The Union army appeared to be making quick work of the southern insurgency as the United States entered the new year of 1862. Recruitment offices around the north just shut down. Why keep something open when it was so clear the war was going to end and soon?
But then came General McClellan’s attempts to capture Richmond, capital of the Confederate States of America. The losses on the battle fields of the Virginia Peninsula Campaign were staggering. Now the decision to discontinue recruitment seemed not only foolhardy but catastrophic. The foreseeable future was one, not of victory celebrations, but of a sustained, long war.
Soldiers, from every state, were needed.
In early July 1862, Lincoln put out a call for 300,000 volunteers; every able-bodied man between 18 to 45 was urged to enlist. As word of the Peninsula Campaign’s failures spread, enthusiasm for the cause waned. Enticements were added, money bounties increased.
Ira Sayles, a long-time abolitionist and ardent supporter of the War, answered the call, and used his position in the communities of Alfred, Whitesville, and Independence to alternately cajole and shame other men to come with him to Almond, to enlist in what would become Company H of the 130th New York Volunteers.
War Meeting to be held at the Methodisth Church in Whitesville, On Monday Evening August 4th 1862.
Recruitment broadside created by Ira Sayles, August 1862; shared by Roger Easton, Former Historian, Town of Independence, Whitesville, New York: The Independence Historical Society, 540 Main, Whitesville, NY 14897.
The poster directs citizens to attend a war meeting on Monday evening, the 4th of August, in the Methodist Church in Whitesville, the town in which his wife grew up and in which his brothers-in-law had businesses. I can hear his voice ringing from the pulpit:
In the extremity of its danger, our tottering Government appeals to each one of us, personally and individually; and implores us to rush to the rescue.
Her defeat will be our shame, her fall, our RUIN!
Let no man stop to count his dollars, nor the profits he leaves; for, the Triumph of this Detestable Rebellion, come Anarchy, Confiscation, Bankruptcy, Vassalage, Slavery, SEMIBARBARISM. Our flocks, and our herds, and our pleasant homes, will be seized upon as plunder of War! Our school-houses, our academies, and our colleges will be emptied. Our rail-roads and our canals will be destroyed and will forever lie in ruins. Our ships will rot at their docks. Our factories and our mills will lie idle, and fall into utter decay. No one need flatter himself with the hope, that those things will not be so.
The History of all Anarchies Testifies to the truthfulness of this Picture.
Let Each Able-Bodied Man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, subject to Military Duty, feel that the suppression of this terrible rebellion, and with it, the slaying of all these evils, may depend, under God on his single individual arm; and that their triumph will be chargeable to him alone, should he now refuse to rally to the ? Of our Noble Beleaguered Government.
My friend, nay my brother, let me beseech you not to turn away from her agonizing cry for help! Are you a husband and a father, look on those dear ones—dearer than life—and remember, that, if you go, it is to avert all this overwhelming run from them;that, if you stay, it is to invite it on them; that they and their children, and their children’s children will pronounce your name, with grateful pride, if you now peril your life in your country’s cause; but that if you remain at home, like a cowardly craven and contemptible slink, these same children, your posterity, will blush with burning shame, whenever they are reminded of your base poltroonery.”
“Who would be a traitor knave, Who would fill a coward’s grave?
Who so base to be a slave…Let him stay at home”
[from Robert Burns’ patriotic song “Scots Wha Hae”]
To the true patriot, the advanced bounty, twenty five dollars and the advanced pay, one month’s wages, making the little sum of thirty-eight dollars is of no consideration that yet if he