CIVIL WAR DISSENT IN COLUMBIA COUNTY, PA
By
George A. Turner
Walking through a cemetery and reading
various inscriptions on tombstones is like reading footnotes to an area's
history. For example, at Bethel Hill Cemetery in Fairmount
Township, Luzerne County, a few miles south of Ricketts Glen State Park, stands
a grave marker for a Civil War officer, Lieutenant James Stewart Robinson.
Carved on the burial stone is this epitaph:
"Was shot by a Rebel sympathizer in Benton Twp, Columbia Co.
Pa., while assisting a U.S. officer in attempting to arrest deserters,
July 31. 1864, and died of the wound,
November 3, 1864." This account
of Robinson's death is like reading a newspaper headline from the Civil War
era, just a few basic facts but enough to stimulate one's curiosity. The circumstances surrounding his death offer
insights into anti-war attitudes of Columbia County citizens at the time.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Robinson, a young farmer, was twenty-six years old and enlisted on June 13, 1861, as a private in Company F, Pennsylvania Seventh Reserves, Thirty-Sixth Pennsylvania Volunteers. In three years of service he rose to the rank of first lieutenant. A veteran of various military campaigns in Virginia, he experienced first hand the hardships of army life: wounded at the battles of Charles City Cross Roads and Fredericksburg and briefly held prisoner by the Confederates in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. When he returned home in June 1864 at the conclusion of his military service, he was a hero, one who had survived his wounds, escaped from the enemy, and become an officer.
The attitude toward the war had significantly changed while Robinson was away. The initial response to President Lincoln's call for troops in the spring of 1861 was positive, even enthusiastic. But after three years of an inconclusive war with increasing casualties in countless battles, there was no immediate prospect of victory over the Confederacy. What was expected to be a short war had become a protracted conflict, and war weariness had set in, accompanied by growing dissent against Lincoln's policies.
In this politically charged atmosphere and with the government calling for more troops, rumors circulated that there were many draft deserters in Columbia County, particularly in its northern townships near Robinson's home. Solomon Taylor, a Deputy Provost Marshal, asked Robinson to help him apprehend army deserters and those who had failed to report to the draft. In addition to Robinson, Taylor also enlisted six others to assist them: Russell and Eli Buckalew, Isaac Harrison, Robert Montgomery, Charles Dodson, and a man named Long, all described as Republicans from the Harveyville area in Luzerne County. A Bloomsburg newspaper, Columbia Democrat, called them the "Lincoln Midnight Raiders.
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The
group started from Fairmount Springs on July 30, 1864, to conduct a
search in Columbia Count)'. Unable
to find Gomer Smith, a deserter from Sugarloaf Township, Taylor and
his men sought another deserter, Thomas Smith, in the Raven Creek area
of Benton Township.
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Thomas Smith. Picture courtesy of Phillip A. Shultz, Mr. Smith's great-great-grandson. |
It was dark when they arrived at his house, between ten and eleven o'clock, and before they could surround it, Smith, hearing them, escaped into a cornfield. Then his wife set the dogs loose and went to the second floor window and blew a horn to alert the neighborhood. Foiled in their attempt to arrest Smith, the group returned to the main road and heard people approaching them from a distance. Robinson told his party to stay on both sides of the road while he ordered the people to stop. When the party neared, he called on them to halt, and Taylor yelled "no firing"; but three shots were fired, and one hit Robinson. His comrades, surprised by the attack, thrown into confusion, and coming to the aid of their friend, were unable to apprehend the attackers as they fled the scene. Robinson was taken to a nearby home where a physician discovered three buckshot wounds in the abdomen. As a result of peritonitis that developed, Robinson died on November 3, 1864, at the age of twenty-nine.
Lieutenant Robinson's family and friends saw his death as murder by Confederate . . . supporters. But rather than interpreting it as resulting from a defense of the rebel cause, it is better described as a desperate act of resistance against the draft. There existed in the North, not only in Columbia County, a feeling of disillusionment over the war; people were tired of the fighting and the many sacrifices. The shooting represented a defiant and lawless opposition to Lincoln's war policy.
