John Mosby, Union Hero

John Singleton Mosby, the Confederacy's Gray Ghost, was a daring marauder, commanding partisans who roamed Northern Virginia, harassing Union troops, sabataging telegraph lines, railroads, and bridges, and even occasionally capturing Union officers. The highlight of Mosby's career was when he woke up 2^nd Vermont Brigade Commander Edwin Stoughton out of his bed in the middle of the night by slapping him on the butt, and then took him prisoner.

That was the highlight of Mosby's career? He removed a commander the men hated, a commander who was more interested in his love life than commanding the Vermont troops in the war. Stoughton was vain, profane, and mean. His men complained about everything he did, and they were glad when he was captured.

When Colonel Blunt was in charge of the 2^nd Vermont, morale and discipline were high. When Stoughton assumed command, things fell apart. Howard Coffin, in "Nine Months to Gettysburg", describes increased incidents of fighting, drinking, and pilfering from neighboring farms after Stoughton replaced Colonel Blunt.

When John Mosby did the Vermont troops the favor of removing Stoughton, he was replaced by General George Stannard. Stannard was the exact opposite of Stoughton. He immediately began drilling the troops on military tactics. The troops respected Stannard. Rather than residing in comfort in the next town, Stannard lived with his men at their encampment.

One has to wonder, what would have happened at Gettysburg, had Mosby not captured Stoughton? The Confederates made it all the way to the Angle. The Union line was almost broken. Vermont's 13^th, 14^th and 16^th regiments were there to fight them back, using tactics they had practiced under Stannard's guidance during the months in northern Virginia in the spring. Would they have been able to execute the same manuevers under Stoughton? Would they have been as effective on the very front line, under Stoughton? Would they even have gotten to Gettysburg in time to join the battle under Stoughton? Stannard drilled the troops hard, back in Virginia. Then he marched them as fast as he could, under horrible weather conditions, through Northern Virginia and into Pennsylvania. Would Stoughton have been able to push them as hard and gotten them to respond as well, to give it all they had, day after day?

My answer to those questions is no. I think the outcome of Pickett's Charge might have been a lot different if our troops had been commanded by Stoughton instead of Stannard. Mosby certainly made a daring capture in March of 1863 when he took Stoughton prisoner in the middle of the night, and probably changed the course of the war. But not in the Confederate's favor.

I used a bunch of different resources in my research on the Vermont 16^th Regiment. Vermonters are really lucky to have so many internet resources devoted to their Civil War history.

Vermont in the Civil War (http://vermontcivilwar.org/index.php) is an amazing internet site. It has the rosters of all the regiments, the town each soldier was credited to, and each soldier's history in the regiment. The Vermont Historical Society (http://vermonthistory.org/research/research-resources-online/civil-war-transcriptions) has transcribed quite a few letters from Civil War soldiers and made thema available for reading on the internet.

Howard Coffin's book "Nine Months to Gettysburg" is the most readable and interesting book I've ever read on the Civil War. Of course, it's even better that it's about Vermonters, but Coffin is an excellent writer who includes lots of anecdotes and quotes about real people. He describes the camps, the marches, the places and people that lived in the areas our troops tveled through, and finally the action at Gettysburg, in a way that you as a reader can visualize them so clearly in your mind. When I read Coffin's description of the part the 16^th Vermont played in repulsing Pickett's Charge, my heart absolutely pounded with every turn of the page. I can't say enough about how excellent this book is and how highly I recommend it.

Another strong recommendation – visit Gettysburg. When you're there, spend the extra money to take a guided bus tour. We went there in April of 2012, and I thought the bus tour was pretty expensive, but it was worth every penny. The tour guides do a fabulous job of describing the action at the different sites. At one point, at Little Round Top, I had to walk away from the group because I just couldn't deal with hearing about the wholesale death and destruction. It is a very, very intense experience. They spend a lot of time at the Angle, the Copse of Trees and the High Water Mark, which are basically all at the same place. When they describe the intense fighting that took place there, they talk about the Union forces holding back Pickett's Charge, preventing the Confederates from breaking throught Union lines by the skin of their teeth, but they don't tell you that it was the 16^th Vermont, with troops from the Upper Valley, who were there at that very spot.

