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Maine

Seeing the Elephant: Lewis and George Bisbee

It is often said we stand on the shoulders of giants. In the American Civil War we name those giants Lincoln, Grant and Sherman. But that is only partially true. The Lincolns, Grants, and Shermans may have planned and directed the fight, but the common soldier did the actual combat. Without soldiers like Lewis and George Bisbee, all would have been for naught.

Seeing the Elephant

Many families like the Bisbees saw their sons go to war during the Civil War. At least 15 of the Bisbee families of New England enlisted.

War in 1861 was an adventure. For the young men of both sides, the lure of war promised adventure in a righteous cause. Most Civil War soldiers had never ventured more than a few miles from their homes. Marching off to war was an exotic venture – “seeing the elephant” in the slang of the 1860s. The elephant was a unique creature from a world beyond their imagination.

But America, unlike Europe, had never experienced war on a grand and terrible scale. The newly enlisted marched off in blissful ignorance of what was to come.

Lewis Child Bisbee and George Dana Bisbee saw the elephant. They also saw more than their share of horror and misery.

Lewis Child Bisbee

The Bisbee Cousins Enlist

Lewis Child Bisbee enlisted as a private in Company I, 16^th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in Augusta on Aug. 20, 1862. Lewis’s cousin George Dana Bisbee enlisted at the same time in Company C in the same regiment. Both men came from Hartford, Maine.

George Dana Bisbee

The war had gone on for a year by then, but the real bloodletting hadn’t happened yet.

On Aug, 27, 1862, Lewis won promotion to lieutenant, George to first sergeant. The regiment immediately marched off to Washington, D.C., without any time for formal training.

Though part of the Antietam campaign, the 16th Maine spent the time guarding rail lines and saw no action. It then continued with the Union Army in the pursuit of Gen. Robert E. Lee into Virginia.

Blanket Brigade

They had a problem, though. In September, when they left their camp at Washington, they had to leave everything behind. Their belongings would catch up with them later, they were told. So, they marched off with just the clothes on their backs and no tents. They remained thus for the next two-and-a-half months without any kind of shelter and with no change of clothes, underwear or shoes. They looked more like hobos than soldiers. Soldiers made them the butt of jokes, derisively calling them “The Blanket Brigade.”

Fall in Virginia in 1862 was particularly cold and rainy, and the lack of shelter or adequate clothing took a deadly toll. Of the more than 1,000 men of the regiment who left Maine, over 300 died or fell sick with debilitating pneumonia or flu.

On Dec. 1, 1862, Lewis Bisbee won promotion to captain, commanding Company I. He still led a virtually untrained unit that spent all day, every day, marching into Virginia with no time for training. Their supplies finally caught up with them at Thanksgiving. They then had their first real shelter and change of underwear since the beginning of September.

Baptism by Fire

In December 1862, the Regiment and the Bisbee cousins received their baptism by fire at Fredericksburg, Va. The 16^th Maine, positioned on the left flank of the Union Army received orders to assault the entrenched Confederate right — uphill. When the veteran regiments on either side of them fell back, they persisted. After taking the Confederate position, they had no support. They were ordered to fall back. Having suffered heavily in the assault, they found themselves in the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. They could stay unsupported to await the inevitable counterattack or fall back as the only viable targets on the battlefield for the Confederates.

The Battle of Fredericksburg: The Army of the Potomac crosses the Rappahanock

Obeying orders, they retreated. One can only imagine the cursing and frustration of a unit that won its battle but had to give up what it had heavily sacrificed to gain.

Somewhere here George Bisbee received a wound in his left arm. Being shot in the arm by a large soft-lead bullet often led to amputation, but he was lucky. The wound must not have been serious since he remained with the unit.

Fredericksburg marked their introduction to the true horror of battle. The battle was a Union loss due not to the lack of valor of the soldiers but to poor leadership at the top. General Burnside noted after the battle: “If there is any glory in the battle, it belongs to the men from Maine.”

The Mud March

The year 1863 saw the regiment still in Virginia and participating in the infamous Mud March. During the fruitless four-day affair, the Army of the Potomac marched back and forth in miserable rain-soaked conditions along mud-clogged dirt roads, for no appreciable purpose.

Chancellorsville

The Regiment’s next serious action took place at Chancellorsville, Va., from May 1-5, 1863. While the battle resulted in a serious loss for the Union, the 16^th Maine had some luck. It did not get involved with the part of the army that the Confederates routed.

The Battle of Chancellorsville

According to its unit history,

“The right of our lines was in extreme peril, for Howard’s corps had stampeded…On the double-quick, though burning woods, over dead and dying, amid a terrific cannonading and an incessant rattle of musketry, we pushed. Exhausted and panting, the Sixteenth took the extreme right and front of the Army of the Potomac at half-past ten P.M, and remained in the line of battle until 3 A.M. when we threw up breastworks…”

While fighting raged elsewhere, the 16^th Maine held the right and eventually fell back with the rest of the army.

After Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac set off in pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it moved to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. The men of the Army of the Potomac marched an estimated 20 miles a day into Maryland and Pennsylvania. It took a tremendous effort in the heat and humidity of a very hot summer, in wool uniforms, carrying heavy equipment. The boys from Maine had no experience of those conditions. By June 30, the 16th Maine found itself bivouacked along Marsh Creek, about six miles from Gettysburg.

Action at Gettysburg

July 1, 1863 saw the 16^th Maine Infantry and Lewis and George Bisbee leave their bivouac at 9 a.m. They force marched to Gettysburg, moving into position along Seminary Ridge. The Regiment belonged to the 2^nd Division of the Union 1^st Corps, arguably the best unit in the Army.

The area to their front had been the scene of bitter fighting by other units of the 1^st Corps earlier in the day. Their corps commander, John F. Reynolds, died there. Moving to their right at about 1 p.m., they took up position behind a fence line near the Chambersburg Pike. They quickly engaged the enemy about 200 yards away behind another fence.

“Now came the order to charge bayonets. Color Sergeant Mower was the first to jump the fences, and the regiment followed with a ringing cheer, and in the face of a galling fire, went double-quick, scattering the rebel line, they going pell-mell to the rear. Our boys would have followed them, but were recalled and moved with the division still farther to the right.”

View to Oak Ridge (left) and Oak Hill and Peace Memorial (right. Photo by the author.

This move took them to Oak Ridge, a key to the Union position overwatched by the higher Oak Hill held by Confederate forces. (The modern Peace Light Monument now stands there.) With other 2^nd Division regiments, the 16^th Maine repulsed several Confederate attacks on the position. While the fighting raged there, the Union 11^th Corps moved into position on the plain to their right. But after brief fighting, the 11^th Corps was outflanked and fled the field in disorder. That left the Union force on Oak Ridge unsupported and fully exposed.