The Columbia Democrat reported the incident and hoped that Robinson would recover. Its account, relying on statements by Robinson's friends, indicated that three men attacked the Provost Marshal's party, which returned the fire to no avail. The paper made a critical observation that there probably would have been little trouble if the deputies had not . . . required might, secrecy, and arms. Despite a great deal of excitement over the shooting, no criminal charges were filed. Three weeks after the incident the paper published an anonymous letter by someone from the area where the incident occurred. Signed by "A Democrat," it was as explicit in denouncing Lincoln's war policy.
We would have it understood. Also, that the people do not intend to suffer
themselves to be dragged [sic] from their homes by force to fight for the
“Abolition Slavery.” Let those who
inaugurated [sic] the war, for this purpose, go and fight, and not hang back
like cowards. They have made war on
the principles upon which our Government was founded, and now us to aid in
destroying these very principles. This
should not be done.
Disenchantment with the war
was further accentuated by the North's costly military campaign in Virginia
in the spring of 1864. General Ulysses
G. Grant had instituted a major offensive
against the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E.
Lee, located south of Washington and west of Fredericksburg, along
the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers. Hopes grew that Grant, who had a successful
military record in the West and an army of 115,000, compared with Lee's 64,000,
would achieve a major military victory, defeat Lee, capture Richmond, and
end the war. But after four major
battles (Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg from early
May and until mid-June), Lee's army remained undefeated, and the Confederates
still held Richmond. From these engagements
the combined Union casualties, dead and wounded, came to 54.929, or forty-five
percent of Grant's forces, a heavy toll.
The Confederate losses were 27,000, numerically far less than the Union's,
but high in that they accounted for forty percent of Lee's army.
Columbia County opponents of the war sought to capitalize on the terrible losses. In a letter R. Broadt wrote to a friend, he observed that around Jerseytown the peace Democrats, called Copperheads, were exaggerating the Union casualty figures: "The Copperheads tell war lies as bad as ever. They estimate Grant's loss at from 60 to 80,000 and Lee's lads slight. Judge Evans reports Grant's loss at 100,000 and the army all cut to pieces. . . ." Expectations that Grant would win the war by early summer quickly faded. Instead, he was severely criticized for ordering frontal assaults on strongly held defensive positions and tolerating such horrendous casualties. His critics called him the "butcher." In another major Union attack that also began in May, General William T. Sherman began to move south from Chattanooga toward Atlanta. However, by the end of June his campaign had met strong resistance from the Confederates, who inflicted more casualties on the North with another 20,000 dead and wounded.
May and June saw Northern hopes for an early end to the war drowned in the sorrows of some 75,000 casualties. This despair was expressed by editor Levi Tate, of the Columbia Democrat, an anti-administration newspaper.
For more than three years this nation has been torn and desolated by a civil war, as fierce as any which history' records. Its soil has been watered by the blood of contending armies. Hundreds of thousands of men have died on the field of battle or wasted away in camps and hospitals. The wail of mourning goes up from almost every household. The property created by the sweat of years of labor has been wasted, and that to be acquired by the toils of unborn millions is mortgaged to defray the cost of this terrible and unnatural struggle.
Added to the travail over the human cost of the war was the divisive issue of race and what to do about slavery. When Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, Northern response was generally unfavorable. This was especially true among peace Democrats, who argued that the President had altered the original war aim to preserve the Union and now had made it an abolition campaign to free the slaves. In Lincoln's home state, the Illinois Legislature on January' 7, 1863, adopted a resolution condemning the Emancipation Proclamation as a tragic mistake.
In Pennsylvania, both houses of the General Assembly, in an overwhelming vote on April 13, 1863, passed a resolution criticizing Lincoln's action: That this General Assembly, in the exercise of its right to differ with the Federal Executive, enters its solemn protest against the proclamation of the President of the United States. . . by which he assumed to emancipate slaves in certain states, holding the same to be unwise, unconstitutional and void.