At Gettysburg, the tour guides and the displays in the visitor's center mention the "fishhook defensive line" a lot. At the time, I didn't understand it, but during the course of doing the research for this blog, I do understand it now, thanks in large part to the maps I got from Wikipedia. If you go, I hope reading this blog helps you understand the presentations there. I'm not sure if you should read "Nine Months to Gettysburg" before or after you go. Probably before you go.

After learning so much about our Upper Valley soldiers at Gettysburg, I want to go back there, and revisit the Angle, the Copse of Trees and the High Water Mark. My husband, the Old Redneck, is dyslexic, so I have been reading "Nine Months to Gettysburg" out loud to him, and it works very well as a read aloud. I have tried reading multiple other Civil War books to him, and never finished them because they were impossible to get through. Last week, we decided to visit our daughter in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and at the same time go to the 150^th Anniversary Reenactment at Gettysburg. If by any chance you're going, I'll be the woman in shorts and hiking boots with the guy that looks like a redneck Santa. I can't spend any money this week because all of our available funds will be going for this trip, but I'm going to look at the Listen Centers and Good Buy Store for a t-shirt that says "Vermont".

Now for the "rest of the story". A few statistics from "Vermont in the Civil War". There were three companies in the 16^th Vermont that had soldiers from the Upper Valley. Company A had 19 soldiers from Royalton, 1 from Barnard, and one from Norwich, out of 95 altogether. 51 of Company A's soldiers were mustered out at the end of their 9 month hitch, with no ill effects. 14 reenlisted. 18 were wounded at Gettysburg, including 4 from South Royalton. I researched these 4 on Ancestry.com and they all lived to be old. Company A lost 5 soldiers from disease, and 3 were discharged with disabilities. There were 4 soldiers killed in Gettysburg, including Philip Howard, age 19, from Royalton.

Company G was made up of all Upper Valley soldiers, with men from Barnard, Sharon, Hartford, Bridgewater and Pomfret, for a total of 111. 69 were mustered out no worse for wear. 21 members of Company G reenlisted. 5 died of disease, 5 were discharged with disabilities and 5 were wounded at Gettysburg. There were 2 soldiers killed in action.

Company H was mostly made up of Upper Valley soldiers, with a few from Reading. There were soldiers in Company H from Barnard, Hartland, Norwich, Sharon, Windsor, and Royalton, for a total of 87. Company H had 49 soldiers who were mustered out after an uneventful hitch. 17 men reenlisted. 3 men died of disease, 6 were wonded in action and 7 were discharged with a disability. 2 men were killed in action. Company H had two men desert. A couple of the men from this company who reenlisted became career army men. One of them joined the Frontier Cavalry.

There were 26 men from Norwich in Company K. 21 of them mustered out in fine shape. Company K lost 1 Norwich man due to disease, and two were discharged with disabilities. 1 was wounded at Gettysburg and 2 reenlisted.

In "Nine Months to Gettysburg" there are quite a few comments to the effect that more of the guys from hill towns died of disease than the boys that lived in towns along the lakes or rivers. As I was compiling these statistics I paid attention to this, and it does seem to be true. The guys themselves thought it was because the men that lived near water could tolerate the damp and fog better. Howard Coffin thought it was because hill town families were more isolated and therefor the guys hadn't been been exposed to as many illnesses as the men from bigger more centralized towns, and thus hadn't built up as many immunities. I wonder if the guys from the lake and river towns hadn't been fed a little better and were healthier to begin with.

After Gettysburg, General Stannard continued as a Union commander. He fought in many battles until he finally was wounded badly enough to lose his arm. After the war, he became the doorkeeper of the United States House of Representatives. He died in Washington DC in 1886.

At the end of the War, John Mosby was a wanted man. He never surrendered because he

never commanded regular troops. He remained in hiding until he received a pardon from General Grant. Mosby and Grant became friends, and Mosby even became a Republican, to the disgust of his fellow Southerners. As a result of this, he received several death threats. When Grant ran for President, Mosby was his campaign manager. In 1878, Rutherford Hayes appointed him to the US Hong Kong consulate. Later, Mosby worked for the Department of the Interior and became Assistant Attorney General.

