Grant is ready to make his final move. On the morning of April 2nd, 1865, he launches a massive counterattack against Lee's Army. Lee's Army starving in the trenches is just a shell of its former self. During that initial attack, the Vermonters break through the Union line. But they've got some friends that came with them. George Adams, that same hard fighting Rhode Island captain, takes 20 of his men in on foot armed with artillery implements and they are able to attack the Confederate artillery, turn it around and use it on their former owners, resulting in 11 medals of honor being won between Battery G and the Vermont Brigade. So, these are just some of the remarkable stories that we have from the Civil War. It was a time that brought about remarkable technology, remarkable changes in technology, and men were able to use that technology, harness it, and really bring about massive changes in that ultimately resulted in a Union victory in the Civil War. Thank you, and I'd be happy to take any questions. Yes, sir? It went for two years, I've been a dozer during the Battle of Sea of Crete. So, I've done the Battle of Sea of Crete in force for two years with people all over, and it's an incredible battle. Yes, I worked at Harpers Ferry for two seasons. I worked at Delbrow and Harpers Ferry. Oh, yes. I've been in Tiedem, but I'm from here, but I got so involved with that stuff, it's so neat to hear you talk about that battle because it really gets very little language in any textbooks at all. But the way that battle sees some, the way that you explain it, that Vermont 8th, which was Core 19, went in and the monument's there. Yes. And I share with people like, you know, they don't know where Vermont, but anyway, it's really interesting that battle at Sea of Crete, it was war's horrible, but it was my honor to be able to be on Delbrow, okay, and be able to share with people that particular battle. I just had to say that it was great hearing you talk about that. So, what's interesting for the Vermonters in the room, you notice all around the state, Vermont has those green and gold history plaques that they put up everywhere. The only one of those signs that is not in Vermont is actually down in Virginia at Sea of Crete, and it talks about the Vermont contribution in that battle. That battle actually saw the most Vermonters at one place during the Civil War, and that's why it was chosen for the painting that's in the state house, which might be a topic for another talk down the road. We'll have to talk. You don't think that's the Vermont age, it isn't. Nope, it's the old brigade. Yes, sir. You talked about how they would fill the regiments with people from certain towns. Yes. Do we know what towns were predominant at the Battle of Sea of Crete? So, there is a book called Peck's Register of Vermont Volunteers. It lists everybody who'd served from Vermont. So, basically just go to that book and you'll see listed men. There should be a copy, I think, in just about every library in the state, but it lists men by, and you can see when they enlisted, when they died. Likewise, once there's other records of the Vermont State Archives, but Peck's Register of Vermonters is the best way to understand who was where. Follow on to that. Yeah. It was kind of a leading question open for an answer. I'm interested in the Charles Andrews, the great war painting, Sheridan's Ride. Yes. The Vermont National Guard. Yes. We'll try to do that. Just the other day. So, I was just trying to lead into why he chose in 1890 to paint that and do kind of a war of remembrance, kind of a celebration of that battle, why he chose that thing, wherever he was from, in Ennisburg. I think it was, primarily, it was really Vermont's greatest moment of the war. You know, a lot of the veterans who served in the Second Brigade, a lot of those guys like Wheel Walk Vasey, they go on to politics after the war. But when you look, you know, Vermont's contribution, Vermonters did a lot of remarkable things during the Civil War. But it's at Cedar Creek, really, early in the morning with the stand of the Eighth, and then later that afternoon with the counterattack of the First Vermont Calvary, the Old Brigade. It's Cedar Creek that really is the battle that Vermonters wanted to be remembered for. Everybody can say, well, they were at Gettysburg, but Cedar Creek is the battle that, because of that battle, that really ensures Lincoln's reelection. Yes? Was that the raid of the bank robberies? Yes, yes, October 19th. It was, it was sort of, there was a little shootout. One guy died, I think two guys were wounded. So, but it's more of just a raid. They took the money, they went up to Canada, Posse chased them, they burned a bridge, I think in Sheldon or Innesburg. But it's the closest Vermont got to actually seeing fighting. And it's really remarkable when you look at it especially from the Canadian side, because the raiders are put on trial in Montreal. There is a big, hardly any of the money's returned to the United States. And really out of the, you can say out of the Civil War came Canada because after the Civil War, we have the Finian raids in Canada in 1866, 1870. And the British government really isn't able to repel Americans coming up to attack Canada. And the Canadians are basically, well, we've got these provinces, let's put them together, make our own nation. It's a lot more complicated to that. But really it's been argued that out of our Civil War, Canada in 1867, they confederate and become the nation of Canada. So it's a lot more to that, but it's one thing that came out of that. It did because there's a posse that's led by a gentleman named Conger out of St. Albans. Conger leads about 50 men actually into Canada. They capture a few of these raiders. And Conger had been a veteran of the 1st Vermont Calvary. And they didn't have the RCMP, but whatever the local police was, comes out and says, hey, you're actually in Canada, you're not in Vermont, give them to us, we'll give you some of the money back, give us the prisoners, and you go back and we'll give them a fair trial. Conger, against his better judgment, turns them over to the police. If he had dragged them back to St. Albans, it would have been a pretty big international incident. So, yes, ma'am? Really? Yes. Instrumentally, there's a lot for women in the military history. It's very interesting with women in the Civil War. Women certainly had a very important role but not really on the front lines. Certainly, there's an estimate of about 400 to 500 women who dressed up as men to serve in the army. There's a great book called They Fought Like Demons about documented cases of female soldiers. But unlike the Revolution or even the War of 1812, there really aren't female camp followers doing laundry, cooking, stuff like that. Men primarily did that themselves. Women