Radio Script #902

Little Talks on Common Things
October 10, 1971

The Colby Oracle, the students’ annual yearbook, published in book form every year since 1870, was preceded by a four-page sheet, copies of which have now become rare collectors’ items. A copy of the second issue of that little annual paper, published in 1863, was recently picked up in an out-of-state bookshelf. It is especially interesting because it reveals conditions at the college right in the middle of the Civil War.

The paper was called the Watervillian because the name Colby had not yet been attached to the institution. It was still called Waterville College. Two of the four pages, and one of the four columns of the third page, are filled with lists of organizations and their membership. The other three columns of page 3 contain the College Roll of Honor, the list of men, by classes, who had enlisted in the Union service in the Civil War, some of whom had already given their lives. The last page contains three long editorials devoted to the college affairs.

Unlike the later Oracle, the Watervillian was published in the fall, not in the spring. Seniors in college, though, when this issue appeared in November, 1863, were therefore members of the Class of 1864. Two of them were senior editors of the publication, Harry J. Cushing of Skowhegan, who entered war service immediately after graduation and later became a Massachusetts surgeon and Edward C. Littlefield, who graduated in 1864 at the age of 19, entered Newton Theological Institution in September and died there in November, soon after his twentieth birthday. Those two seniors were editorially assisted by two juniors, Granville Dunham, who later gained fame as publisher of the Maine Register; and William Lambert, who served many years as headmaster of various Boston high schools.

As for the war, this publication reveals that by November 1863, a total of 124 Colby men had enlisted. They represented 18 classes, from 1838 to 1865. The list contained several names that found a niche in history. William Heath, 1855, who with his brother, Francis, had recruited Waterville’s first company soon after the attack on Fort Sumter, and who was the College’s first Civil War casualty in the spring of 1862, had his name given to the GAR post at Waterville. Harris M. Plaisted, 1853, colonel of the 11th Maine, was discharged at the close of the war in the rank of Major General, became Governor of Maine and Representative to Congress. Benjamin Franklin Butler, 1838, was of course the most notorious Colby man in the Civil War. A Major General who was constantly arousing controversy, he became Governor of Massachusetts candidate for President, a staunch champion of the underdog. Charles H. Smith, 1856, listed in this paper as colonel of First Maine Cavalry, rose to the rank of Major General, remaining in military service until retirement in 1891, and received the Medal of Honor. Russell B. Shepherd, whom the paper lists as Major of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, ended the war as a Brigadier General, remained in the south for four years after the war as a cotton planter, then returned to Maine, where he served in both houses of the legislature.

Stephen Boothby of Livermore, second in command of the first Maine Cavalry, as Lt. Col. under Col. Smith, lost his life on a Virginia battlefield in 1864. Sabine Emery, 1,858, was commanding officer of the 9th Maine. Stephen Fletcher, a captain in the 7th Maine when this paper was published, rose to the rank of Colonel, and at the close of the war was attached to General Howard’s Freedman’s Bureau. In that capacity he became acquainted with a former slave, Samuel Osborne, brought that Negro and his family to Waterville, and saw Sam established in a long career as the beloved janitor of Colby College. Richard C. Shannon, 1862, in 1863 a captain in command of a company of draftees, later gained wealth and fame as a builder of South American railroads, gave Colby its unique Shannon Physics Building where Shannon’s choice for the job, Prof. William Rogers, developed the standard yard for the U. S. Bureau of Standards. Shannon’s classmate, Col. Zemro Smith, later edited such varied newspapers as the Portland Press, the Boston Journal, the Leavenworth Times, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

In the soldier list in that old college paper appear the names of two brothers who both lost their lives in the war: William A. Stevens, 1862, and Edwin C. Stevens, 1863. They were sons of Watervilles’ highly respected churchman and civic leader, W. A. A. Stevens. An unusual number of Colby men, according to this old paper were in command of colored troops. In 1863, it was a comparatively new group, called the Corps d.’ Afrique. G. G. Percival, 1858, was surgeon of its 3rd Regiment, of which Cyrus Hamlin, 1859, was commanding officer. In the same regiment, Julius Clark and William Hatch, both of the class of 1861,were also officers as was also Samuel Hambl±-fl, 1862. George Getchell, 1863, was adjutant of Uhlman’s Brigade of the Corps d ‘Afrique.

One man in that Colby paper’s list of service men was not a Union soldier. He was Robinson Turner, 1857, of whom this 1863 paper said,”Impressed into Rebel service and escaped from the battleship Merrimac.”