It opposed any scheme of emancipation by states that would require compensation from the U.S. Treasury as being burdensome, unjust, and unconstitutional. It asserted that the Lincoln administration was prosecuting the war by relying on "unconstitutional acts of Congress and startling usurpation of power by the Executive." Specifically, the legislators objected to the unwarranted suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and condemned the practice of subordinating civil laws and free government to military rule. They expressed support for a political resolution of the war by convening a convention ". . . for the purpose of proposing such amendments to the Federal constitution as experience has proved to be necessary to maintain that instrument in the spirit and meaning intended by its founders, and to provide against future convulsions and war." Earlier, on February 5, 1863, Alexander Patton of Green County introduced into the Pennsylvania House of Representatives a resolution prohibiting the state from providing men and other means to the federal government in its war against the southern states until the President rescinded the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the legislature did not pass the resolution, it was a clear reflection of the hostile attitude toward emancipating slaves as a war objective.
Northerners feared they would be inundated by a mass exodus of blacks from the South who would compete for their jobs or become public charges. Others argued that the Lincoln administration was trying to impose racial equality between blacks and whites. It was not uncommon to hear soldiers profess that they were willing to fight and die for the Union but were opposed to a war to liberate the slaves. An army private's letter published January 13, 1863, in the Columbia Democrat, asked a question that was becoming paramount:
What is this war turning to? I cannot say what it is turn to or what it means. Or when it is to end. When I enlisted in the Army it was to fight for the Union, and to restore the Government, but instead of that, it is for the Negro. I hope that our authorities will speedily throw Old Abe out of the chair and put some decent, honest President in his place.
Six weeks after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect,
G. W. Howell, a Columbia County soldier stationed in Virginia, wrote to
Perry DeLong, a teacher in Orangeville, and angrily denounced Lincoln's policy
of freeing the slaves.
. . . uncle sam will have to quit having white men shot for the sake of freeing a few infernal niggers. before he gets me to pick up the musket again. now I for my part dont believe in having A hundred white killed for to free one or two slaves nor I don't care about shooting A rebel for to take his Slaves from him. for I believe they have a rite to hold them and old abe I think was out of place when he issued his useless proclamation. now I wouldn't mind playing solider if it was not for the purpose of freeing the negro. and then have him made our superiors. if old abe has command of the shanty a few years longer. the negro will be respected more than a white man. . . .
Peace Democrats argued that the slavery issue was extraneous and for the government to free slaves in the rebellious states was a loathsome policy. In particular, those who called for a negotiated end to the war thought Lincoln's emancipation policy would make it impossible to end the conflict. The horrendous casualties, rising war costs, and the South's ability to resist successfully the Union armies for such a long time prompted many to advocate a negotiated settlement to end the Civil War. One approach envisioned a national constitutional convention to fashion a political compromise to restore the Union. A number of Columbia County citizens endorsed this approach, and John C. Ellis, their representative, submitted to the Pennsylvania House or Representatives on February 24, 1863, their petitions requesting the legislature to enact a call for a constitutional convention.
Democrats in northern Columbia County met at Stillwater early in April 1863 and passed several resolutions denouncing the Lincoln administration and comparing the President to a Russian czar. One read: "Resolve, That, the bloody struggle in which we are now engaged, is not in our opinion, carried on by the administration for the 'restoration of the Union as it was' nor for 'the Constitution as it is' but for the abolition of slavery, an object as morally and socially wrong, as it is unconstitutional." In their view, he had mismanaged the war to such a point that he was no longer entitled to respect or worthy of confidence. To them, the war was a waste of money and lives. Strongly opposed to the draft, they claimed that people were under no legal, patriotic, or religious obligation to support the war. Levi Tate, holding similar views, printed at the top of his Columbia Democrat's editorial page the resolution of Congress at the outset of the conflict that stated the purpose of the war:
That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the Southern States, now in am1S against the Constitutional Government, and in arms around the Capital; that in the National emergency, Congress, banishing all feeling of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights of established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.
