Maine's Draft Riot: "The Kingfield Rebellion."

John Hartwell

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The 10th Maine Volunteers was mustered for two years service on October 1, 1861. They had served in detachments guarding the B&O Railroad line before being united in May 1862. for service in Jackson’s Valley Campaign. They had fought at Cedar Mountain, saw duty guarding the trains during Second Manassas, and were engaged at Antietam.

Some of the 10th Maine boys, however, had signed three-year enlistment papers (sound familiar?). So, the following May, the 2-year men were ordered back home to for discharge, and the 3-year-men were reorganized into the 10th Maine Battalion, and assigned to duty at Headquarters, XII Corps.

The following story is told by one of those discharged 2-year veterans. Private Leroy H. Tobie of Lewiston. It is the story of the “Kingfield Rebellion,” and it involved him and several of his comrades in a unique campaign through the deepest Yankeeland, dodging "bushwackers" all the way.

It was Maine’s only serious draft protest. Before the war, the town of Kingfield had had about a 2:1 Democratic majority, by voting record. Most of them, however, had become loyal “War Democrats,” supporting the crushing of the Rebellion. But, there was a vocal “copperhead” faction that took every opportunity to ridicule the Lincoln administration and its conduct of the war -- and, of course, the new Draft Law.

Trouble started in mid-July, 1863, when officials at Lewiston began drawing names for the Draft. Kingfield’s quota that first draw was to be 12 men. When news arrived of the results of the draw, it was found that the names included 10 democrats, and only two republicans, and the copperheads were immediately outraged. They charged that local enrollment officer Nathan Saunders had marked the lists sent to Lewiston so that the officials there would know to pick mostly Democrats.

That night, a mob of about 50 men went to Saunders’ home with a sack of feathers and cans of black paint (no, not tar, this is Maine, after all!). Finding him not at home, and not expected back for a week, they splashed the paint across the front of his white house, and went away. Two days later, when Federal Marshal Lambert arrived in town carrying the official Draft Notices, he left his team at the stable and went to the hotel for dinner. There he was confronted by a mob of nearly fifty persons and ordered to leave town, with threats of personal violence in case he refused. No fool, Lambert promptly surrendered the draft notices that he carried and left Kingfield post haste. The notices were destroyed.

All this time (just a few days, actually), news of these events was circulating throughout the state. And as the rumors spread, they grew in both numbers involved and violence threatened and done. On July 17, Maine Governor, Abner Coburn, felt he had to take action.

It is at this point that the 10th Maine’s recently discharged Leroy H. Tobie takes up the account.

To be continued:
 
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[From “Comrade Leroy H. Tobie’s Military Career,” published in The First Maine Bugle, (1st Maine Cavalry Association, 1893)]​

"During the summer of 1863 there was trouble at Kingfield concerning the draft, known as the "Kingfield Draft Riots," and so threatening did matters become that the Governor ordered the Lewiston Light Infantry, Capt. Jesse Stevens, reinforced by about thirty men from Augusta proceed to Kingfield to protect the officers and the people. Now it happened that many members of that organization were suddenly very much devoted to business and could not possibly go with the company, so they did the next best thing -— they secured substitutes. It was only a short time after the Tenth Maine arrived home, and to the veterans of the Tenth did the very busy militiamen look for assistance and release from the duty of serving the State. They found the Tenth boys ready and willing to go -— aye, anxious, for to them there was promise of plenty of fun—and about a dozen of them were secured, among whom was the subject of this sketch.

"It is real fun to hear him tell the story of that campaign, and it is worth to print the story, in brief, here, as it has rarely been publicly told. The Tenth Maine boys had a 'picnic' on that campaign, such as boys never had before on a campaign in time of war. They were old campaigners, and they proposed not only to show the militiamen how to 'soldier,' but to have some fun with them. They did, and kept the raw troop wells scared for the greater portion of the time. They donned their old uniforms, which were serviceable if they did not look well; they wore their old army brogans, and could march all day, straight away, while the militiamen, with neater looking shoes, couldn't march a little bit. They had smelled powder, had faced the brave men of the southern army in hard-fought battles, and did not think of being frightened until they saw something to be frightened at.

"The command went to Farmington by rail, and there camped one night on the common. Such were the harrowing stories of the blood-thirsty and desperate character of the rioters and the people at Kingfield, that before starting on the march for that place the next morning ammunition was issued and the men were ordered to 'load in nine times.' At this one of the militiamen became so nervous that he dropped the cartridge into his rifle ball foremost and was then neither good as a soldier, a militiaman or a hunter.

"The Tenth Maine boys took the advance and easily kept far ahead of the column, picking berries, etc., fretting the Captain, and keeping him pretty busy shouting 'Hold on; if you don’t keep back nearer the column you will surely be killed by "bush-whackers!"' But they only laughed in their sleeves at him, not being at all frightened at the thought of bush-whackers the good old State of Maine. At one time, while far in advance of the column, they fired a volley of half a dozen guns at flock of crows, which set the column into serious and half-scared commotion. The men were drawn up in line of battle, and waited some time for the expected attack, and then cautiously advanced again. The column reached New Portland in a thunder shower and the men first took shelter in a barn at the outskirts of the town, and then in the hotel, where the citizens received them with open arms and doughnuts. They had 'lunch' there, and after half an hour of 'Copenhagen' -- think of it ye veterans who campaigned only in the South -— and the singing of patriotic songs, the line of march was taken up for Kingfield, only six miles away.

