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The term of enlistment of Company I was now at its close. On 30 May 1864, orders arrived relieving the troops of further service. Delivered to Captain E. H. Henderson, class of 1863, who was then serving as Assistant Adjutant General of the Third Brigade, the mustering out missive came just as a large Confederate force launched a major attack on the Pennsylvania men as they defended Bethesda Church. The attack came so quickly that Cook and some of his comrades, who had been feasting on spoils seized from a Confederate home, found themselves face to face with the enemy with food still in their fists. Replacement troops were not available. Henderson pocketed the order and the Union troops, including Company I, charged, were in turn checked, then prevailed. More than 300 Confederates were killed and many more taken prisoner.31
Captain
Henderson himself had a remarkable military career. As a private, he was
wounded at Gaines Mill, then promoted to sergeant following the battle. Along
with two other company members he was taken prisoner at Fredericksburg on
18 December 1862 and sent to Libby prison in Richmond. He returned to Union
ranks via a prisoner exchange, and on 16 May 1863 he was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant and eventually rose to his final rank as captain.
As with other educated men, Henderson's skills in reading and writing, joined with battlefield experience, enabled him to be seconded or promoted to positions with other units. Such was also true for Sion Smith, James Chadwick, Milton Phelps, and George Norris (who became quartermaster of the 10th Regiment), all members of the class of 1861. But some of the College enlisted men, however, no doubt shared the view of Chadwick who vehemently advised his younger brother not to sign up as a rank and file soldier. On the other hand, if the lad could enter as a commissioned officer, James allowed he might not object.
But I have seen enough of the treatment of the private soldier to completely disgust me. In my Regiment, from the Commanding Officer down, I esteem myself, (maybe I am an egotist) the superior of every one of them in mental attainments, socially, and perhaps in morals, yet I am a soldier and they are officers. Besides their advantages in privileges, they are paid from $200...per month while I who am a soldier though doing the most work and suffering the most privations, get 13 dollars.32
Chadwick could readily sympathize when reading the ten-month journal of Zerah Costen Smullen, a classmate and fellow member of the Philo-Franklin Literary Society at Allegheny. His description of the cruel, heartless treatment received as an enlisted man in Company D, 103rd Pennsylvania Volunteers struck Chadwick as precise.33
Though Company I suffered high casualties in its three year tour, it was spared some hardships by maintaining its cohesive unit status, at least for some while, thus prolonging a sense of community and shared values. But such issues as these, as well as the terrors seen and felt, no doubt explain why many of the Alleghenians readily returned to Pittsburgh for their official mustering out ceremony on 11 June 1864. Among them was the wounded and now married Lt. Colonel Ayer. Some re-enlisted, joining Company K, of the 191st Pennsylvania Volunteers. Others did not return. One accounting shows that 26 members of Company I were killed or mortally wounded and eight died of other causes. Thirty-six members of the Company were wounded, and 25 had been discharged for disability.34 Yet these figures may be too low.
How many Allegheny College undergraduates actually left for war with the original detachment is difficult to discern today. Ernest Ashton Smith in his 1916 history of the College puts forward 78 as the number.35 But his count is merely the total number of men who mustered into the Company on 20 June 1861 according to the list compiled by Samuel P. Bates in his History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5 originally published in 1869. Bates, Smith, Chadwick, and Cook all, however, state that this contingent included men from the county as well as Allegheny College. A month before the Company’s departure, Chadwick wrote that it held about 50 students. Halver Getchell, a Meadville newspaperman who did much research for the Crawford County Historical Society in the post-World War II period, states in his notes that 15 to 20 men from the southwest section of the county responded to a May appeal in the Crawford Journal for an additional 30 men for the Company; another source reports that 16 enlisted. In July another 25 were added to reach (or nearly so) the prescribed complement of 101 men. Thus the number of Allegheny undergraduates in the initial muster of Company I appears to have been between 50 and 65.36
An additional problem is that the names of some of the individuals specifically identified by Smith, Chadwick, and Getchell as students and classmates do not appear on the list of undergraduates printed in the College catalogue for the 1860-61 academic year or even in the alumni directory meticulously constructed in 1915. Chadwick, noted for his careful record keeping, mentions classmates in the Company that are nowhere listed by Bates or Smith. For example, Chadwick cites Ephraim Ludwick, clearly entered in the College records as a member of the class of 1862 and as a 2nd sergeant as of 13 May 1861; but he is not mentioned by Bates or W. Scott in his Roster, and Smith lists him as an officer with the New Jersey Volunteers. Apparently, Ludwick did not continue with the Allegheny Company until it was actually amalgamated into the army.