View from Confederate position on Oak Hill. Photo by the author.

Forlorn Hope

With no hope of relief, division commander Brig. Gen. John C. Robinson ordered the men to fall back to Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg. By now far superior Confederate forces pressed in on two sides, threatening to surround them and cut them off. Robinson ordered the 16^th Maine to “take that position and hold it at all costs.” The position, about 75 yards north of their current position, was literally the tip of the ridge then vacated by the other Union regiments. At the time, the 16th had only 275 officers and men left, including Lewis and George Bisbee. They faced four oncoming Confederate divisions that had yet done any significant fighting at Gettysburg. The divisions outnumbered the 16th Maine 20-to-1.

The 16th Maine Monument at Gettysburg. Photo by the author.

The regimental commander, Col. Charles W. Tilden, protested that it was suicide. But they obeyed the order and the regiment clung to the position. Many of those men must have felt they would never leave this ridge alive as they looked out on the smoke that concealed the vast numbers of the oncoming foe. They held out long enough for the rest of the Union 1^st Corps to retreat to Cemetery Hill, before a shortage of ammunition and the overwhelming numbers made it impossible to hold any longer. Being hard pressed now from three directions, the 16^th Maine fell back, conducting a fighting and relatively orderly withdrawal, all the while pursued by vastly superior forces.

Saving the Colors

After going several hundred yards, the regiment found itself at the Railroad Cut, and by this time it was virtually surrounded with no hope for escape. If they had the time to look around them, they would have seen the fields covered with the dead and wounded of both armies. They’d been left behind from the hard fighting earlier in the day, when the Union 1st Corps soundly defeated Confederate forces, but at a high cost.

View from the 16th Maine marker of Oak Ridge. Photo by the author.

Such impressions would have been fleeting as their own reality came into sharp focus. Appealing to Colonel Tilden, the color bearers asked permission to tear their colors apart. They did not want them captured as war trophies, a major disgrace for the unit that lost them. With his permission, the men tore them to small pieces and each man in the regiment secreted a piece on his person. The Confederates never discovered them. Colonel Tilden snapped his own sword in half to keep it from being a trophy. Then he gave the order: Every man for himself and to make their way to the Union lines as best they could.

Lewis and George Bisbee, POWs

The majority of the Regiment, including Lewis Bisbee who was wounded in the fight, and George Bisbee, were captured, along with Colonel Tilden. Lewis and George probably saw little of each other during the actual fighting, but likely came together for mutual support in a shared fate as the men surrendered. Of the 275 men in the 16^th Maine at the start of the battle, 11 were killed, 62 were wounded, 159 were captured. Only 43 escaped to the Union lines.

Col. Charles Tilden

The defeated Confederate forces quit the battlefield on July 4, 1863, and moved south into Virginia, taking the captured 16^th Maine men with them. Lewis and George initially were sent to Libby Prison in Richmond. The only advantage to Libby Prison over the rest of the prison camps was that it was in a three-story warehouse, so at least there was overhead shelter. The windows had bars but no glass. Conditions there were beyond miserable, and Libby Prison was described as second only to conditions to Andersonville. The death toll from disease, lack of food and essentials, lack of hygiene and medical care, and outright neglect led to a high mortality rate. By the time the Bisbees and the other 16^th Maine men reached Libby Prison, it housed more than 1,000. It was designed for 300. Things only got worse.

Libby Prison in 1865

Lewis spent 10 months in Libby Prison before being sent further south to prison camps in Macon, Ga. (Camp Oglethorpe), Savannah, Ga. (Camp Lawton), Charleston, S.C., and eventually Columbia, S.C> (Camp Sorghum). All Civil War prison camps were miserable, dehumanizing places, but Camp Sorghum was one of the worst. It was an open field, without shelter and fully exposed to the elements, no sanitation, no real food and no medical care. The prisoners had only the rotting clothes on their backs. The prisoners were already walking skeletons by the time they got there, transferred from other prison camps to alleviate overcrowding. Life went from bad to worse. Death was an everyday occurrence, and only the strongest survived.

Finally, Released

Somehow Lewis Bisbee managed to survive, and on March 15, 1865 he was released. He rejoined the 16^th Infantry, his enlistment not officially ended. It is unclear if he rejoined it in time to be present with the regiment at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. He mustered out with the regiment at Arlington Heights, Va., on June 5, 1865, and returned briefly to Maine.

Lewis had a brother, Sgt. Elisha Sylvester Bisbee, who fought in the Civil War with the 1^st Maine Volunteer Cavalry. He was killed in action at the Battle of North Anna Bridge, Va., on May 22, 1864. Lewis most probably didn’t find out about his brother’s death until after his release from captivity.

Depiction of Libby Prison by David Gilmour Blythe

George Bisbee was sent to the same Confederate prisons as his cousin Lewis. He endured the same hardships in camps that fostered disease, starvation, neglect and brutality. It seems likely the two cousins provided emotional support for each other during their captivity. George was marginally luckier than Lewis in that he was paroled after 18 months, on Dec. 9, 1864. At that time the Bisbee family probably got its first real news about Lewis Bisbee’s status.

George Bisbee was later formally exchanged, meaning that he could return to active service. He rejoined the 16^th Maine in time to fight in the Appomattox Campaign. His unit fought at White Oak, Gravelly Run, Five Forks and Sailor’s Creek. He was present at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Now reunited with his cousin Lewis, he would have participated in the 16^th Maine’s march at the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. He mustered out with the regiment on June 5, 1865 at Arlington Heights, Va.

George Bisbee had won promotion to 1^st lieutenant while a prisoner. But in one of those then-peculiarities of the military, the Army later revoked his commission. He lost it because he couldn’t muster for it, as the Confederates had him in custody at the time!

Lewis Bisbee

Lewis Child Bisbee was born on June 7, 1834 at Hartford, Maine. He married Martha Brett Staples in 1856. The 1860 Census, before the war, listed his occupation as “carpenter.” Because of his capture and imprisonment only a year after he enlisted, he probably never made it home on furlough. His wife and children would have spent four long years not knowing his exact fate.

After the war, in 1865 he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota Territory, with his family. They had one son, James, and a daughter Luella, both born before the Civil War. After moving to Minneapolis, Lewis and Martha had two more sons, Ansel and Llewellyn. James died in 1871.

While his formal education is unclear, Lewis must have had some significant schooling. He worked as an architect and builder in Minneapolis. He won renown for designing and building many of Minneapolis’ prominent structures, including its first city hall, churches, schools and homes of the city’s influential residents. As with most Union Civil War veterans, he took an active role in the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic). He died on July 15, 1921 at Minneapolis, Minn.