really took a role as nurses in hospitals. The Union Army in particular gave women paid jobs in hospitals in Washington and New York. Vermont had three Civil War hospitals in Brattleboro, Burlington, and Montpelier. They employed a lot of women locally to come and nurse soldiers back to help. But women's roles in the Civil War really weren't comparable to the Revolution where they're on the front lines cooking, doing all those ancillary tasks. Men sort of did those themselves while the women were in a supporting role, a very important supporting role as nurses raising money to support soldier relief work back home, making things for the soldiers. For example, in my town of Jericho, there was a women's sewing circle that met at the local church several times a week and they knitted mittens and scarfs and other items that they sent to Jericho men down in Virginia. So that was the primary role of Vermont women in the war at the time. You had said early on that the cannons were cast iron and they often explode. Yes. Did the construction of the cannons change? Yes, I could literally talk here all day about 32 different topics, but cannons, this is going into the minutia of things. The type of gun that fired this particular round right here was called a parrot rifle. It was a cast iron tube with a big jacket around the breach of it. Those had a really bad eye. So if you get bubbles in the casting process, I'm not a metallurgist, but it can explode. Other Union guns were made out of bars of wrought iron, welded together, and those hardly ever failed. There is a very good book. There's a lot of good books, but you can find some books about how artillery was made and used during the war. Rob, we have time for two more questions. Okay. Yes, sir? Anybody here who's been to the state house in Boston probably has seen the statue of General George Hooker. Yes. He was the general in charge of the army of Tondac during the Battle of the Wilderness. Chancellor's bill. Chancellor's bill. Yeah. So I wouldn't get into the sort of etymology of another group of women that were famous during the Civil War, but based on his name, sir name, but I had a great grandfather who fought and was wounded at the Battle of Fisher Hill. Oh, yes. So based on what this gentleman said, I was there about a year ago, and it's really quite moving to actually walk in your ancestors' footsteps and walk that ground. But I'm also a member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, and I just make a brief announcement of a kind of a timely event. The 20th is the anniversary of General George Stannard's birthday. We are having a commemorative ceremony at 3 p.m. at Lakeview Cemetery. It's coming Saturday, the 21st. So we would invite anybody in the room who happens to be in the neighborhood of Lakeview Cemetery or North Avenue to join us for that event. Thank you. One more? Yes, sir. It's two parts. You had mentioned the regiments and listings. So what was the typical strength as they walked out? So a regiment is a Union Infantry Regiment is 10 companies, each 100 men. So 1,000 men at full strength, plus staff officers, it's a little about 10, about 1,012 men at full strength. And as the Vermonters replaced... Yes. ...olded and killed in action, did they get back to that... No, they only kept at about four, four to 500 was by mid-war is considered a big regiment. There really are no medical tests to join the army. Basically, you had to make sure you could have two front teeth so you could tear open a cartridge and you had two arms and two legs. Doctors really didn't get into the weeds. If you could walk and you could talk, you pretty much were able to join the army. So, but guys, especially these Vermonters, they grew up on these hill farms, say up in the Northeast Kingdom. They have no immunity to childhood diseases, measles, smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, whatever. Just the early winter, the first winter, the Vermonters were in the field. Almost 400 Vermonters died of disease in the first brigade. So a lot of disease, disease was the big killer of these troops. But Vermont did a very good job of keeping those regiments in the field and four to 500 men was a big unit by the time of Gettysburg. So thank you so much. So if you could stay up here for just a second. That's fine. I really quickly looked up, so the historic Allen House and this property known as the Eastern Allen Homestead was continuously occupied from the 1780s through until the 1970s. And so even though there's a large focus on the Eastern Allen Homestead Museum on that early 18th century occupation, we do have a history that we do interpret at this museum of those later generations. So I really quickly just looked up who owned this house and this property during the time of the Civil War and what do we know about them in our institutional records. And so just something to maybe possible research in the future here. But what I really quickly looked up is that a man named John P. Howard and another man named Nathan Stearns owned different pieces of this property throughout the 1850s and early 60s. And a man named Alfred Brooks purchased this farm in 1863 and it stayed in his family through past the Civil War. At this point that's all I know other than maybe some of those archaeological artifacts on the exhibit there might have been from the same time period. So I would love to know more about these people who lived here during the Civil War and what their relationship to the war is. So I'll be reaching back out later. Sounds good, sounds good. And I should. Over here, we focus on Ethan Allen and his family here at the Homestead. But there is a bridge to the Civil War because I'm wondering how many of you have heard of General Ethan Allen Hitchcock. He was Ethan's great son. And his last assignment he was an advisor of Lee David and Lincoln during the Civil War. Fifty years in the Army, it has quite a story so you might want to look him up also at some point. Christmas is coming by the way. The museum will be closing on October 31st. Our gift shop is available online if you have history books in your family or friends. You go online and you can order items that are really special for them. So check us out. So one quick reminder that our next lecture is on a Saturday, not Sunday like normal, on Saturday, November 18th. It will be at 2 p.m. And it is remote only because we'll be zooming in with Benjamin Anderson in Scotland. And then the last lecture program of the year is on Sunday, December 3rd. It will be here in the Tavern. And I will be giving a talk called Ethan Allen and Infernal Villain. And that is for members only. So please visit the front desk on your way out the door and pick up a membership application if you haven't already. Please thank me one last time or help me thank Rob one last time. Thank you.