In the spring of 1863 Ham Plaisted had achieved his ambition to command a company of Negro troops, and he headed such a command in Louisiana. From there he wrote to his brother: “I am glad to report that it is now clearly demonstrated that Negro soldiers will fight. Some of the most desperate fighting has been done by colored regiments, and many white soldiers acknowledge the bravery of their sable brethren. A nigger is an individual of some consequence in these parts if he wears the uniform of Uncle Sam.”<\/p>\n News of the Rebel invasion of the North that would end at Gettysburg reached Louisiana late in June. On the last day of that month Ham Plaisted wrote: “The papers have just arrived informing us of the invasion of Pennsylvania, and I suppose you are now excited about the safety of the national capital. Have the cabinet become sufficiently concerned for their own safety to recall McClellan to the defense of Washington?”<\/p>\n Gettysburg was fought on the opening days of July, 1863, but it was the 19th before Ham said in a letter: “We are highly gratified at the victory of the Army of the Potomac over the foe at Gettysburg.” On the 26th he made further comment on the great battle: “The air is filled with rumors, but with little accurate news. We hear that Lee has been captured and his army scattered. I don’t believe it. He is too good a general for that. I rejoice that Hooker has been removed. He merely added one more to the incompetent commanders of the army. I suppose the same cause that lost the Battle of Chancellorsville lost him his command — rum.”<\/p>\n By the first of August Ham Plaisted was in Washington on a quartermaster mission. To his brother Appleton he commented on prices: “Prices here would astonish the market men of Waterville. I have paid eight cents a pound for white potatoes. 60 cents for stuff miscalled butter, and 40 cents for cheese. Eggs are two dollars a dozen when one can find any.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile Appleton Plaisted was keeping his soldier brother informed about the troublesome draft situation in the North. In mid-July Appleton was in Boston and had witnessed the rather mild anti-draft demonstration in that city. He wrote: “The riot in Boston was short-lived. The Bostonians, unlike the New Yorkers, fire grape first and blank cartridges afterward. Judge Wells was disposed to be sympathetic with the New York protesters until they cleaned out the boarding house where Mrs. Wells and their daughter lived. The two women escaped with only a few of their valuables. As the New York World lamented: ‘The rioters made no distinction between Democrats and Abolitionists. In Waterville, for more than a week, nothing has been talked about except the draft. Now that the riots are over in the cities. we can all breathe easier, even the new conscripts.”<\/p>\n Appleton Plaisted ended that letter on an optimistic note: “It looks bright now around the sky. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the fall of Charleston now imminent, all indicate that the end is near.” How wrong Appleton Plaisted was! Nearly two more years would elapse and thousands of men would die before Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox.<\/p>\n In September Ham Plaisted was again back in the South at Port Hudson on the Mississippi. He wanted to know what was happening in Waterville more than he wanted war news. He asked his brother: “What are the facts about the defalcation of Noyes? I was astounded when I saw it in the paper and can hardly believe it.”<\/p>\n What that soldier down in Mississippi referred to was the sudden disappearance of Edwin Noyes, Superintendent of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, and the discovery that, by falsifying records, he had absconded with railroad funds. The best contemporary account of that affair is contained in the diaries of George Flood, now preserved at the Waterville Historical Society. It was Flood who discovered that Noyes was in New York, and who persuaded the fugitive to return, going to New York to accompany Noyes back to Waterville. The outcome of the case is still shrouded in mystery. Noyes was never tried, not even indicted by a grand jury. His father-in-law and patron, Timothy Boutelle, had died several years earlier, but Mrs. Boutelle was still living. To save her daughter from disgrace, it is believed that Mrs. Boutelle parted with a sizable sum of money. Anyhow somehow Noyes made good the railroad’s losses and was eventually employed by the Maine Central, which in 1870 absorbed the A&K system, but he never again rose to the superintendency.<\/p>\n At the end of September Ham Plaisted proudly informed his brother: “The Corps D’Afrique (namely, the Negro troops) has been divided into brigades and divisions. Our division is under Ullanan.”<\/p>\n Before Ham left the Third Maine, he wrote his brother early in 1862 about dissension within the regiment, as he expected it when Staples succeeded Howard: “There is excitement in camp. Some men favorable to Burt signed a paper asking the Governor to appoint him Lt. Colonel. When the Governor appointed Sampson, Burt’s friends were indignant. They blame William Heath and Eesseltine, who I think are strong enough to bear the load. Now there is a counter movement to make Burt resign, and put Hesseltine in as major, a consummation devoutly to be wished. The colonel does nothing, agrees with everyone, and makes matters worse. Before this is over he may find himself unhorsed and out of a job.”