his native Sweden. They adopted as their uniforms gray jackets trimmed with red, gray caps, and black trousers with red tape along the outside seams. The 0fficers had somewhat finer outfits of gray with generously-padded long-tailed coats. Carrying Springfield muskets supplied by the State Militia, the company drilled through the summer afternoons and evenings. By invitation of a friendly farmer they went to his meadows a few miles from the village on a three-or four-day bivouac. Its most outstanding features were a sham battle and the great quantities of good food contributed by neighboring families.
Town and gown were greatly saddened in the spring of 1862 by the news of the first casualties, Lieutenant William McIntyre and Captain Arthur L. Brooks, son of the Baptist pastor, both favorites with their fellows in the Class of 1861. Another solemn reminder of war came at commencement 1862, when one of the Trustees presented a sword to Charles W. Underhill as he left the platform after delivering his graduation oration. Underhill, then a lieutenant, had assisted in raising the 114th New York Infantry with which he was to serve throughout the war.
Students organized a second company for military drill in 1863. It was in charge of Daniel W. Skinner who had rejoined the Class of 1865 after his discharge from the army because of wounds received at Fair Oaks. His experiences must have given the same realistic quality to his instruction which they did in 1864 to his Aeonian Society oration, “The Value of Our National Struggle,”
a “sterling production”
unmarred by “eagle flights of oratory.”
Other campus activities during the war years included frequent Glee Club appearances at patriotic meetings at which they gave selections from their songbook The War-Whoop. Students followed the course of the battles as they avidly read the daily papers and then readjusted the colored pins of the war maps which were conspicuous in dormitory rooms. Union victories they duly celebrated by firing a cannon placed in front of East and West Halls. Though the faculty prohibited salutes during recitation hours, “somehow the patriotic old gun would go off of its own accord, in the middle of the morning, when a particularly good piece of news came by telegraph.”
A poll conducted on the campus in October 1864, showed that students and faculty overwhelmingly favored Lincoln’s re-election by a vote of 77 to 12; of the McClellan supporters, seven were in the College and five in