Charging that the administration was subverting the fundamental purpose of the war, he wrote: "This war is for the abolition of slavery, not for the union as it was, not for the Constitution as it is, not for the purpose originally avowed, but for a different and an unconstitutional purpose, a nigger war. This feeling that the war was now being fought to free the slaves became a common complaint and stimulated anti-black expressions. At New Columbus, near Columbia County, a large Democratic meeting occurred on April 7, 1863. One of the speakers declared: ". . . the Negro was better off in bondage than free, and that it was the will of God, and what was His will should be the will of the people. It was not uncommon for newspapers to print such racist material as this anonymous poem, "All for the Nigger," in the Wilkes-Barre Luzerne Union.
We are taxed for our clothing, our meat and our bread
On our carpets and dishes,
our tables and beds,
On our tea and our coffee,
our fuel and lights,
And we're taxed so severely
that we can't sleep o'nights,
And its all for the nigger,
great God! Can this be
The land of the brave and
the home of the free?
Taking into account Columbia County's war weariness, and racist attitudes toward blacks, it was not surprising to see growing opposition to serving in the war. When President Lincoln issued two calls for new troops to the states in the summer of 1862, governors made every effort to induce volunteer enlistments, hoping to avoid using a state draft. The likelihood that states might rely on drafts to meet their quotas prompted many to flee to Canada. When Pennsylvania resorted to one, Governor Andrew Curtin informed Washington that there was strong resistance. By the end of 1862 the number of volunteers had sharply declined. Military service entailed significant personal sacrifices if one had a family, ran a farm, or had a business. Wartime industries attracted many workers with wages substantially higher than a soldier's paltry pay. At the same time there was a growing agitation against the war led by the Peace Democrats and other anti-administration forces; these dissenting voices also discouraged volunteering.
With the decline in volunteering, governors were not very successful in meeting federal requisitions for using state militias, and a new method had to be employed to meet the manpower needs for the Union armies. Congress's answer to this problem was to pass a national conscription law on March 3, 1863, known as "An Act for Enrolling and Calling Out the National Forces, and for Other Purposes." Those liable for the draft were male citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five, and were divided into two classes, all who were between the ages of twenty and thirty-five and those unmarried from thirty-five to forty-five. The second group could not be drafted until the others had been called. The law exempted the physically and mentally unfit, any son responsible for taking care of aged and infirm parents, a brother whose siblings were orphaned and under the age of twelve, and a father of motherless children who were less than twelve years old. It also stipulated that when two members of a family were serving in the military, there could be up to two exemptions for any family members liable for service. If a man were drafted, he could avoid service either by paying a commutation fee of $300 to the government or by hiring an acceptable substitute to take his place. Therefore, men with money could buy their way out of the draft, which gave rise to the charge that "blood money" made the Civil War a "rich man's war, poor man's fight." This attitude prompted a parody of a popular recruiting song: "We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more. / We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore. / We are the poor who have no wealth to purchase liberty." Conscription became an important political and class issue that divided the two parties: 88% of the Democrats voted against the 1863 draft law while all of the Republicans supported it. Democrats opposing the Lincoln administration combined conscription and emancipation into a major partisan argument and condemned "the draft as an unconstitutional means to achieve the unconstitutional end of freeing the slaves."
Columbia County Democrats who met at Stillwater a month after the passage of the draft act attacked the law as being unjust. Drawing attention to those with wealth who could buy their way out of the draft, they argued: ". . . it consigns the poor man to the hardships and dangers of the battlefield. . . ."As conservative Democrats, they also saw the law as an invasion of states rights. In another meeting two weeks later at Jerseytown, they developed this idea further: "A war carried on contrary to the rules and provisions of that instrument [the Constitution], whether it be a crusade against slavery, or any other fanatical or delusory scheme, never can and never will receive our support."They disputed the idea that the federal government had the authority to impose a draft and argued that a national compulsory service was antithetical to the nation's history. The Columbia Democrat also subscribed to this idea by denouncing forced conscription as contrary to the customs and traditions of Americans: "It has been our pride and our boast that unlike the monarchies of the old world, our government has never been compelled either to resort to a conscription of its citizens. . . ."