George Bisbee

George Dana Bisbee was born on July 9, 1841 in Hartford, Maine. The 1860 Census lists him as a pupil at Teacher’s Normal, West Peru, Maine. A Normal School trained teachers at the college level. It is unclear what he did just prior to enlisting.

In 1865 he returned to Maine to live. In December 1865 he was admitted to the bar in Oxford County and began a lifelong practice as an attorney. On July 18, 1866 he married Anna Louise Stanley. Together they had three sons, Stanley, Seth and Wirt, and a daughter, Mary.

The Bisbee Family history notes that in 1872 and 1880 he served as a state senator. He held several other prestigious positions, including president of the Rumford Falls Trust Company, trustee and later president of Hebron Academy, Hebron, Maine (which still exists). He served four years as the U.S. marshal for the District of Maine, director and attorney for the Rumford Falls Railroad and president of the Rumford Falls Trust Company. George also belonged to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. He died on May 26, 1918, at Rumford, Maine.

Lewis and George Bisbee are the author’s 5^th cousins, 3 times removed.

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The History of the Maine Plantation

Maine has a unique form of local government – an organized plantation – that exists nowhere else in the nation. Viewed either as a municipality (Maine law) or as a minor civil division (U.S. Census Bureau), it can be found mainly in the northern and central parts of the state.

Rangeley Plantation lies on the south side of Rangeley Lake.

Organized plantations are created when county commissioners (since 1837) call for an organizational meeting to choose officers. The minutes of the meeting and plantation boundaries are then sent to the Secretary of State. Thereafter, at an annual meeting in March, eligible voters serve as the governing body to elect officers, raise revenue for expenditures and discuss other issues. A three-member board of assessors acts as the executive body, values property, approves expenditures and handles other business. Plantations generally have the same powers and duties as towns and cities, but can enact ordinances only for state-approved purposes. Those include animal control, fireworks and unwanted material on private propert). State legislators from towns represent their interests.

Matinicus Island, a Maine plantation

The First Plantation

In 1607 Popham (Sagadahoc) Plantation or Colony became the first English attempt at permanent settlement in New England, near the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine. It failed a year later (unlike the 1607 settlement in Jamestown, Virginia). Following the establishment of fishing stations after 1610 by proprietors who could easily withdraw their support, more permanent settlements by families had emerged by the late 1620s. Among the earliest plantations along the lower southern coast were Kittery (settled in 1623), incorporated as the first town in 1647; Wells (1622), incorporated as the town of Wells in 1653; and Agamenticus/Acomenticus (1636), incorporated as York in 1652 as the second town. Meanwhile, Native Americans destroyed various 17^th century plantations including Kennebec (settled in 1654) in 1689 and New Dartmouth (1665) in 1688.

Site of the Popham Colony, once a plantation

Before 1751 these settlements were controlled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1751 plantation freeholders (landowners) had the authority under Massachusetts law to hold a meeting to elect a moderator and clerk. They could also choose assessors of property and collectors of province and county taxes. Thus, these organized plantations gained limited governmental powers. After 1821, plantations often served as an intermediate step between an unorganized township (i.e., no local governmental powers) and an incorporated town. They had authority to provide some public services (e.g., policing, road maintenance, and education).

The Maine Plantation

Maine, still under the control of Massachusetts, finally became a state in 1820, while retaining its local governmental units.

Sturtevant Pond in the now-Town of Magalloway

In 1820 Maine had thirty-seven plantations, with nine of them becoming towns by 1840. Fifty years later, there were 78 plantations. However, over the next hundred years, U.S. Census data showed their numbers steadily declined to 57 in 1970 and 30 currently. U. S. Census data also indicates that 116 plantations existed at one time or another between 1870 and 1970, with Baring (Washington County) the last one created in 1961. Of these, 45 became towns and 41 deorganized and became unorganized townships. Thus, not all plantations became towns. Conversely, towns were incorporated without first becoming plantations.

The old schoolhouse at Coplin Plantation

All but three of the 30 plantations are located in the northern and central parts of the state. One half of the plantations are in Aroostock and Somerset Counties. All of the plantations have relatively small populations residing in forested areas with various water bodies. Population sizes range from 200 in Baring (Washington County) to five in Glenwood (Aroostock County). Land areas range from 59.0 sq. mi. in Reed (Aroostock County) to 0.9 sq. mi. on Monhegan Island (Lincoln County).

Deorganization

Since the 19^th century plantations have frequently deorganized, with 27 plantations approving this decision after 1970. The trend has accelerated recently: Oxbow (Aroostook County ) in 2017, Codyville (Washington County) in 2019, Cary (Aroostock County) in 2019 and Magalloway (Oxford County) in 2021. The main reasons cited: rising property taxes, declining job opportunities and changing demographics.

Trying to harvest fish in Grand Lake Stream Plantation

Deorganizing a plantation is a time-consuming process that ultimately leads to a loss of decision-making by residents over local affairs, including having the state and county governments assume the provision of public services. Nevertheless, if the afore-mentioned problems continue, then the future of these remaining entities becomes more precarious.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Coplin Plantation schoolhouse By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34201233. Sturtevant Pond By Jim Pennucci from Hope, USA – 20090818-JAP_0035, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75761098. Rangeley Lake overlook By Doug Kerr – originally posted to Flickr as Rangeley Lake Scenic Overlook – Maine, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12253715. Site of Popham Colony By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71452873. Matinicus Island By Jim Kuhn – originally posted to Flickr as Harbor Low Tide Panorama (Matinicus Island, Maine), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7846479.

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Seven Fun Facts About Portland Head Light

Portland Head Light has stood as a sentry to Portland Harbor since 1791, the oldest lighthouse in Maine. It can also claim to be one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world. The National Register of Historic Places

It’s one of only four authorized by George Washington and never rebuilt. Automated in 1989, today it includes light tower,
keepers’ quarters, whistle house, a paint locker and garage.

Want to know more? Here are seven fun facts about Maine’s iconic lighthouse.

1. It has had a lot of ups and downs — literally.

It was raised 20 feet. Then it was lowered. It was raised again. Then lowered. Then raised.

http://www.newenglandlighthouses.net/portland-head-light-history.html

Two stonemasons, Jonathan Bryant and John Nichols, got the job to build a 58-foot lighthouse for $700 in 1789 (the first lighthouse in Maine). They had to build it with local materials — granite and wood. to mark the entrance to Portland Harbor. When they finished, people realized it needed another 20 feet so ships could see the light. Bryant quit but Nichols finished the job in 1791. It went into service on Jan. 10, 1791, with whale oil throwing off a steady white light.

