The County Regiment A Sketch of the Second Regiment of Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, Originally the Nineteenth Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War — A Closer Reading

From Infantry to Heavy Artillery

The regiment began as the 19th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry before being converted to heavy artillery—a shift that Vaill notes without elaborating on the reasons. The excerpts show the unit serving in the defenses of Washington, with illustrations of Fort Ellsworth and guard mount scenes. Later, the regiment fought as infantry in the Shenandoah Valley, a dual role that the text treats matter-of-factly. Vaill includes a list of colonels (Wessells, Kellogg, Mackenzie, Hubbard) and a frontispiece of Governor Buckingham, suggesting an emphasis on leadership. The conversion is presented as a simple fact, not a point of analysis, leaving readers to infer how artillery training affected the unit's infantry performance.

The Shenandoah Campaign and Cedar Creek

The most detailed excerpt covers the period from Fisher's Hill to Cedar Creek. Vaill reproduces the regiment's own history describing the enemy's signal flags on Three-top Mountain and the sense that Early's position was "mere impudence." He then quotes Early's explanation that he attacked because he was "compelled to move back for want of provisions." The account of the surprise on October 19th is vivid: men were "driven from their beds, many of them not having time to hurry into their clothes." Vaill includes General Merritt's description of the Eighth Corps being attacked "in flank and rear" and the Sixth Corps offering only "spasmodic resistance." The regiment's own role—first to plant colors on the works at Fisher's Hill—is noted with precision.

Local Pride and National Service

Vaill's preface frames the book as part of a series by the Litchfield County University Club, funded by a member, Carl Stoeckel. He stresses that the county's sons served in many commands, but this regiment was "distinctively of the county." The text repeatedly ties the unit's record to the home community: survivors were "still our neighbors in probably every town in the county." This local focus explains why the narrative includes details like the presentation of colors on September 10, 1862, and the monument at Arlington. Vaill does not claim the regiment was exceptional; instead, he presents it as typical of the county's sacrifices, a deliberate choice to make the war's scale comprehensible through one unit's story.

Vaill's sketch is best read as a commemorative document that balances official history with personal connection. Readers interested in the mechanics of Civil War regiments will find a straightforward campaign narrative, while those curious about how communities remembered the war will note the framing devices—the club sponsorship, the list of illustrations, the prefatory appeal to local pride. The text does not attempt to analyze strategy or question sources; it preserves a particular voice from 1908, when veterans were still neighbors and the war remained a living memory.

I’ve shelved regimental histories for decades, and The County Regiment holds that peculiar ache of men fighting far from home. It reminds me, oddly, of the earlier struggle upon the water — a quieter kinship of resolve. That old volume, The Navy of the American Revolution — Reading Notes, shares the same patient courage, the same salt-stained hope.