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Having received their flag, the volunteers were served a sumptuous meal on the campus green, then marched to Dock Street, where they boarded a canal boat. An immense crowd cheered them off that Tuesday evening. Each youth’s name was announced as he boarded the boat, and each received from the ladies a “Handy Betty” (a sewing kit), a New Testament, and a white muslin Havelock to protect his neck from the southern sun (an item that did not last as far as Pittsburgh). A cornet band played, and girls sang patriotic tunes. Few slept that night as they were towed along the canal on the J. D. Gill, dodging the spikes of the bridges. New friendships were made, for some of the recent recruits hardly knew the core of college lads. Borosus “Bo” Strickland, the smallest and most unassuming of them all, from nearby Andover, Ohio, became the messmate and blanket sharer of Octavius Williams, an arrangement parted only by bullets.
The next morning the recruits were treated to a grand breakfast at Sherman’s Corners, now Shermansville, and again the following morning at Sharon. Their destination was Camp Wilkins, a filthy fairgrounds east of Pittsburgh, where they joined other regiments already encamped. Several former Allegheny students were enrolled in these. Ironically, as the Allegheny Company arrived, two Meadville lads who had enlisted with the Meadville company for three months and were sent to Camp Wilkins in April were able to return to Meadville for graduation with their Allegheny class. In addition to those two seniors, either six or seven other Allegheny undergraduates served with the town company.6 All of the boys made up, in the later reflection of Octavius Williams '64, an “undrilled, ununiformed and intensely unsophisticated lot…with their camp equipage, consisting principally of bundles of clothes, bed blankets, and patchwork quilts.”7
On 20 June, the College Company was merged into the 39th Regiment, 10th Reserve, Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps, becoming Company I. The regiment, which throughout the war was commonly referred to as the Tenth Pennyslvania, was commanded by a former Alleghenian, Colonel John S. McCalmont, class of 1840. To preserve morale, higher officials decided not to disperse the men of college companies. Of course, as company members were killed or wounded, their replacements were not from the College. By the end of three years’ service, the company had fewer Alleghenians, but its esprit d’corps, comradeship, and even the idealism planted by the original student contingent remained.
Because
of the background of its members, most of whom came from a college then strongly
connected to the Methodist Episcopal Church, a greater percentage of the
company reportedly attended religious services than was customary within
the army as a whole. Of the four officers and three sergeants initially appointed,
all but one were Methodists, and four were licensed to preach. During the
first weeks of training, Company I rose at five each morning and began prayers
ten minutes later, the only company in the regiment to hold worship services
both morning and night. Captain Ayer himself was abstemious, eschewing any
use of liquor or tobacco. His troops soon passed a resolution that they would
use no intoxicating liquors of any kind in camp. The company’s reputation
for orderliness and discipline grew, and around Camp Wilkins Company I was
called the best in the regiment.
It was at the camp on Penn Street, the same street on which College founder Timothy Alden died 22 years earlier, that the men of Company I had their first taste of the harshness of army life. At night they lay on what they called the soft side of a board, with a blanket and a carpet sack for a pillow; nevertheless, they found they slept the best sleep of their lives. Meals hardly matched those of home or Allegheny. James Chadwick reported that, "Our fare consists of baker's bread with crackers which are so hard that you can not easily break them, salt bacon and occasionally a mess of fresh beef, coffee twice a day, without milk, and sometimes a mess of beans. It is rather hard living...."8 Little did the students know that in the future their fare would be still more plain, "not much except crackers and coffee; meat sometimes on the 'rusty' order." Tents would be scarce, and shelter from storms had to be found under India rubber blankets.
Drill was tiresome. The boys adapted quickly and their greenness ripened into army routine. The first day of July the regiment moved to Camp Wright, 12 miles up the Allegheny River. Shortly thereafter, Norris traveled to Meadville to recruit an additional 25 men to bring Company I to its required strength of 101 soldiers. He had some success, and the addition of a few transfers finally brought the company close to its full quota. On 18 July the regiment entrained to Hopewell and then moved to Harrisburg. There, on Saturday, 20 July, the eve of the Union’s severe defeat at Bull Run, the volunteers were mustered into the United States Army, part of the first regiment to be accepted for a term of three years.9
Shortly thereafter, the regiment was posted to Washington by way of Baltimore. Warned by police of the possibility of an attack by secessionists mobs as had already happened to other Federal troops changing trains in the divided city of Baltimore, Colonel McCalmont did not shrink. He issued ammunition and ordered bayonets fixed. On its march through the streets, the regiment was accompanied by an African-American lad. His service running errands and helping to pitch tents won the soldiers’ approval, and young "Baltimore," as he was called, would accompany the regiment as its mascot until he “transferred” himself to a cavalry outfit about the end of 1863. Arriving in Washington, the College boys encountered troops maimed at Bull Run; it was a frightening and sobering sight that encouraged them to accept discipline far more strict that they had experienced in camp.