Administering the draft became the responsibility of the Provost Marshal General's Office of the War Department. Each congressional district became a draft district for enrolling prospective draftees and conducting the draft. This organizational approach alarmed the Columbia Democrat, for it saw Washington superimposing its military authority over the states and threatening civilian government: "It is an exaggerated copy of the military organization under which despotism reigns in Russia and France." The law stipulated that the Provost Marshal had the authority to arrest anyone who resisted the draft, counseled others to oppose the, draft, obstructed the operation of the draft, and engaged in treasonable practices. The Columbia Democrat also objected to these provisions, believing that people's constitutional guarantees to discuss freely and express their opinions openly were now in jeopardy. It felt the Lincoln administration wanted to stifle or prevent any public debate of the draft law and would arrest those who opposed it: "All who question it, in either aspect, it denounces as traitors, deserving of summary punishment. It has encouraged political leagues and its blind partisans in heaping obloquy upon those who dare express their opinions upon the subject, and insulting them in every possible form."
Another criticism leveled against the draft centered on its adverse impact on the state militia. The law gave the federal government the authority to mobilize the nation's military forces, a fundamental break from past practices of relying on the state militias called into service by the President. A conflict arose between those who thought that the central government had the power to enforce direct conscription and those who argued that it infringed upon state sovereignty, the right of a state to control its manpower resources. Since all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and forty-five were subject to conscription, states could be deprived of the means to maintain their militias. The Columbia Democrat, a staunch defender of the militia system, believed this was possible. Arguing that the Constitution distinctly recognized the states' militias, the paper said that enacting a national draft constituted a usurpation of the rights of states and a threat to liberty. It expressed concern that with the weakening of the militia system, the states would lose their ability of self-defense. States would become prostrate before the federal government. No longer would it be ". . . their agent for the exercise of restrain defined and limited functions would become a vast consolidated military despotism, ready to be seized by any Caesar, Napoleon, successful soldier, and to be wielded amidst bloody contentions between anarchy and tyranny. Is this to be the heritage of our children?" To rectify this perceived danger, the newspaper urged that the law be challenged in Pennsylvania's courts.
A legal test of the national draft law did occur when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear three similar cases involving three men drafted from Philadelphia, known as Kneedler et at vs. Lane et al on September 23, 1863. Only the plaintiffs presented their arguments in the case since United States District Attorney Coffey chose not to appear in court, taking the position that a state court lacked the authority to rule on the constitutionality of the draft. The court nevertheless rendered a decision: voting three to two, the justices ruled on November 9. 1863, that the federal draft was unconstitutional and granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the plaintiffs from being inducted into the army.
The majority, in three separate decisions, held that Congress did not have constitutional authority to enact a federal draft law. The justices did not believe the constitutional provision, Article I. Section 8, that "congress shall have the power to raise and support armies," gave it the right to pass a conscription law. Chief Justice Walter Lowrie argued that if the government is free to use conscription to recruit, an army, the Constitution provides ". . . no regulation or limitation of the exercise of the power, so as to prevent it from being arbitrary and partial, and hence we infer that such a mode of raising armies was not thought of, and was not granted." Specifically, there was no enumerated power to sustain a conscription law. With Americans fearing standing armies, Justice Woodward asserted that the nation’s history and tradition interpreted the power to raise armies as being solely based on voluntary" enlistments. Conscription in the eyes of Justice Thompson was nothing more than a throwback to the nefarious English "press-gangs." He wrote: "Can anyone now be credulous enough to believe that if a power had been supposed to exist, to raise an army, not by voluntary means but by coercive, especially as there were no limits fixed as to its magnitude, that the constitution would have been ratified by the states? The idea would, it seems, be preposterous."
