drill which employed
the scant two weeks spent here were supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel
Kellogg, fresh from McClellan's army in Virginia, and he was
afterwards reported as delivering the opinion that if there were nine
hundred men in the camp, there were certainly nine thousand women most
of the time.

With all possible haste, preparations were made for an early
departure, but there was opportunity for a formal mustering of the
regiment in Litchfield, when a fine set of colors was presented by
William Curtis Noyes, Esq., in behalf of his wife. A horse for the
Colonel was given also, by the Hon. Robbins Battell, saddle and
equipments by Judge Origen S. Seymour, and a sword by the deputies who
had served under Sheriff Wessells.

[Illustration: Presentation of colors, September 10th, 1862]

On September 15th (1862), the eight hundred and eighty-nine officers
and men now mustered as the Nineteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry
broke camp, made their first march to East Litchfield station, and
started for the South, with the entire population for miles around
gathered to witness, not as a holiday spectacle, but as a farewell,
grave with significance, the departure of the county regiment.

"In order to raise it," says the regimental history, "Litchfield
County had given up the flower of her youth, the hope and pride of
hundreds of families, and they had by no means enlisted to fight for a
superior class of men at home. There was no superior class at home. In
moral qualities, in social worth, in every civil relation, they were
the best that Connecticut had to give. More than fifty of the rank and
file of the regiment subsequently found their way to commissions, and
at least a hundred more proved themselves not a whit less competent or
worthy to wear sash and saber if it had been their fortune."

* * * * *

The regimental officers were: Colonel, Leverett W. Wessells,
Litchfield; lieutenant-colonel, Elisha S. Kellogg, Derby; major,
Nathaniel Smith, Woodbury; adjutant, Charles J. Deming, Litchfield;
quartermaster, Bradley D. Lee, Barkhamsted; chaplain, Jonathan A.
Wainwright, Torrington; surgeon, Henry Plumb, New Milford.

Colonel Wessells, a native of Litchfield, and a brother of General
Henry W. Wessells of the regular army, had been prominent in public
affairs before the war, and served for twelve years as Sheriff. Ill
health interfered with his service with the regiment from the first