Then in 1812 a contractor named Winslow Lewis looked at the lighthouse and determined the top 20 feet were very poorly constructed. He suggested taking it off an putting in a new light. Lewis got the job in 1813 and designed a new lamp with reflectors and lamps. He sheared off 25 feet off the top.

In 1864, the wreck of the Liverpool cost the lives of 40 immigrants. An investigation found the lighthouse was too short. It was raised again by 20 feet and a new Fresnel lens installed. Then in 1883, the Lighthouse Board decided to remove the top 20 feet because it had deteriorated. Two years later, the board decided to raise it again.

Today it stands 80 feet above ground and 101 feet above sea level.

2. Keepers had to lock the doors to keep out nosy tourists.

In the 1950s, a woman barged in to the keeper’s house, sat down and demanded dinner because he was a government employee and she was entitled.

In the 1960s, the keeper’s wife forgot to lock the doors and took a bath. Tourists with cameras walked in on her in the bathroom.

Joshua Freeman, keeper from 1820-1840, kept a supply of liquor that he’d sell to tourists for three cents a glass. He kept a special bottle on a high shelf for visiting clergy — the “priest’s bottle.” (He also sat in his favorite chair with a coiled rope at his feet in case anyone needed a rescue.)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who grew up in Portland, visited the lighthouse often. He would sit on his favorite rock and look out to sea, or chat with the lighthouse keeper. He wrote a poem, probably inspired by those visits:

The rocky ledge runs far out into the sea
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

About a million people a year now visit the lighthouse.

3. Portland Head Light inspired a great American painting.

Lighthouse and Buildings, Portland Head, Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Critics consider his painting of Portland Head Light a masterpiece. It was even more than that — the inspiration for many, many more lighthouse paintings. “[I]t was Hopper who made of the lighthouse a representative and enduring American image,” wrote Carl Little.

Hopper painted the lighthouse in 1927 while on a visit to Maine. He painted a number of other lighthouses, including Two Lights nearby. He may have seen something of himself in the lighthouses. Hopper stood 6’5”, spoke little and didn’t and stood apart from the abstract painters of his day.

4.It didn’t prevent the wreck of the Annie Maguire, but it should have.

Of all the shipwrecks in Casco Bay, the tale of the three-masted bark Annie Maguire has the longest legs.

She wrecked just 150 yards from Portland Light on Christmas Eve, 1886, in air clear enough for the crew to see the light. Some speculate a brief snow squall caused them to misjudge the location of Portland Head Light. The crew, the captain and his wife — 18 in all — made it onto the ledge. The keeper, Joshua Strout, and his family brought them ashore by extending a ladder from the ledge. The Strouts brought them inside, made them take off their wet clothes, wrapped them in blankets and fed them.

The keeper’s son recalled that his mother had killed eight chickens for a huge Christmas dinner. She fed the crew with it. Recalled Strout’s son, “I only got one plate full. But we should worry. A feller doesn’t get wrecked often and when it happens where he can eat after starving for weeks, you can’t blame him for passing his plate until it is all gone.”

On board, the crew had been eating nothing but salt beef and macaroni with lime juice. Onshore, they stayed for three days and salvaged two cases of Scotch. Then they beat up the cook.

The vessel’s creditors only got $177 for the remains of the wreck. The sheriff searched for valuables in the ship’s sea chest but found nothing. Years later it turned out the captain’s wife had taken valuable papers and cash from the chest and sneaked them off the ship in a hatbox.

5. Four generations of one family worked at Portland Head Light.

For more than a century, at least one member of the Strout family had a job at the lighthouse.

Jane Dyer worked as a housekeeper for Joshua Freeman in the 1820s. She married Daniel Strout, and they had six children. They named their oldest Joshua Freeman Strout after the old keeper.

Joshua went to sea at age 11 and rose to captain. However, he fell from a masthead and suffered such severe industries he had to give up life at sea. He took the job as keeper of Portland Head Light in 1869. He then retired in 1904 after 35 years on the job.

His wife, Mary, worked as assistant keeper until their son, Joseph, took over in 1877. Joseph, known as Cap’n Joe, kept a parrot named Billy. When bad weather approached, Billy would squawk, “Joe, let’s start the horn. It’s foggy!”
Joseph succeeded his father as keeper in 1904, serving until 1928.

Joshua’s son John also served as assistant lighthouse keeper at several New England lighthouses. On one birthday, he painted an inscription to commemorate the wreck of the Annie C. Maguire. He chiseled away part of the rock to make a flat surface. He painted “In Memory of the Ship Annie C. Maguire, Wrecked on this Point Christmas Eve, 1886.” Then he put a cross on top of the rock. People have renewed the inscription over the years, shortening it to “Annie C Maguire, Shipwrecked Here, Christmas Eve 1886.”

https://www.southportland.org/online-services/learn-about/south-portland-historical-society/2013-articles/2015-articles/january-2015/

6. Keeping Portland Head Light was not a job for the faint-hearted

Old gun battery at Fort Williams

A hurricane almost killed Joshua Strout in 1869 when it knocked the fog bell from its base. In 1875, a storm knocked out the foghorn and extinguished the light. Storm-driven waves in 1975 and 1977 also snuffed out the light.

In 1872, the U.S. Army established a gun battery nearby, which grew into Fort Williams in 1899. The military usually notified the lighthouse keeper when it planned artillery practice, because shells would whiz by the keeper’s house and tower. The keeper’s wife would pack up the dishware, take pictures off the wall and remove anything on a table or bureau surface. The big guns blew out windows and tore off sections of roof and siding.

Thayer Sterling served as the last keeper from 1944-1946 until the U.S. Coast Guard took over. He lived there with his wife, Martha, and dog, Chang. One day during a storm, Martha sat knitting in her chair next to the window when Chang would not stop growling. She got up and moved away from the noise. Moments later a giant wave crashed through the window and threw shattered glass onto her chair.

7. 300 people can go into the light tower on just one day a year.

The public cannot go into the light tower except on one day, Maine Open Lighthouse Day in September. About 300 tickets are made available on a first-come-first serve basis the day of the event.

The museum and gift store, however, open from 10 am to 2 pm weekdays and 10 am to 4 pm weekends from Memorial Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Admissions costs $2 for adults, $1 for children (6-18) and free for younger children.

Portland Head Light is actually in the town of Cape Elizabeth, by the way. It’s inside 90-acre Fort Williams Park, where visitors can hike along cliffs, explore the old fort or picnic on the grounds.

