Today’s post is less an explication of a piece of Capitol Hill history and more a set of questions. These questions are raised by a series of short articles/advertisements that ran in D.C. newspapers in August, 1861, so it seems unlikely that they will ever be answered. Nonetheless, I think they’re worth asking – for reasons that I hope will become clear.
On the morning of August 8, 1861, a small ad appeared on the third page of that day’s Daily National Republican. Entitled “Notice” it stated that there was a new company was being formed, a company that was to join in the fight against the secessionists. There was some urgency to this announcement, as the company was to be sworn in by August 21, giving them less than two weeks to rustle up the volunteers. The same notice, with almost exactly the same wording, appeared later that day in the Evening Star.
So far, this was fairly straightforward: Since early that year, the need for new soldiers was urgent and continuous. Much stranger was that this was not one of the D.C. regiments asking for recruits, but rather one from Maryland; the 3rd Regiment Maryland Volunteers, to be exact.
According the History and Roster of Maryland Volunteers, the 3rd Regiment had been organized on June 18 of that year, and had begun signing up troops in August. Over the following months, they would manage to raise four full companies, with another partially filled. Again, according to the History, these men would all come from Baltimore. The following year, another partial regiment from Williamsport, just south of Hagerstown and hard against the Virginia (today West Virginia) border would be added, then, finally, parts of two other Baltimore regiments.
Now finally complete, the regiment would set out, slogging through some of the heaviest fighting of the Civil War over the next three years: Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Petersburg. In all, by the end of the war, the regiment would have marched 1,771 miles and moved, by road, train, and boat, a total of 4,963 miles. Sadly, the history makes no mention whatsoever of any D.C. residents who may have been part of this.
Here is the ad from the Daily National Republican on August 21st. Clearly Berkley was not making his numbers, this being the day everyone was to have been sworn in. What the blob at the upper right corner is to portray is anyone’s guess. (LOC)
The second question raised by the original advertisement is this: The location that the troops were to come to join up was the “old hospital” which was said to be at the corner of 10th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, near the Navy Yard. This is, of course, exactly where our ‘old hospital’ is – the Naval Hospital. However, in 1861, this was not even in the planning stages yet. The most complete database of locations in D.C. during the Civil War locates a “Baptist Church Hospital” on E Street, just below Pennsylvania Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets – but no other source knows anything about this particular establishment. Furthermore, there is no way that a Civil War hospital would have been ‘old’ by this time. And there were no hospitals anywhere nearby – mainly because this was the edge of the city at the time. Nonetheless, this must have been a relatively substantial edifice, as the location is listed as a ‘hall.’
Now, to make this even more unclear, the Captain in charge of finding volunteers was a Benjamin Berkley, who was a butcher who lived in Washington, and who had previously signed up for three months with a D.C. militia, entering as a third sergeant, and ending his service as a sergeant.
So, what was it that Captain Benjamin Berkley was up to? Why was he signing up soldiers for a non-local regiment? And where was he expecting people to show up to?
Sadly, I do not think that we will ever have answers to either of these questions. If you have any good ideas, send them my way!