Justice Lowrie also maintained that "the state militia is wiped out if this act is valid, except so far as it may be permitted by the federal government,"clear intrusion upon states rights and an example of unrestrained federal power. Justice Woodward wrote: "The state militia, always highly esteemed as one of the bulwarks of our liberties, are recognized in the federal constitution, and it is not the power of Congress to obliterate them." Concern over an unwarranted expansion of federal power also was a major issue. Since the draft law only exempted the governor, the court majority felt that with the law's broad conscription power, it had the potential to emasculate the civil government of the state; it was possible that all of its officials could be drafted and hence leave it defenseless. Justice Thompson wrote: "Can it for a moment be believed that the framers of the federal constitution intended to create such a monstrous power? One that would not only absorb the military authority of the state, but the civil also."
Justice Woodward also thought the draft law was unconstitutional when it permitted the Provost Marshal to seize a civilian who resisted conscription and to bring him before a military tribunal to be tried. This was an attack on one's civil rights, a violation of the fifth amendment protection. He argued a person served with a draft order retains his civilian status until he is inducted into military service. "A citizen of Pennsylvania cannot be subjected to the rules and articles of war until he is in actual military service."
Since the Lincoln administration had chosen not to participate in the case, it also refused to acknowledge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling; therefore, the draft continued without interruption. Further, Republicans were unconcerned about the decision due to the, outcome of the recent judicial elections: David Agnew, a Republican and strong supporter of the war, defeated Democrat Chief Justice Lowrie. With a new justice, the defendants sought an order to dissolve the preliminary injunctions of a month earlier. The new majority, three to two, on January 16 upheld the constitutionality of the draft and rejected the plaintiffs' arguments that their rights had been unlawfully invaded. Peace Democrats were disappointed and saw the court's reversal as an act of submission to federal despotism.
Opposition to the draft was not confined to legal challenges and critical editorials, but also included people at the grass roots level who were likely to be drafted. When Pennsylvania instituted a state draft in October 1862, resistance surfaced in different parts of the commonwealth, particularly in the anthracite region. Governor Curtin informed Secretary of War Stanton that there was strong opposition to the draft in Carbon, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties, the last two of which bordered Columbia. Over all, the draft was considered a failure since it did not raise the needed number of troops. This resistance prompted the War Department to establish the Lehigh Military District with troops stationed in Reading. They were frequently dispatched throughout the district to maintain order and enforce the draft.
The national draft law required persons subject to military duty to be enrolled, noting their place of residence, occupation, and age on July 1, 1863. It was a formidable task to secure this information; enrolling officers had to canvass the district, in essence, to conduct a door-to-door census. It was the hope that people would cooperate; however, Pennsylvania had serious problems with enrollment. Samuel F. Pealer, an enrolling officer in Columbia County, encountered hostile threats at the Stillwater mill when he attempted to register four men. They refused to answer his questions, and ordered him to leave the mill, one threatening to knock his brains out. After this intimidation he left but was later warned that he was in danger of being attacked. The Provost Marshal for the 13th District, which included Columbia County, reported that the draft headquarters at Troy was broken into on July 18,1863, and all of his papers stolen; consequently, much of the enrollment had to be done again.
In Columbia County, Dyer C. Moss, a resident of Sugarloaf Township, described a political meeting at Moore's Schoolhouse where Levi Tate, the speaker, told his audience that ". . . not a man or a dollar until the administration was changed. He also said “. . . that they should obey all constitutional laws but that the conscription act was unconstitutional law. Moss indicated that a neighbor, John Moore, told him ". . . that he would die at his own door before he would go to war if he was drafted."The quota for Columbia County on June 3, 1864, was for 618 men. When the draft board met in Bloomsburg from late June to early July 1864, it became apparent that opposition to the draft was real. The Columbia Democrat estimated that about three-fourths of those called did not appear for induction: another local newspaper, Star of the North, indicated that large numbers of men from the townships were not reporting.in an editorial it denounced the draft.
This thing of drafting for soldiers is about played out. In some districts nearly. All report themselves, and get “exempted" or pay “commutation,” while in other districts very few are paying any attention to the "draft." We say the thing is about run into the ground! What will be tried next? Undertake to hunt up and arrest these men who have not reported? That would not pay. They could not be found; or at least enough of them to make it profitable to the "Government.” Ever since Abe Lincoln has waged war for the freedom of the negro, and subjugation of the South. he has had difficulty in getting soldiers to fight his battles.
