Book Description

Excerpt from War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: 1861 1865 When the Civil War began, early in April, 1861, by the Secessionists firing upon and capturing Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, S. C., the general though transient belief at the North was that in about sixty days the United States Government, with an army of about a hundred thousand men, could certainly crush the rebellion and restore order. Acting upon this popular assumption, President Lincoln on April 15th, 1861, called for Seventy-five Thousand ninety-day Volunteers, which force added to the then existing though badly scattered regular army of about Twenty-five Thousand men, made up the desired force of One Hundred Thousand. Preliminary skirmishes and unimportant engagements took place during the next few weeks, and on July 21, 1861, occurred the first serious battle of the war - that of Bull Run, or Manassas, in Virginia, near Washington, in which the Union Army was badly defeated. The whole country was aroused and alarmed. Realizing the desperate nature of the conflict thus entered upon, President Lincoln, under an act of Congress, then promptly called for three hundred thousand volunteers, for three years or "during the war." At that time Hon. Benjamin F. Wade was one of the two Ohio Senators in Congress, and Hon. John Hutchins, of Warren, Ohio, was the Representative in Congress from the District embracing Northeastern Ohio. Immediately following the battle of Bull Run these two men asked and received from the President authority to recruit and organize a regiment of cavalry from the counties of the Western Reserve, with headquarters at Cleveland. Under this authority the Second Ohio Volunteer Cavalry enlisted and organized, and their camp of rendezvous was named Camp Wade. No better material ever formed the rank and file of a volunteer regiment. Governor Denison appointed Charles W. Doubleday to be the first Colonel of the Regiment, as he had acquired some military experience while serving as a member of a filibustering expedition against Nicaraugua, and possessed energy and dignity. Lorain County furnished one company for the Second Cavalry, one hundred men. Most of these came from the southern part of the county, and mainly from the village of Wellington and vicinity. Between August 25th and September 9th, nine young men from Oberlin, mostly college students, enlisted in this so-called Wellington Company, designated as Company "H," and joined the regiment at Camp Wade as privates, none anticipating official position of any sort. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.