What about Charles Aiken? He was the man whose name I found, who led me to the 16^th Vermont. Aiken was from Barnard and had been married for four years when he enlisted as a nine month recruit. Charles Aiken left Vermont and traveled on a troop train through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City and Maryland. He lived briefly in Washington DC and then spent a winter in Virginia with his regiment doing picket duty in the enemy territory of Northern Virginia. His commander was captured in a midnight raid. At the very end of his nine month hitch, Charles fought in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, at Gettysburg. He returned to Brattleboro, Vermont, and was mustered out of the 16^th Vermont on August 10, of 1863, and reenlisted on December 4, 1863, and that very well might be another story.

The 2nd Vermont Gets a New Commander

In March of 1863, the Sixteenth Vermont regiment was encamped at Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia. They functioned mostly as protective troops for an outer perimeter around Washington, DC. The Sixteenth Vermont was commanded by Colonel Wheelock Veazey, who was liked and respected by his men, unlike Edwin Stoughton. The 16^th Vermont had a Company from Barnard, Company G, which had soldiers from Hartford, Pomfret, Bridgewater, and Sharon as well. . Although I have chosen to focus on the 16^th Regiment, the 12^th Regiment had companies from West Windsor, Tunbridge, Bradford and Woodstock, and the 15^th Regiment had a company from West Fairlee.

The 16^th Vermont was part of the 2^nd Vermont Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton. Stoughton had assumed command of the brigade just before Christmas, 1862. He was not a popular commander with the troops. He was an arrogant, mean ladies man who chose to lodge in a private boarding house owned by a southern family several miles away from Camp Vermont. On the night of March 8, this proved to be a serious mistake when he was captured and taken prisoner by John Mosby, also called the “Gray Ghost”, a Confederate hero.

There was lots of talk about Stoughton consorting with the enemy. He lived in a Confederate boarding house and was dating a beautiful Confederate young woman named Antonia Ford, who, immediately following Stoughton's capture, was arrested as a spy and thrown in a Union prison. It's hard to believe that Stoughton was actively disloyal to the Union, especially in light of the fact that he was the one captured that night. It seems more likely that his comfort and his love life were higher priorities than his duties to his men and the War.

Colonel Blunt again stepped in as interim commander of the Brigade, and soon had the men refocused on their duties as soldiers. Howard Coffin quotes Henry White of Bridgewater, in a letter he wrote to his sister: “Our Colonel has been drilling us in charge bayonet this week, designating some hill in the distance, he wants us to take. He would order: charge, bayonet forward, double quick. Then with a yell we would go forward double quick over fences, across brooks, through underbrush, and often not stop until after the bugle sounded. This type of drilling is terribly hard, but yet it is interesting and I like it." The makes one think, not surprisingly, that this is a new activity since Stoughton was captured.

On April 20^th, Edwin's Stoughton's replacement arrived to assume command of the 2^nd Vermont. Brigadier General George Stannard,born in Georgia, Vermont, was a farmer, teacher and foundry operator in St Albans, when he left his wife and four daughters to volunteer in the Union Army. There is a legend that he was the very first Vermonter to volunteer for the Civil War. He was elected to the position of  lieutenant colonel in 1861, and saw heavy action right up until the time he arrived to lead the 2^nd Vermont. George Stannard was the opposite of Stoughton. He commanded respect and admiration from the men on every level. In letters home to Vermont, there was no shortage of praise for Stannard, and of course, plenty of comparisons between Stannard and Stoughton, with Stannard found to be much preferred.

a lieutenant colonel in 1861, and saw heavy action right up until the time he arrived to lead the 2

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Cummings was the next in command of the 16^th Vermont. He was a newspaper publisher from Brattleboro. The letters he wrote home from Virginia survived the War and you can read them online here: http://vermonthistory.org/documents/transcriptions/CummingsTranscriptions.pdf. Cummings, second in command, seems to have mixed feelings about all of the talk disparaging Stoughton. In a letter to his wife dated March 15^th, he says that he is “much pained” to read newspaper articles accusing Stoughton of having a “dalliance” with Antonia Ford. He tells his wife that the Colonel “could have seen but little of her, as his apartment and meals were taken care of by an old Negro wench.” He goes on to say that “General S is a handsome man, is young and fond of female society, but he never had the reputation, nor does any officer in this brigade believe, that he could be capable of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” If Howard Coffin's quotes are any indication, that is just what many of the other officers did believe. In fact, Coffin himself calls Cummings “the defender of General Stoughton”.