A Columbia Count)' resident in Orangeville writing to a friend in the army remarked that with the draft taking place, people were leaving the area, perhaps going to Canada: "I am thinking that if we were to go there we would feel quite at home, among so many of our Pennsylvanians." The Lincoln administration on July 5, 1864, requested Pennsylvania to supply 12.000 militia to serve for one hundred days, unless discharged earlier, in Washington and vicinity. To help meet this demand, Columbia County’s quota was 203 men. Shortly thereafter, on July 18, 1864, Washington issued its second draft call for the year, requesting 500.000 men. This prompted the Columbia Democrat to complain that "Five hundred thousand poor men are to be torn and dragged from their families in the beginning of winter, leaving them to freeze and starve. . . . In the Provost Marshal's report for the 13th District, March 11, 1865, Captain Thomas E. Douglas wrote that there were 1,800 deserters in the district. He felt that if the Provost Marshal had had a military force of at least twenty soldiers, the number of deserters could have been reduced by one-third. The exact number of who evaded the draft in Columbia County is uncertain, but clearly many men resisted the draft in Fishing creek, Benton, Sugarloaf, Jackson, and Pine townships.
John G. Freeze, a Bloomsburg attorney and prominent Democrat, maintained that Columbia County, as well as the congressional district, had been subjected to unfair drafts due to excessively high quotas. There was a strong feeling that the War Department attempted ". . . to draw from the district nearly three times as many men as we were honestly obliged to furnish." The complaint, which Freeze described as an "egregious outrage," stemmed from the failure of the Provost Marshal's office to credit the district for numerous volunteers who entered the army outside the district. Men from Columbia County often volunteered for military service from other counties due to bounties paid to increase enlistments. Finally, after repeated protestations of an alleged injustice, the Provost Marshal General ordered an investigation of the matter in the spring of 1865. It resulted in the removal of Captain Manville as Provost Marshal for the district and, most importantly, a reduction of nearly one-half of the enrollment. This, in turn, significantly reduced Columbia County's quota.Practices surrounding conscription in the Civil War are often described as one of the war's major scandals.
Politically, Columbia County had a well-established reputation as a Democratic stronghold. For example, in the 1860 presidential election Lincoln won 56% of the state's popular vote and 54 of the 66 counties; however, Columbia was one of the twelve counties that he lost. Within the county he received only 43% of the vote; particularly, Benton, Fishing Creek, Jackson, Orange, and Sugarloaf, voted heavily for John C. Breckenridge, the southern Democrat states rights candidate, who received 76% of the votes.
In this anti-Lincoln sitting, there occurred in the northern part of the county a number of political meetings beginning in the latter part of 1862 that were critical of Republican war policy, and in particular, expressed a defiant attitude toward the draft. At these meetings, some secret, people took an oath to "support the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." The idea was that if they felt anything was unconstitutional, they were not to support it. To them, this meant resisting the draft. Daniel McHenry, Columbia County Treasurer and a speaker at one of the meetings, implied that if a person were drafted, he should not report; he told his audience that the quickest way for the people to end war was to refuse to enter the, army and not to pay taxes. He chided the men by praising the women for their Ii I bravery in driving off the enrolling officers when they came to their homes. Levi Priest of Benton said that Rohr McHenry, a Columbia County Commissioner, believed that the drafted men were determined not to go into the army, a decision he personally supported, feeling it was wrong to drag men away from their families. According to participants, these meetings took on the character of a secret organization with the intention to protect and give assistance if someone got into trouble with the draft. If difficulties occurred, members would use various signs to communicate with each other. When coming to a member's house at night, one knocked three times on the door. To recognize a member in the dark, one would say "bear" and the other person would respond by saying "bear" and then both would say "wolf." A signal used in daytime to indicate that one was a member was to run a hand along the coat collar.
