Sergeant Edwin Graves
37th Massachusetts Regiment
Monday, January 28, 2013
Edwin Graves and the Formation of Company F,
37th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment
This month's 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation prompts me to write a little about how Edwin Graves finally came to enlist and go off to fight in the Civil War.
The immediate reason for Edwin's enlistment was the hasty, near-panicky response of the Northern states to the failure of General George McClellan's Peninsular campaign in Virginia, and his withdrawal from Virginia by July 1, 1862. Any hope that the war would come to a speedy conclusion was now gone. By July 2 President Lincoln called on the North to raise 300,000 new troops. Hatfield had its quota to fill, and it filled the quota with calls to the anti-slavery sentiments of Hatfield citizens.
The troops raised in Hampshire County would become part of the new 34th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, shortly thereafter to be renamed the 37th Massachusetts Regiment. At the Amherst College commencement on July 6th (they had a late commencement back then) graduating senior Mason Tyler Whiting approached Massachusetts Governor John Albion Andrew (who was present as a graduation speaker) and asked for Andrew's authorization to raise a company within the new regiment. Governor Andrew quickly agreed, and young Whiting quickly set out to raise troops for the company.
I have not yet been able to firmly establish how Edwin Graves and a number of Hatfield men came to form the nucleus of Whiting's company. However, Whiting was the son of longtime Amherst College professor William Seymour Tyler, and it is likely that Edwin had been a student of Professor Tyler during the three years in the early 1840s when Edwin was an Amherst student. (Edwin dropped out of Amherst in 1844, perhaps one semester shy of graduation, in order to marry Ursula Billings Moody of South Amherst and go off to what I suspect was a decade-long career as a railroad surveyor: more about that another time !). It is possible that Mason Tyler looked Edwin Graves up when he went over to Hatfield and recruited Edwin as both a soldier and as a recruiter.
On July 14 Hatfield called a town meeting to vote support for raising the town's quota for the new regiment, a quota of 16 men. The Hatfield history written by Wells and Wells reports that "spirited addresses were made by Rev. J.M. Greene, Rev. J.L. Morton, George W. Hubbard and
Edwin Graves. "
Four nights later, on Friday, July 18 a second town meeting was held to enlist the volunteers. According to the Hampshire Gazette of July 22, "after a few preliminary remarks by the chairman (George W. Hubbard), a committee of two was appointed to extend an invitation to Rev. Mr. Greene to address the meeting. He being absent from town, Mr. James Crafts of Whately was called upon to address the people."
Crafts explained that he had not come expecting to speak but had come to "get a little inspiration to infuse into the hearts of his people" back in Whately. Crafts "spoke of his boyhood days, when his father used to cover up the coals in the old fire place when retiring to rest, and in the morning would call him to go to the neighbors to get some fire, and now the patriotism in his native town was dying out and he had come to Hatfield to procure some fire, some real live coals, to awaken his fellow citizens to a sense of their duty. "
The Reverend J.L. Morton followed Crafts with a speech to the crowd, and was followed by the late-arriving Reverend John M. Greene. Greene "came forward, filled to overflowing with patriotism, and offered his services as chaplain, and said he would shoulder a musket if necessary. Mr. Greene spoke for about an hour and was frequently applauded. He showed himself a patriot, a true American."
Then, "Mr. Edwin Graves was called for, and after making a few remarks presented a United States enlistment roll and amid the most deafening applause signed his name thereto. He then called upon others to follow his example, and before 12 o'clock the call was responded to by sixteen good men and true - the town's entire quota. "
In his sermon at the Congregational Church the following Sunday, the Reverend Greene directed himself to the new enlistees, preaching from the scriptural text "be strong and of good courage, and I will be with thee." The Gazette reported that "slavery was briefly but pointedly alluded to as being the prime cause of the rebellion, which has been undermining the very foundation of our government, suffering the best interests of the nation, and tending to destroy public institutions of learning, and to do away with civil liberty and freedom, and those who go to do battle for our country, right and liberty, should have in mind that their work is but partly finished unless this blighting curse of our nation is crushed and destroyed."
The Hatfield volunteers marched off to camp in Pittsfield on August first. According to Wells and Wells they marched off "singing, 'We are coming, Father Abraham, with three hundred thousand strong.'"
In Pittsfield Edwin Graves was made a sergeant in Mason Tyler's company, Company F of the new Massachusetts 37th. He became the orderly sergeant, in charge of much of the details of camp life. His Hatfield friend John Field became the company's flag bearer.
Back in Hatfield Edwin's sister Fanny was galvanized by the war and by Edwin's service. With the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in January (1863) she began a campaign to win appointment as a teacher of freed slaves in Union-held territory in the South. More on that shortly.....