One has to wonder what led Cummings to defend Stoughton. Was he an idealist, trying to convince himself that a commander from Vermont could not have been having an affair with a Confederate spy? I have to confess that I would lean that way. My first thought was “Not a Vermonter!” Did he steadfastly adhere to a military code that wouldn't allow any public (even to his wife) criticism of his commanding officer? Did he think that because he was second in command, he had to adhere to a higher standard than the rest, above rumor and scandalmongering? But really, no officer in the brigade believed that Stoughton was screwing around with Antonia Ford? Okay, it was 1863, maybe they weren't “screwing around”. But they were “keeping company” to use a euphemism my mother loves, and it does appear that everyone knew it.

On the other hand, Cummings changes his tune a little in a letter dated March 21^st. He says “I expect General Stannard will be assigned to this brigade. He is a plain, practical man with an abundance of good sense, and with that a good soldier. If he comes he will live in a tent like the others of his command, and if he is is taken prisoner it will be after a fight, with the rest of his brigade.” This is obviously a reference to Stoughton. Possibly Cummings was starting to see the light, in view of an accumulation of negative evidence concerning Antonia Ford.

Charles Aiken was an enlisted man from Barnard, a 29 year old blacksmith who left his wife of four years to enlist in the Union army for 9 months. We don't know much about him. I assume he could write, and I'm pretty sure he sent letters home, but none of them survive.

Charles' father was in the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, so there is a military tradition in his family. From what I can tell from Ancestry.com, and I researched this from every

angle I could find, Charles' father was Solomon Aikens, Jr. He was in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, Shay's rebellion, and he was involved in a riot at the courthouse in Windsor. Charles' mother, Elmira Wheeler, was his second wife. I can't find a marriage date, but she had her first child in 1825, when she was 28 and her husband was 62. Solomon was 70 when his son, Charles was born, and Charles was 10 when his father died at age 80.

I would love to know what Charles Aikens thought about the capture of Stoughton. Charles' father Solomon had been in two wars, was involved in two anti-government civil disturbances, and became a father at age 70. With that family background, as a blacksmith in a hill town, it is hard to imagine that he had much sympathy for a commander who got captured because he was consorting with a female spy.

Meeting the Enemy - 16th Vermont in Fairfax, Virginia

The 2^nd Vermont brigade, composed of the 12^th, 13^th, 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th Vermont regiments, was made up of soldiers who had signed up for a nine month enlistment in the Civil War, answering Lincoln's call for troops of August, 1862. There were men from the Upper Valley in the 12^th regiment, with companies from West Windsor, Woodstock, Tunbridge and Bradford, with Roswell Farnham from Bradford as their Lieutenant Colonel. The 15^th regiment had a company from West Fairlee, and the 16^th Vermont had a company from Barnard and a company from Bethel. Charles Aikens, from Bradford, was a member of the 16^th regiment, and Charles Cummings was the lieutenant colonel. The 2^nd Vermont headed south toward the battlefields in stages, with the 16^th being the last regiment to reach Washington, DC.

On Monday, November 3, 1862, the 16^th brigade was given an hour and a half to pack their gear in readiness for a march south. After a 10 mile march, they arrived at the site of what would be their winter camp in Alexandria, Virginia. They marched through some beautiful country. Charles Cummings wrote home to his wife, “We marched a somewhat circuitous route about ten miles, passing Fairfax Seminary, naturally one of the lovelies places I ever saw, now despoiled of much of its beauty by a year and a half occupation by our troops..........The buildings are in good order and consist of a large central edifice, finer than any building in Vermont except the capital.”

Charles Cummings was the editor of a Brattleboro newspaper, and would have had the opportunity to see Vermont's capitol. We can be pretty sure that Charles Aikens had not been to Montpelier, and at Fairfax Seminary he probably saw the most impressive architecture that he had ever seen. Charles Aikens was probably familiar with the courthouse in Woodstock, which was the pride and joy of Windsor County, having been built in 1854-55.