Another outspoken critic in the area was Rev. Alvah R. Rutan, who was emphatic in his denunciation of Lincoln and his war policy. William Forbes reported that Rutan told him "he would like to see a ball put through old Abe Lincoln's heart, and if he had an opportunity he would do it himself.Seth Dodson affirmed Forbes' statement and added that the out-spoken minister did not blame those who resisted the draft and refused to fight to free the slaves. Rutan argued that Lincoln was entirely at fault for the war and if the Democrats controlled the government, the war would soon come to an end.
An incident at a church service at the North Mountain School House, north of Benton, on July 30, 1864, illustrated the polarized attitudes over the war. The minister, Rev. P. F. Eyer, had his sermon disrupted when a group of six to eight men, described as being drunk, ". . . came to the door and began cursing and swearing . . . uttering the fiercest oaths . . .” and one called out, ‘I learn that you are an abolition preacher, and if you are we will take you out and hang you on this hickory tree, but if you are a democrat preacher you can preach on.'Due to their abusive and disruptive behavior, he could not finish his sermon. The intruders attempted to drag Eyer from the pulpit and take him outside to the rest of the group, who were armed and whom he felt would do him great harm. However, two members of the congregation came to his assistance and enabled him to escape through a back window to safety. Eyer saw this intrusion as a threat to anyone who supported the Lincoln administration and its war policy. To him, being a Democrat in Columbia County meant opposition to the draft, hostility to the government, and placing one's party above the county. Reuben Larish, a church member who witnessed the affair, said that Montgomery Cole, a prominent Democrat and justice of the peace in the township, was responsible for bringing the men to the school house to disturb the church service, and that Rev. Eyer was threatened because he supported the Union cause.
The Eyer confrontation, Democrat political meetings condemning the war, strident editorials denouncing the Republican war policies, and acts of draft evasion illustrated the politically charged atmosphere that existed in Columbia County. It was into this contentious milieu that the Provost Marshal with Lieutenant Robinson and the others went to the home of Thomas Smith the night of July 30, 1864, to arrest him as a deserter. That night two separate forces came into sharp conflict: the Provost Marshal, representing the authority of the federal government to enforce the draft, and Smith, who like so many others in Columbia County, adamantly opposed the government's war policy and decided to defy it. Robinson became a victim of these conflicting forces.
At the time of the incident, the civil authorities made no effort to identify or arrest the assailants, and twenty-seven years passed before anyone was arrested and brought to trial for murder. When John Robinson, Lieutenant Robinson's brother, became the sheriff of Luzerne County, he had Elias Young, who lived a few miles west of Benton, arrested for the murder on March 16, 1891. In the trial that occurred on September 17-18 in Wilkes-Barre, Young, a Civil War deserter, admitted being at the scene of the shooting. In his account, he argued that the Provost Marshal's party shot first at him and two others, Minor Smith and Thomas Smith. It was an act of self-defense when he fired his gun, he said. In deciding the case, the jury concluded that Robinson's death was not homicide and found Young not guilty since his action constituted a legitimate act of self-defense.
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When Lieutenant Robinson and many others went off to war in 1861, enthusiasm for the Union cause was high. But three years later, when he returned from the battlefield, support for Lincoln's policies had waned. Those called Peace Democrats or Copperheads saw the bloody conflict as a tragic mistake. Time and events had eroded that early fervor to subdue the South, which was replaced by a divided public that felt exhausted and disillusioned with the war. People like editor Levi Tate and others in Columbia County wanted an immediate end to the human carnage, and, if necessary, a peace achieved by a political compromise rather than one dictated by an eventual military triumph after thousands of additional casualties. Politically, war opponents were conservative and believers in states' rights, and consequently were alarmed over the accumulation of power in the federal government. They objected to a draft they thought was unconstitutional, complained about its unfairness, and resisted being forced to fight for a war they did not support. To them, it had become a struggle to liberate the slaves, an objective which their racial views prevented them from embracing.
What happened in northern Columbia County was but a microcosm of Civil War dissent in the country', and the death of Lieutenant Robinson was a tragic reminder that conflicts resulted in death not only on the battlefield, but also in back county rural areas of the North.