Images: Annie C. Maguire graffiti By Danazar – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75498874. Aerial view Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Aerial view of Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth, one of the most-photographed places in Maine. United States Maine Cape Elizabeth, 2017. -10-18. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017883253/. Fort Williams By RobDuch – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53326291. Portland Head Light black and white, Detroit Publishing Co., Copyright Claimant, and Publisher Detroit Publishing Co. Portland Head Light. United States Portland Maine, ca. 1902. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016799598/. Final Portland Head Light photo By Jubileejourney – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21849420.

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Seven Fun Facts About New England’s Stone Walls

New England stone walls are as distinctive a feature of the landscape as bayous in Louisiana or redwoods in California. Hundreds of thousands of miles of them criss-cross the region like so much grillwork.

They marked boundaries, protected crops from livestock and inspired poems about mending them. Who doesn’t know the opening line to Robert Frost’s Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

And the last line:

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

The Robert Frost Homestead, in Derry, N.H.

Here are some more facts about the iconic New England land form.

1. Narragansetts built stone walls in Rhode Island.

The early colonists hired Narragansett people to build them before King Philip’s War. After the war, the colonists just enslaved them and forced them to do it.

Colonist Daniel Gookin wrote two books about New England’s native people in the 17^th century. Of the Narragansetts, he wrote,: “they are an active, laborious, and ingenious people; which is demonstrated in their labours they do for the English; of whom more are employed, especially in making stone fences, and many other hard labours, than of any other Indian people or neighbours.

They had a long history of building with stone, having created structures in Rhode Island that mystify people today. The Queen’s Fort in Exeter, for example, perhaps sheltered King Philip during the war named after him, Or maybe it was built for the Narragansett queen Quaiapen.

A stone wall near the Queen’s Fort at Exeter

Tarzan Brown, the legendary Narragansett Boston Marathon winner, worked as a stone mason.

2. New England’s stone walls could reach to the moon.

A mining engineer named Oliver Bowles in 1939 figured there are about 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England. That’s twice as long as the U.S. coastline – including Alaska and Hawaii.

Eastern Connecticut landscape showing stone fences near Baltic.

The densest concentration of New England stone walls goes along the Connecticut coast to Portland, Maine, and then inland about 100 miles.

3. Stamford, CT, crushed stone walls for roads.

Streets in Stamford, Conn., are made of old stone walls. Road crews crushed old stone walls to make them into roads. The city bought a rock crusher in 1909 for $2,011 to save money on road building.

The Guide to Nature magazine explained the rationale in 1914.

Everywhere in New England there are plenty of stone walls but in many places there are not good roads. So, as the old-fashioned saying goes, why not let one hand wash the other; that is grind up a few of the stone walls and improve some of the roads? Far be it from us to advocate banishing all the picturesque stone walls, but there is no danger of doing that, for a few stone walls go a long way in making enduring roads.

At the time of the article, Stamford road crews had built eight miles of roads. The Stamford Historical Society reports the following streets were made from stonewalls: Hope Street, from North Springdale to the Glenbrook trolley junction, and Crescent Street and Courtland Avenue, Glenbrook, Newfield Avenue, Belltown Road and Oaklawn Road.

Workers reducing stone walls to roadbeds in Stamford

4. The Crude Wall in Concord started Transcendentalism.

According to Robert Thorson, the world’s leading expert on New England stone walls, says the Crude Wall at the Old Manse in Concord, Mass., ranks as the most important.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and his forbears – Puritan ministers and their families – lived in the old house for centuries. William Emerson watched the Battle of Concord from his field, the rest of his family from an upstairs window. When the British retreated, patriots shot at them from behind the wall. A stone marks the spot where the regulars perished.

Stone wall in front of the Old Manse.

His grandson, the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, also lived there until he rented it to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his bride in 1842. Thorson maintains the wall is important because it inspired Emerson – Ralph Waldo – to write the essay Nature in 1836. Nature set the stage for the Transcendentalist movement that followed.

5. The Cliff Walk in Newport RI has the tallest stone wall.

The Cliff Walk is a 3.5-mile public right-of-way over private lands — including properties developed by Gilded Age millionaires. It offers stunning views of Narragansett Bay, which some Gilded Age millionaires wanted to keep for themselves.

Aerial view of the Cliff Walk in Newport, R.I.

King Charles II granted “Fishermen’s Rights” in a colonial charter. The Rhode Island Constitution also give the public “rights of fishery and the privileges of the shore to which they have heertofore been entitled.”

Originally it was just a path along the shore. Then people started rearranging stones, while some owners made their walls neater. Some even made tunnels and bridges along the path.

Serious work on the Cliff Walk started around 1880, when owners of the adjoining estates improved the path piecemeal.

Klaus von Bulow

The Depression put a stop to further development of the Cliff Walk. Then hurricanes in 1938 and 1954 damaged the wall. In 1975, a committee headed by socialite Klaus von Bulow and Mayor Humphrey Donnelly got money from the city, state and federal governments to restore the walk. A few years later von Bulow was convicted of murdering his wife, but exonerated on appeal.

In 2022, a 20-foot section of the wall collapsed after battering from winter storms.

6. The Golden Age of stone wall building was 1775-1825.

Thorson explains that wall building didn’t really get going until the Revolutionary Era. He cites a couple of reasons. First, the earliest settlers had farmed communally, sharing pasturelands (think Boston Common). That meant they had no need for boundary markers. Secondly, the earth hadn’t thrown up that many stones until then.

Stone walls on Haley’s farm in Connecticut.

Stones move to the surface because the earth freezes and then the soil swells upward. We call those bumps (often in the road) frost heaves. Forested land doesn’t freeze as deeply as meadows or pastures.

New England farmers began to clearcut a lot of land. They needed fields for their crops and livestock, and they needed wood to build their houses and barns. Then they had to heat them. It was, after all, the Little Ice Age.

Once the land was clearcut, frost heaves pushed up rocks through the soil. So the farmers, maybe with the help of a couple of oxen, hauled the stones from the field and dumped them in piles on the edge of their pastures and fields. Thorson calls them linear landfills. Later, some of them went back and relaid them more carefully.

7. The first recorded stone wall in New England was built in 1607.

The Popham colonists in Maine. The Popham Colony was a year-long effort to establish a British colony in Phippsburg at the mouth of the Kennebec River. It began in the summer of 1607 and ended a year later in 1608. For one harsh winter a group of English settlers tried to stick it out at a small fort they built.

Map of the fort at the Popham Colony. There were definitely some stone walls there.

They did manage to build the first ocean-going vessel in North America, the pinnace Virginia. The colonists also celebrated the first European-style Thanksgiving in America. And they built the first known stone wall. A visitor to the old site in the 1620s reported “Rootes and Garden Hearbes and some old Walls” left behind.

