April 15, 1861: Norwalk Responds to Lincoln's Call for Volunteers

On April 15, 1861, early that Monday morning, Ebenezer "Eben" Hill, the president of the Norwalk Lock Co., had his horse hitched to his carriage and started off on a visit to Major Gen. Thomas Guyer, commander of the state militia. Hill's son, Eben Jr., then about 12 years old, went with him.

Fort Sumter had been fired on, Norwalkers along with everyone else knew that a civil war was starting, and Lincoln was just issuing a call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers, all to serve for three months. The short term of service was all Lincoln could ask for under an 18th century law still in place.

Hill's first-thing-Monday visit may have been prompted by talk at church on Sunday, called a "Battle Sunday" by historians W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris. Across the state, preachers referred to the looming conflict in their sermons, people meeting at church must have spoken about it, and newspapers published extra editions. The Hartford Daily Post sold newspapers even within a church without rebuke, and the New-Haven Palladium sold 8,000 extra copies that day.

The weekly Norwalk Gazette kept to its regular Tuesday publishing date, and when that edition was published, it said nothing of any particular church meetings, although Norwalk preachers later made patriotic speeches.

Guyer, 51, a supervisor at the Union Knob Co. factory on Water Street in South Norwalk, was waiting for orders from Gov. William Buckingham, who had already in January called upon the state militia to be ready if hostilities should break out.

A Westport native, Guyer was at one point a Norwalk town official, and from 1872 to 1876 he represented Norwalk in the state House of Representatives. He never saw battle in either the Mexican War or Civil War, but he was very influential in choosing officers in the Connecticut volunteer regiments.

Hill could not have been a stranger to Guyer. As president of the Norwalk Lock Co., founded in 1856, Hill was in the business of selling locks as well as doorknobs. His factory in South Norwalk turned out 1,200 pairs of doorknobs daily, together with 2,500 locks and latches, along with special orders. All of Michigan's state prison locks, as well as its hospital and alms house locks were made in Hill's factory.

The factory ran on coal power and was situated relatively close to the South Norwalk train station, allowing it to distribute its products with relative ease. Workers in the brass foundry had to provide their own cruciables, which sometimes cracked under the heat. The company also paid workers on a piecework basis—only providing compensation for perfect work handed in.

In the depression of 1857, Hill was able to keep the company afloat with an enormous order for a new gadget, the Yankee Apple Paring Machine. Hill appears to have been an active, entrepreneurial, hard-driving businessman. He also appears to have been a patriot.

Whatever was said between the two men that morning, Hill started putting Norwalk into the war.

He rounded up a drummer and a fifer and set them marching around the streets of South Norwalk to announce a volunteer company was being formed. Hill also spoke with clergymen around town, one of whom made the first war speech in Norwalk.

Hill, who was also president of the Bank of Norwalk (then about four years old), helped organize a meeting days later in Lynes Hall, where nearly all the prominent businessmen in town pledged support for the volunteers. Within days, the Bank of Norwalk and another bank in town, the Fairfield County Bank, would join other banks around the state in offering Gov. Buckingham loans to finance the volunteer regiments.

At that time, many didn't think the war would last long, so volunteering for three months of service was a less daunting prospect. Also, various prominent citizens in town pledged to care for the families of Norwalk men who signed up.

So did Hill: "Mr. Hill was a friend of the soldiers all through the war and did not forget them even when the war was over," wrote C. F. Hallock in Norwalk After Two Hundred and Fifty Years. Many workers at the lock factory went off to war, and when they returned, they were able to get their old jobs back, according to Hallock.

The volunteers who were rounded up formed a company under Capt. Daniel Fowler. The group was too late to join the First Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, the only one originally called for by the federal government. But after the governor traveled to Washington to make the request personally, Connecticut was allowed to offer two more regiments, and in May the Norwalk group would join the Third Regiment of Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

Sources:

Norwalk After Two Hundred and Fifty Years, various authors, C. A. Freeman, publisher, 1901, "Military History of Norwalk" chapter by C. F. Hutton, pp 196-205.

Norwalk: Being an Historical Account of that Connecticut Town, by Deborah Wing Ray and Gloria P. Stewart, Norwalk Historical Society, 1979, Chapter 10: "Saving the Republic", pp 118-129 (see also pp 107-108 for its description of the Norwalk Lock Co.)

The CONNector, newsletter of the Connecticut State Library and Museum, April 2003, "The Major General Thomas Guyer Collection" by David J. Corrigan, museum curator, pp 11-12.

The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861 to 1865, by W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868, see p 42, footnote 2 on the initial legal constraints Lincoln faced in raising an army.