I really need to find out how may casualties were from Maine, and how may soldiers were sent out of Maine to help in the Civil War!! And, if you have any other facts about Maine and the civil war please post! I can not find any info online, and I need this for a history project!





Those Boys from Maine...
VOLUNTEERS
* These men from Maine averaged twenty years of age. They averaged five feet eight inches in height. Most of them were not married. Most claimed to be farmers. The majority of them never advanced beyond the rank of private.
* The State of Maine census of 1860 had 122,238 men between the age of 18 and 45. The state provided 70,107 men as Union soldiers or about 58.9% of the total available men. Maine provided one of the highest percentages of men of military age to serve in the Union Army of any state in the Union. Maine lost one out every five men it sent to the war. The anyalysis of deaths for Maine’s 49,635 three year enlistment troops is: Killed in combat 3,184 (6.4%); Died of disease 5,257 (10.6%) and all other deaths 957 (1.9%) which was a total of 9,398 (18.9%).
* Before 1862, the Union soldiers were volunteers. The system work like this: the Federal Government would call up a certain number of men from the states for services. The War Department would set the state’s quota based on its population. The state government would then assign each town a quota based on its population.
* The Federal Government would offer a $100 bounty to any enlistee. The bounty would be paid at the end of their term of service. The State of Maine and some of the Towns also would offer bounty to any men who would enlist. The opportunity to get as much as $300 at the end of service was more money then many of these men could hope to earn in a life time. The men not only got their bounty but also a private would earn $13 a month while in the service. The Civil War also provided many men or boys with a chance to start a new life.
THE DRAFT
* July 17. The Militia Law Act was passed by Congress. The Act defined the militia as all able bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45.
* There were three ways to avoid the draft. One was to go to Canada. The second was to find a substitute. The price of a substitute was usually less then $300. The third was to pay $300 to get your draft notice commuted for that particular draft only.
FYI:
Sites with Information about the Social, Military, and Medical History of the Civil War
Index of Civil War Information on the Internet (U. S. Civil War Center)
Cyndi' s List - U.S.-Civil War/War for Southern Independence
Internet Modern History Source Book
Shotgun's Home of the American Civil War
The American Civil War Homepage
Civil War Battle Summaries by Campaign
American Memory - Selected Civil War Photographs
Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System
Civil War Archive Regiment Index
Maine State Archives - Civil War
Maine Civil War Regimental Records
Maine Regiments in the Civil War
Maine Civil War Regimental Flags
Colored Troops in the Civil War
Abolition and Slavery (U. S. Civil War Center)
Civil War Women - Primary Sources on the Internet
American Women's History: A Research Guide - The Civil War Period
Women in the Civil War (U. S. Civil War Center)
Civil War Women - On-line Archival Collections, Duke University
Women and the Civil War, Inc.
Women in the War (by Lyn Sudlow)
United States Sanitary Commission Home
Dress Up: Interactive Description of 18th and 19th Century Clothing
Bands and Musicians of the Civil War
Music of the War Between the States
The Emergence of Modern Medicine in 19th Century America
Civil War Medicine Links (U. S. Civil War Center)
Civil War Medicine Links (Shotgun's)
National Museum of Civil War Medicine
Pvt/Lt Craig Young
3rd Maine, Company A
29th Georgia/7th Maine
"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us:
What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."
Here is some information
Here is some information about Maine's links to the Confederacy. This is a subject that is not impressed by many historians.
Maine was a very pro-Union state even compared to the standards of other Northern states. Maine had the largest percentage of its male population serving in the Union army than any other Union state.
However, Maine was also home to a number of soldiers who chose to fight for the South during the War for Southern Independence. There were also, as in most other Northern states, a share of citizens who supported the South's right to secede and were critical about Lincoln's invasion of the South.
A Bangor Maine newspaper,Union, wrote,
"The difficulties between the North and the South must be compromised, or the separation of the states shall be peaceable....here in Maine, not a Democrat will be found who will raise his arm against his brethern of the South. From one end of the state to the other let the cry of Democracy be, Compromise or Peaceable Separation."
Two generals who led troops in the Confederate army were born in Maine.
Brig.General Danville Ledbetter was born in Leeds Maine, Aug 26, 1811.
He graduated from West Point in 1836 and was a captain in the US army. During the War Between the States he became a Lt. Colonel of Alabama troops. In 1862 he became a Brig. General and Chief engineer for the Army of Tennessee between 1863 and 1864. He designed the defenses at Mobile, Alabama and the Confederate lines at Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. He died in Canada shortly after the war.