Images: Frost homestead By Sedrik Spaulding – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95657256. Cliff Walk steps by Ben + Sam via Flickr, CC By-SA 2.0. Exeter, R.I. stone wall By JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49496088. Claus von Bulow By Open Media Ltd. – Open Media Ltd., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75646153. Eastern Connecticut stone fences, Stone fences, Delano: Delano, Jack, photographer. Eastern Connecticut landscape showing stone fences. Near Baltic, Connecticut. United States Baltic Connecticut New London County, 1940. Nov. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017792626/. Aerial view of Cliff Walk Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Aerial view of Newport on Aquidneck Island in the U.S. state of Rhode Island, with a focus on some of the elegant properties along the famous Cliff Walk. United States Newport Newport County Rhode Island, 2018. -07-29. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2018700542/. Haley’s farm stone wall Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Stone walls on Haley’s farm in Connecticut. United States Connecticut, 2011. September. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012630478/.

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How To Be a Swamp Yankee

A swamp Yankee is born, not made. Those who aspire to swamperdom may tell you differently, but they’re wrong.

Though definitions of “swamp Yankee” vary from “trailer trash” to “salt of the earth,” they agree on one thing: the swamp Yankee goes back generations to the same part of New England. Mark Patinkin , in his Providence Journal column, defined them as “earthy, proud New Englanders who date to the Revolution, but haven’t made or spent much money since.”

Thomas Barnes, a New Bedford raccoon hunter, illustrated a 1925 article explaining swamp Yankees.

The pushback he got from that column prompted him to write another. In it, he concluded, “I think I’m more confused than when I started.”

We understand.

“The outside world has never understood the Swamp Yankees,” wrote one denizen of Hope Valley, R.I., a hotbed of swamperdom. “We act dumb to keep our privacy.”

Swampers

In 1963, Ruth Schell wrote a scholarly essay on swamp Yankees. She concluded the typical swamper is “…a rural dweller—one of stubborn, old-fashioned, frugal, English-speaking Yankee stock, of good standing in the rural community, but usually possessing minimal formal education and little desire to augment it. “

A more disdainful definition comes from the urban dictionary. “Someone whose family has been in America for generations (several of which may actually reside together) but has never gotten off the ground, couch, or smack long enough to build a functional family or become a redeeming member of society.”

An even more scornful description came from the late Walter Stone, longtime Rhode Island state police chief who retired in 1990: “illiterate woodchopper.” (T-shirts were subsequently made with the slogan, “I’m an illitrit woodchoppah.”)

Otis Dyer wrote a book, Swamp Yankee, in which he explains where “woodchoppah” comes from.

Edward Buzzell, [swamp] Yankee dairy farmer from Slocum R.I.

Swamp Yankees were usually small dairy farmers who supplemented their income by spending their winters in the swamps, cutting firewood to sell in Providence and Pawtucket and saw-logs to local sawmills.

They also worked as fishermen and shop owners, wrote William Sisson in Soundings:

They were tough, smart, laconic fishermen, farmers and merchants who grew up in Rhode Island and Connecticut and could wrest a living from land, sea and small shops. Best as I can tell, they were an independent, hard-working lot who spoke what was on their minds and didn’t suffer fools.

Pete MacPhee, who designs rock ‘n roll posters, motorcycle ads and beer cans, calls himself Swamp Yankee. “A Swamp Yankee to me is a blue-collar guy who marches to the beat of his own drum,” he told The Newport Daily News. (MacPhee once handled the props for a heavy metal band called the Amish Alcoholics – “Spinal Tap but worse,” MacPhee said.)

Where the Swamp Yankee Dwells

Grayson Hugh, an R&B singer-songwriter, wrote a song called Swamp Yankee.

(I ain’t no punk (ain’t no punk)
just a little bit stanky (a little bit stanky)
I got the funk (I got the funk)
I’m a swamp yankee (swamp yankee))

Hugh describes himself as “from the western hills of Connecticut,” but he’s a first-generation American born in Hartford, so no, he ain’t no swamp Yankee.

In a 2003 article in New England Quarterly about President Calvin Coolidge, Kerry W. Buckley called Calvin Coolidge a swamp Yankee because he came from an old family “no longer prominent or monied.”

Calvin Coolidge Swamper wannabe?

Another former Massachusetts governor, William Weld, was also described in a newspaper as a swamp Yankee. Perhaps he earned the designation because he liked to brag about his $8 drugstore glasses. But Weld came from Long Island and Coolidge from Vermont, so no, they ain’t no swamp Yankees, either.

The real swamp Yankee comes from the watery lowlands of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island or eastern Connecticut.

Some argue Massachusetts has only one swamp Yankee county: Bristol. Others make a case for southern Worcester County, too. As for Cape Cod: absolutely not.

Connecticut has four swamp Yankee counties: Middlesex, New London, Tolland and Windham. Four of Rhode Island’s five counties are swamper country: Bristol, Kent, Providence and Washington.

Proud swamper Barry Browning in 2000 argued swamp Yankeeland is smaller than that. According to him, swamp Yankees come from South County – which exists only in the minds of Rhode Islanders. It’s a mythical county along the southern coast of the state.

According to Browning, swampers come from rural parts of South County, such as Perryville, Hope Valley, Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter, Alton, Woodville, “Tuckertown” and Matunuck. Driving south from Providence, swamp Yankee country it starts past the old Bostich-Textron Plant on Route 2 in East Greenwich.

How the Swamp Yankee Got Started

The origins of the term are also disputed. Some say the name started in Thompson, Conn., during the American Revolution. Townsfolk who feared a British attack hid overnight in the swamp.

According to others, swamp Yankee refers to the descendants of those who fought in the Great Swamp Fight during King Philip’s War. (Not really something to be proud of.)

Engraving depicting the colonial assault on the Narragansetts’ fort in the Great Swamp Massacre in December 1675

Still others say they arrived in the Great Puritan Migration, but usually as indentured servants or underpaid crew on the ships. Further, the story goes, the servants got paid at the end of their indenture with swampland.

To add to the confusion, the New York Times reported in 1935 that swampers were Yankees driven out of mill towns by immigrants ( “Out of the Whirlwind,” The New York Times, May 26, 1935 .)

Hunh?

Browning explained in 2006 why the Times might have gotten confused. “The ”great” cotton mill families of South County’s nineteenth century….are inextricably entwined with many old-line South County families who would now consider themselves “Swampers,” he wrote.

Back in the day, he wrote, one would have correctly described swampers as uneducated and poor. “However today I know several who would call themselves “Swampers” who have attended Brown, Wellesley Smith, and other Ivy League colleges,” he wrote. Others, he wrote, serve on bank boards and own over 1,000 acres of land. The ownership and coveting of land is an inherited trait, he noted.