The editors of the Watervillian did not claim that their list represented a complete record of all men of the college in Civil War service up to November, 1863. In fact their editorial comment was: “The following is a roll of Waterville college sons who have left the peaceful vocations of life to do battle for our Republic. We have been unable to make the extensive search of records requisite for completeness. We fear we have omitted names that deserve equal honor. Imperfect as our roll may be, we present it with pride.”

The old college paper gives a lot of attention to the fraternities, s0 much in fact that even the names on the military roll were labeled as members of DKE, Zeta Psi, or DU – the only fraternities established at Colby before 1863. In fact only DKE and Zeta Psi,were then known as secret societies, for DU had been deliberately established as non-secret. Actually the Watervillian placed it under the heading “Anti-secret Confederation”. In the four Colby classes it then had 18 members, five of whom were in military service. DKE, the oldest of Colby’s fraternities, was then the largest with 30 members. Zeta Psi was smallest with 13. The old non-secret literary societies that had existed almost since the beginning of the college, were still active in 1863, though were already being pushed aside by the national fraternities. The oldest, Erosophian Adelphi, claimed 39 members, while its rival, the Literary Fraternity listed exactly the same number. Those old clubs and the newer secret fraternities were not rivals or mutually exclusive. The same men belonged to both.

A student club, not the Colby Library, provided a reading room with periodicals. The club was the Athenaeum, and  among the papers to which it subscribed were the N. Y. Tribune, the N. Y. Evening Post, the Boston Journal, and the Bangor Whig and Courier. The Boardman Missionary Society was very active in 1863 with E. C. Littlefield as president and Ira Waldron as secretary. There were two musical organizations, the Sacred Music Choir and the Quartette Glee Club. The Shakespearean Club had 14 members and the Chess Club, 10. Athletics were not prominent in 1863, but were not entirely lacking. Baseball was just coming in though as yet there was no varsity team. Rufus Bartley headed the Butler Baseball Club, made up entirely of sophomores and freshmen, while the juniors had a team of their own under Captain Charles Harmon. Patriotically they called it the Lincoln Baseball Club. The seniors had a cricket club headed by William Young, a man who in his old age. I came to know in my own undergraduate days, as he regularly attended commencement. Young was also coxswain of the Alpha Boat Club.

In those days the various exhibitions and oratorical contests attracted lots of attention and the 1863 Watervillian published the previous years’ awards. In the Junior Declamations, John Harkness of Bangor had won first prize with his recitation of Wendell Phillips’ Filneuil Hall oration, “The National Crisis”. In the Sophomore contest William Lambert of Auburn was the winner. When the Watervillian went to press the fall exhibitions by seniors and juniors had not been held, but the paper announced the program to come soon. That war was on everyone’s minds is shown by several of the announced offerings. Stanley Pullen of Foxcroft was to speak on “Principles of Reconstruction”; William Young would discuss “Peace from War”; Cyrus Richardson would tell about the’ “Navies of the World”; William Freeman of Fairfield had as his topic “Slavery and Aristocracy”. But that the classics were still in ascendancy was shown by the announcement that Granville Dunham would render a translation into Latin from the Greek of Socrates, that Charles Harmon would make a metrical version from Aeschylus and that Daniel Taylor would give an English translation from the Latin of Tacitus.

As for the effect of the war on the college, the editors said: “When the class of 1863 entered, it numbered 54. It remained nearly unchanged until Mars sounded the notes of war throughout the land and defiantly boasted to slay our freedom. When Minerva called young men to rally around her standard, twenty-one of those 54 boys at once responded. Of those remaining only 14 finished their college course in August. War has thinned the ranks of all our classes, and our aggregate is consequently small. Gratefully we have no copperheads to pollute our midst. While quiet usually prevails at the college, a few students occasionally blow off steam as if there were no war. Such recreation must have originated in the Middle Ages, when there existed a preponderant desire for hideous noises. Individuals satisfied with such strains have evidently never participated in the more advanced and purer pleasures of college life.”

One editorial was captioned “A Word to Enemies”. The enemies were people whom the editors accused of persistently slandering college students, regarding them as depraved and accursed. The editorial divided those traducees into two groups, the honestly ignorant and the ignorantly honest. It sought to inform the former and scorn the latter. It said: “Our morals attract your chief attention. You regard college as a purgatory which we have entered on the road to Hell. To you, even a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We have indeed learned in college that students must serve either God or Mammon. They must either have their innocence changed into right principles and perchance into holiness, or they must at least be disrobed of hypocrisy and exhibit something of manliness even in their wickedness.”

The Watervillian looked forward to the 1864 commencement which it said would occur on Wednesday, August 10, with the orations before the literacy societies on the evening of the 9th.

Year: 1971