Fairfax Seminary was an Episcopal seminary. It was taken over by the Union Army, and was General McClellan's headquarters at the beginning of the war. When the Vermonters passed by the school, McClellan was no longer the Commander of the Union forces. Six days after the Vermonters passed Fairfax Seminary, Lincoln removed McClellan from his command of the Army of the Potomac, and replaced him with General Ambrose Burnside. After McClellan's exit, Fairfax Seminary became the site of a Union hospital, which served 1700 soldiers during the course of the war. Five hundred Union soldiers are buried on the grounds of the school. Fairfax Seminary exists today, as the Virginia Theological Seminary.

The 2^nd Vermont made its winter camp in Alexandria, Virginia, on the property of George Mason. George Mason was an avowed secessionist who nonetheless found his home invaded by a thousand soldiers from Vermont. Mr. Mason kept a white sheet hung out of an upstairs window to indicate surrender, but Colonel Blunt, Brigade Commander, made it clear that the landowner would not be treated well until he traded the white sheet for a Union flag, and took an oath of allegiance to the United States Government. Howard Coffin discusses George Mason at length in “Nine Months to Gettysburg”, and Charles Cummings mentions him in one of his letters home. Cummings says, “His barn is used for stabling horses, his farm is despoiled, and he is prevented from communicating to any considerable extent with the outer world, and yet some of our officers think and say that even his family, women and children should receive no protection because the head of their family is at heart a rebel. The colonel and I fight such inhuman notion. We cannot see why his larder should be robbed and defenseless women, children and niggers be left to starve and beg on account of the notions the head of the family may entertain.”

As the brigade went about constructing huts to spend the winter in, there was a great deal of political upheaval in the camp. Colonel Asa Blunt was the commander in charge in November, but Charles Cummings mentions to his wife that there was talk of Colonel (Wheelock) Veasey, commander of the 16^th regiment, taking command of the whole brigade. This would result in a promotion for Cummings, as he would become regiment commander. All of Cummings' speculation went for naught, however, because on December 7, Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton arrived to assume command of the 2^nd Vermont .

George Mason was about 65 in 1862, which was pretty elderly in the mid 19^th century, certainly really old to have your home invaded by a thousand enemy soldiers. He had been married three times. His first wife was Ann Louise Harrison, who died in 1822. She must have died in childbirth, as they had a daughter, Ann Louise, who was born in 1822 and lived less than a year. His next wife was his cousin, Virginia Mason. They were married in 1827, and Virginia died in 1838, never having had any children. George married his third wife, another cousin, Sally Eilbeck Mason, who was 24 years younger than he was. She had two children, Kora and George. Kora would have been 15 and George 14 in 1862. Kora married and lived until she was in her 40's but didn't have any children. George lived with his mother until he died in 1888, his mother dying that same year. Kora died the next year.

This picture is a picture of George Mason's home, called Spring Bank, just before it was demolished in 1972. The property changed hands many times over the years. The house was originally a 25 room mansion, but over the years it was gradually whittled away, with all of its window and door pediments taken off, and the portico removed. In its very last years, the house was an apartment house and the rest of the property was a trailer park, before the property was sold one last time and the house torn down to make way for a K-Mart.

The 16th Vermont Leaves Home

Charles Aikens enlisted in Company G, from Barnard, on September 4, 1862. Charles and his compatriots spent most of September learning how to march and practicing military maneuvers. On October 9, they left Barnard for Brattleboro, Vermont.

There were five nine-month Vermont regiments, the 12^th, 13^th, 14^th, 15^th and 16^th. Company G was in the 16th regiment, commanded by Wheelock Veasey.   All five trained together at Camp Lincoln in Brattleboro.  Once they got to Camp Lincoln, the troops received their weapons and uniforms.  Howard Coffin, in his book “Nine Months to Gettysburg” quotes Private George Benedict, of the 14^th regiment. “The overcoats, knapsacks, belts, cartridge boxes and haversacks were distributed yesterday morning, completing our equipment. The whole form an amount of harness which strikes the unsophisticated recruit with a slight feeling of dismay.”

Another soldier wrote home that it was difficult to find uniforms to fit. “The Government did not have in mind the stalwart Yankee boys of the Green Mountain State when giving out the contract for manufacture of army clothing, for a number could not find dress coats large enough, or trousers long enough.” The young men of Vermont were well fed compared to young men from other states. The topic of food comes up time and time again in Coffin's book. The further south our boys went, the more they complained about the food.

