General Oliver Otis Howard, ca. 1863
Maine Historical Society
Equally distinguished was Oliver Otis Howard of Leeds, who commanded the 3rd Maine Regiment at the first battle of Bull Run, after which he, too, was promoted to brigadier general. Howard lost an arm in the Peninsula Campaign and was later promoted to major general in the 2nd and later 11th Corps.
After the war, Howard became commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau, in charge of accommodating former slaves, and he founded and became first president of Howard University, which provided instruction for African Americans.
During the war several Maine women distinguished themselves as nurses, the most famous being Dorthea Dix of Hamden, already well known as an advocate for reform in prisons and insane asylums. Dix served as superintendent of nurses during the war.
Dorothea L. Dix, ca. 1870
Maine Historical Society
Amy Bradley, nurse for the 3rd Maine regiment, took charge of the Soldier's Home in Washington, while other Maine women helped coordinate the Sanitary Commission. Some women followed sons or husbands into the campaigns and in some cases disguised themselves to participate in battle.
In Maine, women kept homes and farms running and fed and clothed needy families of Union volunteers. Thousands joined the Soldiers' Aid Society or worked through their churches to sew bandages, bedding, and clothing. In Rockland, for instance, 25 to 50 women met daily to make shirts, drawers, socks, towels, bedsacks, pillow ticks, and bandages and package soap, sponges, spices, cornstarch, wine, and jellies. Others took "men's" jobs in the towns or stayed home to nurse the returning wounded.
The Civil War at Home
At home the war hung like a cloud over most Mainers. In 1861 President Lincoln asked for 75,000 men to serve in the Union Army, and in 1863 the federal government issued a draft law calling on all men between ages 18 and 45 to enroll in local militia units.
Draftees were selected by state lottery, and to distribute this burden equitably each town in Maine was given a quota. Toward the end of the war, towns were forced to raise money to hire substitutes when their supplies of young men were exhausted.
Civil War Recruiting Poster, Bancroft Mills, 1862
Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum
As in previous wars, Maine's long coastline left the state vulnerable to depredation by privateers. In June 1863 a Confederate privateer disguised as fishing vessel entered Portland Harbor, captured the Caleb Cushing, and sailed out of Casco Bay before being captured.
The federal government began modernizing fortifications in Portland Harbor, at the mouth of the Kennebec, and at the narrows of the Penobscot River, but these projects were finished only after the war ended.
The war opened cleavages that were difficult to close. For 40 years Maine had prospered on shipping southern slave-raised cotton, and in the process citizens developed strong ties with their southern "neighbors." There was a great deal of southern sympathy in Maine, and issues like abolition, the Fugitive Slave Law, states' rights, and southern succession generated thorny debates that divided Maine politically and religiously.
State Democratic papers highlighted Union military reverses, the draft riots in New York and Boston, and the corruption in the Republican administration. Marcellus Emery, editor of the Bangor Democrat, called for a peace convention after Bull Run, and on August 12, 1861 his press was destroyed by a mob in Bangor.
Enlistment and draft quotas, Houlton, 1864
Cary Library
Passage of the federal draft law triggered riots in several New England cities. Maine saw huge peace demonstrations, including a gathering of about 15,000 in Dexter, and along the border draft dodging was widespread; Aroostook County's forests became a thoroughfare for "skedaddelers."
In Warren the provost marshal in charge of the draft was subjected to an "egg attack," and a marshal in Washington County was killed for attempting to arrest a draft resister.
Winter Harbor's male citizens left en masse for Canada. Rebel sympathizers threatened to burn Camden, and in Rockport, a U.S. cutter sailed into Goose River Harbor with its decks cleared and guns stripped for action, causing Rockport's copperheads – anti-war Democrats who wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates – to beat a hasty retreat for Canada.
Portland dentists apparently did a thriving business extracting front teeth, since older cartridges required the soldier to bite them before loading. The city's recruitment encampment was located on Mackworth Island to discourage runaways.
The story of one draft-resister suggests the lengths to which some would go to avoid the draft. A newspaper account noted that:
The person in question was naturally of fine physique and commanding personal appearance. But for the occasion he arrayed himself in a grotesque suit, much too small, and from which legs and arms protruded in the most surprising manner; pantaloons of the most ancient pattern, white vest, blue swallow-tail coat, ornamented with rows of brass buttons, which his grandfather might perchance have worn on his wedding day.
On his head he wore a battered white tile of bygone days. With a stooping form, wildly disheveled hair and bleary eyes, protected by a pair of green spectacles, he presented himself to the Provost Marshall's headquarters. With tottering gait, he was led to a vacant chair, where he seated himself, with his mouth agape and idiotic stare gazing straight up at the ceiling, to all appearances totally unconscious of his surroundings. Soon the surgeon began to question him, but for a time he paid no heed to his interrogatories. At length he turned to his attendant, in a deep nasal bass tone, drawling "Be they talking to you, or to me, Pa?" "To you, Erastus," shouted his attendant, in stentorian tones.
Ha? interrogated the conscript, as his chin dropped until it nearly rested on his shirt front. "To you, Erastus," again shouted his attendant, placing his mouth close to the listener's ear and shouting out his reply in tones which might have been heard several blocks away. "Tel-um to Tawk Louder," roared the conscript. 'Here's a pretty go," exclaimed the examining officer, "a fellow as deaf as an adder, and evidently not sound in the upper story. Enter this man non compos, Mr. Clerk."
For those who failed to evade the draft, the war was a heavy financial burden. A soldier's wages at the beginning of the war were $13 a month, while a skilled city worker commanded around $30.
This paltry wage was even more burdensome because prices rose steadily between 1861 and 1865, and local governments increased taxes to pay bounties to fill draft quotas. Thus social and economic wounds added to the physical wounds of war. As the war dragged on, the Democratic party split into war and peace factions, further rupturing a party already split by antislavery and liquor prohibition campaigns.