Major General Howard who first commanded Federal troops of the 3rd Maine regiment and later led a corps in the Army of the Potomac was also from Leeds Maine.
Brig. General Zebulon York was the only other native of Maine who became a general officer in the Confederate Army. He was born in Avon, Maine in 1819. He started the Civil War commanding troops from Louisiana and quickly became a general officer. In the defense of his chosen country, Brig. General York lost an arm for the Confederacy. He led 1,000 troops to defend "at all costs" North Carolina's longest railroad bridge against Stoneman's Union cavalry near the end of the war. It was one of the last Confederate successes of the war.
He died in the year 1900.
Maine did not see much action during the Civil War. There was a major naval battle in Portland Harbor. Also the war's most Northern Confederate raid happened in Calais, Maine. Captain William Collins of the 15th Mississippi led a group of Confederates across the Canadian/U.S. border into Calais to raid the town's banks and bring the war that terrorized the South onto the quite streets of this small Maine village. However, Collins' brother, Reverend John Collins who lived in Maine informed Federal authorities of his brother's mission. Before the first shot was fired Captain William Collins and his band of rebels were arrested at the National Bank of Calais. On Captain Collins' body was discovered a Confederate flag. Collins had hoped that the flag would wave victoriously over the Maine countryside. Instead, betrayed by his brother, Collins and his men became POWs in a county jail for the rest of the war.
Also interesting, and I don't know much about this, there was a draft riot in little Kingfield, Maine. So notorious was it that it was reported that the small village was involved in it's own secession crises.
There at least six Confederate soldiers buried in Maine that I know of. There is rumored to be several more.
Two are unknown soldiers. What happened to the unknowns was that during the war they were sent north by accident!
In Gray, Maine, parents were waiting for the body of their son, a Union soldier, who died at the battle of Cedar Mountain in 1862. You can imagine their surprise when they opened the coffin and saw not their son but the body of a rebel soldier. Yet, the family and town buried the soldier with a handsome headstone with honors. His stone reads "Stranger. A Soldier of the late war. died 1862. Erected by the ladies of Gray." Being a local legend, a wooden sign swings in the wind pointing to where he is buried. The real son, dressed in blue, was finally sent to Gray where he was buried next to the "stranger." On the Union statue in Gray, that has a list of the Union dead from the town you will also see "unknown Confederate" included in the list.
The other unknown Confederate buried in Maine is in Durham. The theory there was that upon the Confederate's coffin, his town was written. Durham. He was supposed to be sent to Durham, North Carolina but somehow was sent to Durham, Maine! A few years ago friends of the 15th Alabama, a SCV camp and a SUV camp raised money to buy him a headstone that reads "Unknown Confederate." The other Confederates buried are those soldiers who either moved to Maine after the war or died on their way to Canada after a prison escape.
Each year Confederate units in Maine mark as many dates as possible to have ceremonies at these Confederate graves. Our latest one was at Poland Springs for a soldier of a Florida regiment.
I am not sure how much of this information will help you in your assignment. It is, at least, an interesting subject to research.
Good luck!
-Zac
15th Alabama Company G www.mainerebels.org
Another Confederate in the
Another Confederate in the (Maine) attic so to speak was Edmund Drummond of Winslow. While growing up, his family would travel to Georgia to visit friends. In either 1857 or 59 he moved to Georgia to marry his sweetheart whom he had become acquainted with on those trips.
He was a teacher and when war broke out, enlisted and fought with a couple Georgia units, was a prisoner of war and was eventually exchanged. He had family members who fought with the 3rd Maine. Edmund could of returned home to his roots, but chose to fight for his new home.
I have the book that is written from his war time diary, "A Confederate Yankee", but it is loaned out or I could give you some better facts.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157233276X/sr=8-8/qid=1147427820/ ref=sr_1_8/104-6495903-6619925?%5Fencoding=UTF8
(Describes the book and has some excerpts from it - maybe a local library could have it)
Cpl Marc Averill
29thGA
Ah, but lest we forget!
Gen. R. Davis. born in Woodville, ME (near Lincoln)and was the newphew to President Jefferson Davis. He led a Mississippi Brigade in the Railroad Cut at Gettysburg, where they were decimated by Federal fire on the first day.
Will