"By this time the militiamen had become 'tenderfeet,' and were transported in hay racks while the Tenth Maine boys trudged along cheerfully with many joke at the 'weak sisters.' They were cautioned to keep well together and not straggle, as the rioters had thrown up fortifications and had pickets out on the road. As the column neared Kingfield the militiamen heard the sounds of martial music and were seized with a trembling, but ‘ere long found out that the Tenth Maine boys, who as usual were some distance in advance, had discovered the Kingfield brass band — big drum, little drum, cracked fife and cornet — waiting to escort the invading army into town, and had induced that band to play “Dixie” for the benefit of the militiamen in the rear. In short, Tenth Maine boys just played with those poor militiamen during the whole campaign. The troops were welcomed with hospitable arms, but not to bloody graves.

"A camp ground was selected in a hay field, tents were pitched, and the command made ready for the night. Young Tobie was put on guard at nine o'clock, but believing the country to be safe, he left his post, lay down behind a hay stack, and in five minutes was fast asleep, not waking till morning. When the corporal of the guard, a militiaman, discovered that this post was empty, he remarked, with much vigor. 'D*mn that Tobie, and all the rest of them Tenth Maine fellers -- I guess he's all right, though,' and he put another man on his post.

"The next day the people of Kingfield gave the invaders a royal picnic dinner. In the afternoon the troops were withdrawn took teams for New Portland, where they had a dance that evening, went to Farmington the next day in teams during a heavy rain storm, and arrived in Lewiston that night wet through, but the 'Tenth Maine fellers' were jolly.

"Thus ended the Kingfield Campaign."


NEXT: what had actually happened at Kingfield.
 
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Many years later, an eyewitness to the “Kingfield Rebellion,” Francis Edgar Stanley told its story to a reporter for the Lewiston Journal Illustrated, and it was printed in the April 27, 1918 edition. I have not been able to find a copy of that issue, but the following is from a fine article by Brian Swartz, that appeared in the October 23, 2013, Bangor Daily News.

Francis E. Stanley, by the way, would become famous, along with his twin brother Freelan Oscar Stanley, as inventors of the Stanley Steamer, the most successful of the steam powered automobiles. But, in 1863, he was a 14-year-old Kingfield boy.

Continuing, in Brian Swartz’ words:

... reality had already ridden into Kingfield. On Friday, July 17, (the date is based on Stanley’s timeline) “a thing happened that gave the Rebels something to think about,” Stanley recalled. Several “Secessionists” stood clustered “at the post-office when a team drove up, and in the carriage with the driver was a man wearing the army uniform.”

Home on furlough, the captain wore his left arm in a sling, “the bone having been shattered by a Rebel bullet,” Stanley recalled, using “Rebel” interchangeably to describe his Copperhead neighbors and the actual enemy in Virginia.

The captain chatted with the civilians; when one “commenced to give an account of the [July 16] affair,” the veteran “interrupted him,” according to Stanley.

“Are you Copperheads such fools as to think you can resist the draft?” the captain asked. If the draftees failed “to report for the examination,” they would “be regarded as deserters, and you know what that means.”

A Copperhead “stepped out” from the group “and took hold of the [horse’s] bridle” and started to turn “the team around at the same time,” recalled Stanley.

“You had better mind your own business,” the Copperhead warned the veteran. “You can’t make such talk as that here, we are running this town.”

“Let go of the bridle,” the captain ordered. Fifteen decades later, the chill in his voice resonates from Stanley’s memoirs. “Leveling a revolver at the man’s head,” the captain reminded the Kingfield men about the gulf separating them from him.

“You say I better mind my own business,” the veteran said. “Do you know what my business is?

“Just now it is shooting Rebels, and I will shoot one in Kingfield as quickly as I would down in Virginia,” he commented.

Because “he evidently did not enjoy looking into the muzzle of a revolver,” the Copperhead released the bridle “and quickly placed himself at a safe distance,” Stanley recalled.

So, the Kingfield Draft Riot essentially ended before the military arrived. It was brought down by a one-armed convalescent captain with a pistol and an unshakable demeanor.

Grumbling continued for a while in Kingfield and a few other rural towns. But it never came to anything.

Here's how the Portland Argus spoke of it on July 24:
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[in New York Commercial, July 25, 1863]​
Rumor still ruled.
 
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Man, it comes to show not even the New England portion of America was 100% pro-Union.
No one has ever claimed that, that I know of. Before the war generally about 40% of the New England vote was Democratic: a majority in some places, almost non-existent in other places. Even Massachusetts elected Democratic governors four times in the 1840s and 1850s. Most local Democrats came to support the war, but copperheadism was hardly unknown.

One of the most rabidly anti-Lincoln newspapers of the war period was the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette -- and it was not alone. The Manchester Weekly Union, for example:
jkloip.jpg
 
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No one has ever claimed that, that I know of. Before the war generally about 40% of the New England vote was Democratic: a majority in some places, almost non-existent in other places. Even Massachusetts elected Democratic governors four times in the 1840s and 1850s. Most local Democrats came to support the war, but copperheadism was hardly unknown.

One of the most rabidly anti-Lincoln newspapers of the war period was the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette -- and it was not alone. The Manchester Weekly Union, for example:
New England had its fair share of anti-Republican/Lincoln and Copperhead sentiment like you pointed out. I was noting that wartime not everyone in New England/America was pro-Union.
 
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