It was 150 years ago today that Southern batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, pushing months of sectarian tension into open warfare. Here in the Berkshires, there were plenty of memories of standing up to actual oppression and tyranny — from the memory of the battles of Bennington and Saratoga, to Shays Rebellion. But in 1861, they were just as quick to claim that heritage as they rushed to the defense of the Union they had helped create.
A Massachusetts Volunteer Militia company from the Berkshires was one of the first units called into action, responding to President Abraham Lincoln’s call on April 15 for the states to send troops to defend the capital.
Henry S. Briggs of Pittsfield, the commander of the city's "Allen Guard" militia unit, which was among the first group of Massachusetts troops to join the fight.
The “Allen Guards,” had been organized in Pittsfield in 1860, and were made up of men from the city and surrounding towns of Great Barrington, Lee, Adams, Cheshire, Richmond, and Hillsdale, N.Y. With only 24 hours notice, they were ordered to join the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment as it made its way from Boston to the South. On April 18 they joined the regiment as it arrived in Springfield at 9 p.m., and they were together “ushered into the city amid the ringing of bells, the blazing of bonfires, firing of cannon, and inspiring music of the bands.”
They were heading to Maryland, a slave-holding state that was still wavering on the fence about whether to secede, with orders to help protect rail and communication lines between Washington and the rest of the North. It had potential to be dangerous — the Eighth was in Philadelphia when they heard that another militia, the Sixth Massachusetts, had been attacked by a mob in Baltimore on April 19. The regiment was sent to Annapolis, and the men of Company K were for awhile station to guard the USS Constitution, which was then docked at the U.S. Naval Academy, from rebel mischief.
The first several weeks, they worked to protect and occasionally restore the critical railroad lines in the area. They were poorly equipped, frequently short on food, and nervous that violence could break out any moment. On April 26, they were reviewed by President Lincoln, and briefly quartered in the Rotunda at the Capitol building. The President personally ordered they receive federal uniforms, and commended them for their work in a letter to the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Timothy Monroe of Lynn. “Allow me now to express to you, and through you to the officers and men under your command, my sincere thanks for your zeal, energy and gallantry, and especially for the great efficiency in opening up the communication between the North and this city, displayed by you and them.”
They spent much of May and June in and around Baltimore guarding the railroads. The militia had been called up for only three-months, and on July 29, they went back to Massachusetts. This even though the unit had volunteered to stay after the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21 had shown that the war was going to be a much longer affair than hoped.
Most of the men who served in the Allen Guard would go on to serve in other Northern units. The company commander, Captain Henry S. Briggs of Pittsfield, would go on to command the Tenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which saw action through much of the war in the Army of the Potomac. Continue reading