<\/p>\n All that was long in the past when Ham Plaisted sent his brother a telegram from New York on October 26, 1863: “I have arrived from New Orleans and shall be at home the last of the week.” The next day Hamilton Plaisted received his honorable discharge and was out of the war.<\/p>\n Now let us turn to William Heath, who left Waterville as captain of Plaisted’s Co. H in the Third Maine. who rose to Lt. Colonel, and was killed at Gaines Mill in Virginia on June 27, 1862, having been promoted to second in command of the Fifth Maine. Eleven months earlier Heath had written a letter to the publishers of the Waterville Mail, and that letter appeared in the paper on August 3, 1861. Written from Clesmont, Virginia, the letter informed folks at home of the Third Maine’s casualties at Bull Run: “I am deeply grieved to write that Charles Preston of Benton was killed instantly, struck by a cannon ball near the bridge at Bull Run. Sgt. George Pillsbury of Winslow was wounded, but his wound is not dangerous. Corporals Charles Shorey and Watson Marston assisted him from the field and placed him in a wagon with other wounded men. The wagon fell into enemy hands and I presume Pillsbury is a prisoner in Richmond. Llewellyn Ballard of Vassalboro was shot in the leg above the knee. He came to me just after the retreat at Bull Run had commenced, and told me he had been hit. I tied my Havelock over his wound and turned him over to Sgt. Love, who has some surgical knowledge. Leander Bean of Fairfield also received a slight wound. Albert Ballard of Vassalboro is a prisoner. The same is the case with Nathan Taber. Others missing are Martin Foss of Albion, Weston Merrow of Canaan, and John Goodwin of Vassalboro. Wilbur Judkins of Fairfield was severely wounded in the thigh and was taken from the field in an ambulance. He is now in hospital at Georgetown.”<\/p>\n A year later the Waterville Mail carried the sad story of what happened at Gaines Mill. This time the Mail got the news from Col. Jackson, commander of the Fifth Maine. Here is what the Mail said about the brave Waterville man who died at Gaines Mill: “When the charge was ordered, Col. Jackson and Lt. Col. Heath took their proper positions in the regiment. They had reached the crest of the hill on which Dr. Gaines’ house was situated. Col. Jackson was in the yard on horseback and had raised his sword over <\/em>his head to cheer the men on, when a piece of shell grazed him so closely as to cut the strap that supported the sword and struck the fleshy part of his arm just above <\/em>the elbow. The impact threw Jackson from his horse onto the ground and he was unconscious for more than an hour.<\/p>\n “The adjutant later told Col. Jackson that William Heath was struck not more than two minutes after Jackson was knocked from the saddle. The adjutant said he noticed Heath bending forward on his horse’s neck, when suddenly he fell lifeless. His body was carried to the rear and deposited in a wood near the Chickahominy, with the intention of giving it burial after dark. The adjutant took charge of Heath’s sword, cap, diary, and valuables in his pockets, and has sent them to Captain Francis Heath of the Third Maine, together with Col. Heath’s horse. The cap discloses where the bullet struck. It entered the head just above the forehead, passed directly through the brain, killing Col. Heath instantly. When a party attempted to bring the body from the Chickahominy, they proceeded to the bridge over the river and were then forbidden to cross. They were thus unable to recover the body.”<\/p>\n And with that contemporary account of how a gallant Union officer from Waterville met his death in the Civil War, we close our recent three broadcasts on that war and now say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n Year: 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #819, Broadcast on November 9, 1969<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42949,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nToday we complete our examination of Hamilton Plaisted’s letters from the Civil War front. One of those letters tells us how the soldiers ate. It is well known that there was no central commissary, no served company mess, during the Civil War, even when a company was not in the battle line, or as they said in World War I, “in the trenches”. Every company, often every squad within a company, was responsible for its own cooking, and was often obliged to supplement the crude rations distributed by the quartermaster with purchases from farmers who brought food for sale, or quite as often by raiding and plundering the countryside. Ham Plaisted tells how they prepared a fire for cooking: “When it is too cold to cook in the open, we make a fire inside the tent. Here is the way we do it. First we steal a piece of sheet iron or tin anywhere we can get it. Then we dig a hole about two feet square and a foot deep, partially cover it with iron and dig a trench a foot wide, a foot deep, and six feet long under the canvas, then cover <\/em>it with sheet iron and dirt. place two barrels over the hole at one end for a chimney and the job is done. It serves both to cook our food and to keep us warm.”<\/p>\n