F r o m t h e Archi v es
Father… may I go?
ith no official records, most Phillips and Abbot academy Civil War heroes remain unknown
logistical demands wrought by a war more savage and unceasing than anyone had predicted. Deaths and casualties— the mutilations and disfigurements were unprecedented both in kind and scope—were too numerous to report, and no centralized infrastructure existed to count them, report them, treat the by Amy Morris living, or bury the dead. Add to this Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University confusion enrollment and conscription president and Civil War historian, and lists muddled by substitutes and dodgers. According to Faust, this “unresolvfilmmaker Ric Burns discussed their documentary, This Republic of Suffering: ability” continues to hamper our full comprehension of the war today. Death and the American Civil War, before a large audience in Cochran Thanks to records kept by Civil War Chapel on April 15. Phillips Academy veteran Samuel Raymond, much is and the Andover Historical Society known about the town of Andover’s hosted the event to commemorate role in the conflict, including the the 150th anniversary of the Battle identities of the local boys who fought. of Spotsylvania, in which the town of Much of what we know about the supAndover suffered its largest casualties, portive and ceremonial roles that Phillips 24 wounded and 15 dead—a staggerboys and Abbot girls played for the ing loss for a town of just 4,800 people. town while attending school comes The film, based on Faust’s book of the same title, describes how Americans struggled to meet the spiritual and 46
Andover | Fall 2014
from his work The Record of Andover During the Rebellion.
Unfortunately, there is no official record of Phillips and Abbot alumni who served. An estimated 600 Phillips and Abbot academy students and alumni served for the North alone. As for the Confederacy, one alumnus wrote, “every one of those boys was home as soon as the first gun was fired to fight for the South.” Scattered among documents, books, and digitized sources are many tales… …of classmates reuniting on battlefields, one in which two Andover chums meet again as Union captor and Confederate prisoner: “The Sergeant marched him in and was dismissed, the door closed, and we just hugged each other”; …of one Sunday morning when South Carolina’s Palmetto flag greeted the Above: Members of the Class of 1864. Their class motto: Non Nobis, Sed Patriæ (Not For Ourselves, But For Our Country). The class unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts governor in 1864 to form a PA military company of 100-days’ men. Half of the classes of 1865 and 1866 signed the petition, too.