“Swampers” seem to take pride in accumulating ancestral objects, and they practice frugality. They paint the bathroom floor, though they can easily afford ceramic tile.

How To Spot a Swamp Yankee

One way to tell a swamp Yankee is to look in the yard. There’s a big woodpile and a clothesline in it because swampers heat their houses with woodstoves and dry their clothes in the fresh (often winter) air. You might spot an accumulation of shells, evidence of all the quahogs they’ve eaten. You might also spot an accumulation of old vehicles.

Montville, Conn., in New London County — swamper territory.

The house might be unpainted, but flowers will bloom in the yard. A swamp Yankee might also leave an old washing machine in the dooryard for decades, or recycle a bathtub in the pasture to water the cows. A swamp Yankee might still patch his roof with corrugated tin.

Swamp Yankees wouldn’t buy new clothes because that would be showy and embarrass the family. They drive old pickup trucks or perhaps a Buick Skylark with a rotting muffler.

Eating and Talking

You used to be able to find swamp Yankees at the Swamp Yankee Days festival in Ashaway, R.I. It featured a tractor parade, baked bean-eating competition, a Mr. and Mrs. Swamp Yankee contest and cow chip bingo. To play, you put some well-fed cows out on some grass and lay bets on who will produce a cow chip first.

The Country Store by Otto Land

Ashaway’s annual fest has ended, but you might find a swamp Yankee in an old country store telling lies to another swamp Yankee. Those are disappearing, too.

But if you do happen to find such an emporium, you’ll know if the patrons are swamp Yankees by the way they talk. There’s no “r” at the end of a syllable, and “i” is pronounced “oi.” They can also improvise with added syllables.

Catherine Presley , who grew up in Hope Valley, tried to explain it:

Theyugh in Hope Valley. Ole Ben James would saye to mah brother’s “Whaccha saye bouy!”

And

We wood goeh dowun to the main street theyugh, to the squayugh and get summuh that theyugh sodey wahtah.

Swampers eat as their ancestors did. Supper might consist of johnnycakes, cube steak and codfish cakes. Or fried eels, baked beans(home made) and johnnycakes. An upcountry swamp Yankee could dine off slab bacon, boiled potatoes and johnnycakes, while a coastal swamper might feast on smoked buckies (river herring), bluefish and johnnycakes.

So, whaccha saye to theyat?

Images: Mattity Swamp By Swampyank – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105080393. Edward Buzzell Delano, Jack, photographer. Mr. Edward Buzzell, Yankee dairy farmer of Slocum, Rhode Island. United States Rhode Island Washington County Slocum, 1940. Dec. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017793117/. Country Store: Lang, Otto, -1940, Artist. The Country Store. , ca. 1890. [Between and 1910] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2009616966/. Montville: Montville: Delano, Jack, photographer. Untitled photo, possibly related to: Houses and small farms in the Montville, Connecticut area. United States Connecticut Montville, 1940. [Nov] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017748612/.

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The Maine Capitol Riot of 1880

On Jan. 6, 1880, Joshua Chamberlain stepped onto a volcano about to erupt in Augusta, Maine. He had agreed to try to quell the Maine Capitol Riot, during which a hundred armed and angry men inside the Statehouse faced off against against an equally armed and angry mob outside. Each side believed the other had stolen the election for governor.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

Amid the chaos, the governor resigned leaving Maine with no government. Then the two factions formed their own governments even as they pointed guns at each other. Chamberlain took charge as acting governor and commander-in-chief of the state. He managed to keep the peace over 12 days of turmoil.

Chamberlain survived attempts to kidnap him and arrest him, and he faced down would-be assassins. At the end of 12 days, he turned the government over peacefully to the men the courts declared victorious. Throughout the ordeal, Chamberlain stayed neutral, but he paid a political price for it..

Over a century later a similar scene would play out in the U.S. Capitol, though no Joshua Chamberlain appeared to prevent looting, destruction and death.

The Election of 1878

It all started a year earlier, when Democrat Alonzo Garcelon, a wealthy doctor, won election as governor with 15 percent of the vote.

Alonzo Garcelon

Republicans had dominated state politics for 20 years. Chamberlain himself had served three one-year terms as governor. But hard times for farmers and millworkers had spawned populist anger. The Greenback money channeled that discontent into opposition to deflation and monopolies. A Greenback newspaper attacked Republican indifference to the common man’s distress in a poem:

Little boys true come blow your horn,
Banks eat the meadow, the cows, and the corn.
Where are the big boys that look after the sheep ?
Down in the Capitol, fast asleep.

In Maine, the Democrats aligned with a new, third party, the Greenbacks, to form the Fusionist Party. During the 1878 election, Garcelon, a Democrat, garnered only 15 percent of the vote. But neither the Republican nor the Greenback candidate won more than 50 percent of the ballots. Maine law then required the governor to get more than half the popular vote. If no one did, the Legislature decided. The Republicans held their noses and voted for Garcelon rather than the Greenback candidate.

It was a decision they probably regretted.

Cause of the Maine Capitol Riot

Maine elected its governor every year back then. The next year, 1879, Garcelon ran again and lost again. But for a second year in a row, no one had a majority. That meant the Legislature would elect the new governor. And this time, it would likely be the Republican, Daniel Davis, because the GOP had narrowly won control of the Legislature.

The Maine Capitol in the 1850s

But first Garcelon and his executive council — dominated by Greenbacks and Democrats — had to collect the ballot returns and certify the results. And so began the chicanery.

Inside the council chamber, Garcelon and the executive council started throwing out Republican votes for legislators. They disqualified votes if names were misspelled, missed a middle initial or a “junior.” Some GOP towns had results invalidated because only three town officials signed the returns instead of four. Or they threw out a votes if the town’s name wasn’t written in the right place.

Garcelon and the executive council were supposed to announce the winners of the election in November. But they said it would be delayed until December. The counting and disqualifying went on for days behind closed doors inside the Statehouse.

On Dec. 2, 1879, senators and representatives went to the Capitol expecting to examine the voting returns. One after another, however, they failed even to get into the Council chamber.

Fusion Victory

Finally, the Fusionist executive council managed to void the elections of 12 Republicans. That gave the Greenbacks the majority in the Senate and the Democrats a majority in the House. As a result, there was no way the Legislature would elect a Republican governor — the intended outcome of the vote-counting.

