Recruiting renewed: Albany and the Summer of 1862
A Call for Troops
The President's call for troops came just as the people of the North were beginning to hear rumors that the Army of the Potomac had been repulsed by the rebels outside of Richmond. When the Seven Days' battle began in late June, Union General George McClellan ordered all reporters away from the front lines, leaving the northern populous blind to the army's situation. Between June 25 and July 3 news of the northern armies operations consisted only of "rumors and overoptimistic reports." (5) The bad news could not be contained forever, and by July 4, northern newspapers were shocking their readers with reports of "stunning disaster" and thousands of dead and wounded northern soldiers left lying on the southern battlefields, tempering the Independence Day celebration. An article in the Argus relayed news from the New York 44th infantry regiment: "The Forty-Fourth Regiment is reported to have suffered in one of the battles with the enemy last week . . . they went in 400 strong and came out with only 250 men." The people of Albany felt a strong connection to the 44th, and followed any news from the regiment closely. During the next several days, both the Argus and the Albany Evening Journal reported additional Union losses and the disarray of the 44th and the Army of the Potomac. To the citizens of Albany it must have looked as though the Union Army was in a position of great peril.
The new Federal call for 300,000 troops came after a period when northern recruitment had slowed to a trickle. In April, Edwin Stanton, the new Secretary of War, had suspended all recruiting activities and reorganized the inefficient system of recruiting. (6) Stanton quietly began recruiting on June 6, but it was this new call for troops that resumed the process in earnest. The recruitment lull between April and July gave northern communities the mistaken impression that the Union Army had enough men in the field to quell the rebellion. Lincoln's demand for new volunteer soldiers was issued to each state as a quota based on each state's population. New York State's quota of 59,705 men was the highest in the country. (7)
On the heels of Lincoln's request, New York Governor Edwin S. Morgan released a statement, crafted to both arouse patriotism in New Yorkers and make it clear that the responsibility for filling the quota would fall on the local communities. The citizens of Albany saw Morgan's message in the Argus on July 3:
This appeal is to the State of New York; it is to each citizen. Let it come to every fire-side. Let the glorious example of Revolutionary period be our emulation. Let each feel that the Commonwealth now counts upon his individual strength and influence to meet the demands of the Government . . . Let the answer go back to the President and to our brave soldiers in the field, that in New York the patriotic lists of the Country's defenders is being augmented . . . The details of organization will be in accordance with the orders from the Adjutant General of New York. The State will be distracted, Local Committees will be appointed, and regimental Camps established. (8)
Recruiting responsibilities filtered down to the state's senatorial districts; Albany County
represented the 13th Senatorial District. On July 10, a committee of citizens "designated by the
Governor to promote the speedy enrollment of a Regiment of Volunteers in [Albany] County, had
its first meeting." (9) The committee considered a special tax to generate money for bounties, and
called for a general public meeting to be held at the state capitol on July 15 for the purpose of
organizing the regiment. The Journal, wasted no time in rallying Albany residents to the task at
hand. An article covering the July 10 meeting announced the public meeting, and became a
patriotic call for action:
...It should be a grand mass meeting. Every man in the city should attend it, for
much will depend on upon the numbers, spirit and enthusiasm of the occasion . . .
And now, Fellow Citizens, what say you? Our patriotism is to be tested as never
before. To raise this Regiment promptly will require large personal and pecuniary
sacrifices. It will not do to depend upon the ordinary process of enrollment. Nor
will it do for every man to rely upon his neighbor. Their is personal work for each
of us, and that work must be performed with prompt vigor, here and elsewhere, if
we would bring back to the country that peace and prosperity which has been
broken and blasted by traitors now in arms. (10)
2. Albany Atlas & Argus, July 2, 1862, 2.
3. Eugene Nash, A History of the Forty-fourth Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, 1861-1865, (Chicago: R.R. Donnelley and Sons, 1911) 89-91 4. Ibid.
5. Nevins, Allen. The War for the Union. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960.) 140.
6. Gallman, Matthew. The North fights the Civil War: The Home Front. (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1994.) 60.
7. Nevins, 163.
8. Albany Atlas & Argus, July 3, 1862, 2.
9. Albany Evening Journal, July 11, 1862, 2.
10. Ibid.
11. Albany Evening Journal, July 5, 1862, 3.
12. Ibid.