The 16^th Vermont was officially mustered into the United States Army on October 23^rd. There was quite a bit of controversy among the recruits regarding their nine months. Some felt that their nine months should have started the day they signed up, especially in light of the fact that they had spent most of September drilling and learning maneuvers rather than their regular jobs. All agreed that at the very least, their term of service should have started when they left Barnard and arrived in Brattleboro. But no, their nine months started when they were officially mustered in.

The 16^th left Vermont in the very early morning of October 24^th, on steam trains headed south. I grew up in Northfield, Massachusetts, on west side of the Connecticut River. The railroad tracks pass directly in back of my house, which was built in 1843. As I researched this story, I realized that Charles and the rest of the 16^th Vermont traveled right by my house, which was only 19 years old at that time. Howard Coffin describes townspeople coming out of their houses and waving handkerchiefs at the passing soldiers, who waved back. I wondered if the people who lived in my house did the same thing. The house is very near the track.

As the soldiers traveled south, they stopped in Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, where they were treated to lunches including good coffee, cake and fruit. Apparently the treats there included more than food. Coffin quotes Roswell Farnham, a commander of the 12^th regiment, saying, “We had some trouble with the boys, there were so many girls about. Some of them were rather loose in their manners but their free and easy style suited many.” 

 

                                                                                                                              Roswell Farnum, from Bradford

 

 Also in Coffin's book, a drummer boy relates his conversation with the girls from Hartford. “You have done nobly, but not quite as well as the girls from Springfield.” When the Hartford girls asked where they had  fallen short the boy replied, “They kissed us.” The Hartford girls replied, “We will not be beaten by Springfield,” and the rest is left to the reader's imagination. One would hope that Charles Aiken wasn't kissing the girls along the way, seeing as how he had left a wife at home. With the average age of the Vermont recruit being 22, Aiken was somewhat older at 29.

By the time they got to Springfield, Massachusetts, the vast majority of the Vermont recruits were farther away from home than they had ever been before. We have no way of knowing how far away from home Charles Aikens had traveled before he joined the Union Army, but almost certainly not as far away as Springfield, Massachusetts.

South of Springfield, the soldiers' experience was not as warm and welcoming as it had been in New England. They spent the night in New York City, and were served soup that the Vermont boys thought was better suited to be fed to the hogs. This type of soup was probably standard fare for young men living in New York City at that time. Our boys were used to much better food at the dinner tables of their farmhouse homes in Vermont.

The 16^th Vermont arrived in Washington, DC at the end of October. All of the Vermont regiments were brigaded together. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Cummings, of the 16^th Vermont, tells his wife in a letter home that he can see the dome of the Capitol building, a mile from his tent. At first, the soldiers' tents were so small they didn't even keep the rain off, but the men quickly got busy enlarging the tents with anything they could buy or find, and furnishing them the same way. In several days, they had done wonders, most of them even managing to rig up stoves for their tents.

Immediately after they had managed to improvise decent quarters, the 16^th Vermont received orders to move further south. In an hour and a half, according to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Cummings, they packed up their gear and began marching. After a march of 10 miles, they reached Alexandria, Virginia, where they would spend most of the winter. With their arrival in Alexandria, they were officially in enemy territory.

 

A word about my sources: I highly recommend Howard Coffin's "Nine Months to Gettysburg". It is the best Civil War book I've read.  It's highly readable, with plenty of human interest stories.  Coffin includes stories of the loved ones the soldiers left behind, and quotes letters and diaries.  You really get attached to the characters in the book. Absolutley riveting reading.

 

If you are willing to spend some time looking, you can find lots of letters and diaries from Civil War soldiers online.  Vermont has done a great job of preserving and posting primary sources,  much more so than other states. Charles Aikens and Charles Cummings were in the 16th Vermont.  Roswell Farnum, from Bradford, was Lieutenant Colonel in the 12th regiment.  The 12th and 16th were together during the beginning part of the 9 months.  The 12th Vermont had companies from West Windsor, Tunbridge, Bradford, and Woodstock. I would like to stick to just quotes from the 16th Vermont, but I don't have access to enough of them to use.