To justify their actions, the Fusionists claimed Republicans had rigged the election, as they had for years. The governor and council reported that “numerous affidavits were sent in showing actual cases of bribery. and fraud beyond question….the Republican majorities] were the result of corrupt and improper means used at the poles [sic].“

The Fusionists were probably right. The voting results in certain districts didn’t make sense, with Fusionists winning at the top of the ticket but Republicans winning the lower-ballot races. Further, the Republicans adamantly opposed the secret ballot, suggesting that charges of bribery and intimidation had a basis in reality.

Republicans, stunned at the audacity of stealing 12 legislative seats, demanded the state supreme court settle the issue. But Garcelon refused.

In January, the Fusionists came to the Statehouse and swore in their own men to the Legislature. The new lawmakers then elected their candidate, Joseph Smith, as governor.

Garcelon had two cartloads of guns and ammunition carted to the Capitol from the Bangor Armory. He stationed a hundred men with guns inside the building. Some had served time in prison. Garcelon had wanted to prevent trouble. His actions had the opposite effect.

James G. Blaine

The courts might have settled the matter peacefully but for U.S. Sen. James G. Blaine, head of Maine’s Republican Party and a future candidate for president of the United States. Blaine’s supporters called him “the plumed knight” and “the magnetic man” because of his eloquence. Detractors called him the Continental Liar from the State of Maine and said he wallowed in spoils like a rhinoceros in an African pool.

Puck cartoon showing Blaine supporters trying to wipe off the scandals with which he’s tattooed

Blaine rushed back from Washington, D.C., to his 28-room white clapboard mansion across the street from the Maine Statehouse. From there he plotted the Republican counterattack.

He gathered his supporters at his house, where they talked about leading armed Republicans to the Statehouse to eject the Fusionists. The Republican lawmakers who claimed victory caucused and named their candidate, Daniel Davis, as governor.

Blaine also orchestrated “indignation meetings” in every city in Maine to rouse the rabble. He himself spoke to one indignation meeting in Augusta. He declared, “A great popular uprising will avert these evils and the people are already moving…. A day of reckoning is at hand.”

Blaine House, now Maine’s governor’s mansion

Meanwhile, Democrats and Greenbacks drafted their own makeshift army at an Augusta hotel.

Garcelon realized he had probably gotten in above his head. So he called on Joshua Chamberlain to take over the government as an interim governor and military commander. Chamberlain already served as honorary commander of the state militia.

Garcelon advised Chamberlain to call up the militia. Chamberlain refused, believing a military presence would only inflame the mobs on both sides. He alerted militia in neighboring cities to be on the alert, but to stay put for now.

Twelve Days

January 6 became known as the first of 12 days that shook Maine. The state had no civilian governments, or it had two. The streets swarmed with angry, armed men. Tense groups of men plotted their next move at three different command posts: the Capitol, a downtown hotel and the home of James G. Blaine. Writers from national newspapers came to Augusta to report on the Maine Capitol riot. More armed men patrolled the Statehouse halls a d stood guard over offices, especially the rooms that held the disputed election returns.

Chamberlain persuaded Garcelon to send his goons home and to return his arsenal to Bangor.Then he met with Augusta mayor Charles Nash, who agreed to replace Garcelon’s men with city police. Nash also agreed to order the police to patrol the little city and put down any violence. Finally, Chamberlain convinced Garcelon to submit the election results to the court.

Until the gun-wielding mobs stood down, the situation reminded Chamberlain of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg. During that fight, Chamberlain’s badly outnumbered men ran out of ammunition while protecting the hill and the Army of the Potomac. In one of the most famous maneuvers in the history of warfare, his men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. They shocked the Confederates, capturing 100 enemy soldiers, and saved the Union forces.

Chamberlain is credited with a similar act of bravery at the Maine Capitol. It happened on the steps outside or at the top of the stairs inside or maybe in the rotunda.

Both sides harangued him relentlessly to side with them. Chamberlain stayed steadfastly neutral. The result: Plots were hatched to kill and kidnap him. Mayor Nash gave him a bodyguard, and he slept in a different bed every night.

As the stories go, either an angry mob burst into the Statehouse, or an aide told him of an assassination plot. Chamberlain then stood up before the crowd.

Climax of the Maine Capitol Riot

‘Men,’ he called out, ‘you wished to kill me, I hear. Killing is no new thing to me. I have offered myself to be killed many times, when I no more deserved it than I do now…. It is for me to see that the laws of this state are put into effect, without fraud, without force, but with calm thought and sincere purpose. I am here for that, and I shall do it. If anybody wants to kill me for it, here I am. Let him kill!’

He then tore open his coat, daring anyone to shoot. A Civil War veteran shouted out, “”By God, old General, the first man that dares to lay a hand on you, I’ll kill him on the spot!”

All Over

As the days wore on, passions cooled. Finally, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Fusionists had wrongly disqualified votes.

[The judicial decision said election returns “are not required to be written with the scrupulous nicety of a writing master. . . . It is enough if the returns can be understood, and if understood, full effect should be given to their natural and obvious meaning.”

Daniel Davis

The court then reinstated the Republican lawmakers. They elected their candidate, Daniel Davis, governor. Garcelon went home. So did Chamberlain went home, after turning over militia command to him. The crisis had ended.

Or had it?

On Jan.19, 1880, a group of Fusionists tried to enter the Capitol. When they weren’t allowed in, they fell back and talked about seizing the building by force.

Gov. Davis called up the militia and placed a Gatling gun on the statehouse lawn. The Fusionists did not return. Instead, the legitimately elected Fusionists were sworn into office. With that, the crisis finally did end.

James G. Blaine ran for president against Grover Cleveland in 1884 and lost.

With thanks to The Greenback Party in Maine, 1876-1884 by Everett L. Meader and Joshua Chamberlain The Soldier And The Man by Edward G. Longacre.

Images: Blaine House By Albany NY at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7009469. Color postcard of Maine Statehouse By Boston Public Library – https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/2381302533/in/photolist-4CqLzM-4CqMhk-4Cv4v3-4Cv4p3-4CqLNa-4CqNwv-4CqNhe-4CqNpg-EUBSC-4CqFrT-4Cv3Xq-4CqM2t-4CqMPZ-4Cv549-4CqMpc-4Cv4Cd-EZu29-4CqFke-4CqM9v-4CqLVz-4Cv44m-o3LaL-EwKgq-nJSEs-hpLRo-4CqMHt-4CqNKB-o3L5o-EH3QT-EUC3b-hpLRp-EZvsw-EZvvk-EZvHV-EZvaK-dWPBQW-E9S3L-qhLhx-phUiY-phUfk-ptAqcp-E5QR6-E5R2w-nDQq3-qRiLxp-nDBYz-nDBK2-EqdJj-EqbKi-E5RU4/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43035200.

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