The summer of 1862 was a tumultuous time in Litchfield County, Connecticut, as it was for the rest of the nation. As the Civil War entered its second year, two separate calls from President Abraham Lincoln for a total of 600,000 new volunteers for the Union Army left county officials scrambling to meet their quota of nearly 2,000 men. Recruiting officers knocked on doors and held patriotic rallies. Military officers began procuring the supplies and equipment needed to establish a training camp in Litchfield. Town leaders across the county hurried to secure funding for bounties, cash incentives designed to entice men to volunteer. While all sought to avert a draft, military conscription seemed increasingly likely. The July 1862 Militia Act authorized states to turn to conscription when they could not meet their quotas.1 However, a medical exemption was one way for men to avoid this draft, and in August of that year hundreds of men lined up outside the offices of the county's medical examiners with hopes of obtaining a medical certificate. Many of these men—and some of their examining doctors—were mocked, emasculated, and villainized for their inability to serve, often by men who had paid commutation fees to avoid the draft. Examining the story of these men and the process of securing medical exemptions sheds light on the challenges Connecticut counties faced in mobilizing for the war, and how social class and nineteenth-century gender norms helped shape the way in which the Civil War has been remembered. Dr. Josiah Beckwith seemed an unlikely candidate to be a villain. Beckwith was born in the town of Stanford in Dutchess County, New York in 1803. He graduated from Union College before studying medicine, receiving a degree in 1829. Moving to Litchfield, he married Jane Seymour, a daughter of the recently deceased merchant Moses Seymour, Jr. The newlyweds moved into the Seymour home, and Dr. Beckwith ran his medical practice and pharmacy out of the home. The Beckwiths quickly became quite prominent. Within two years of receiving his medical degree, Dr. Beckwith had his name put forth as a candidate for governor of Connecticut. He served as president of the state's Board of Medical Examiners and had several business interests in town. A son, Josiah Jr., was appointed to the United States Naval Academy.2In some ways, the scandal that surrounded Dr. Beckwith in the summer of 1862 resulted from outdated army medical practices. At the start of the war, the federal government left it entirely up to the states to license physicians and mandate necessary components of their training. On July 2, 1862, Congress passed “An Act to Provide for Additional Medical Officers of the Volunteer Service.” A central thrust of the law was to establish greater competency among surgeons and assistant surgeons. Key to this were the medical boards set up to examine the candidates. Aspirants took written exams in anatomy, medical practice, and surgery; oral examinations covered chemistry, hygiene, physiology, pharmacology, and toxicology. Practice exams took place with cadavers, and there was an essay portion. A candidate who failed would be offered a second chance after two years, but not a third.3 Coupled with changes brought about to practices in the field by Dr. Jonathan Letterman, medical director of the Union's Army of the Potomac, these regulations significantly improved the quality-of-care that sick or wounded soldiers received.4All men who entered the Union Army also had to undergo a medical examination. Folklore holds that the only medical requirement to serve in a Civil War army was that a recruit needed two teeth—one over the other—to tear the ends off cartridges while loading a rifle. While this was not true—and men were rejected from the ranks of volunteers—the anecdote reveals the truth that such examinations were less than thorough. Men were urgently needed; time was of the essence, and the enrollment boards were under extreme pressure to get as many men in the field as quickly as possible. Additionally, enrollment board surgeons were paid between $100 and $130 a month, an amount insufficient to get many experienced or skilled doctors to leave their practices for an assignment not at the front lines. Further, examining rooms were either inadequate or non-existent.5 In many cases, recruits were examined in the open fields of their training camps.The coming of the draft, however, created special circumstances. Prior to August 1862, those with health concerns could simply opt not to volunteer. The regulations governing the draft required men to demonstrate that they were medically unfit for military service, defined by the government as having “great deformity of body or limb; permanent lameness; loss of eye.”6 The subjectivity inherent in the first of these conditions led Adjutant General Joseph D. Williams, chief administrative officer of Connecticut's troops, to mandate that the state's surgeon general appoint examining surgeons for each recruiting district. They were empowered to examine men and, if medically necessary, provide certificates of exemption. Certificates were technically only recommendations to be forwarded to the surgeon general, and the power to declare men ineligible for conscription rested with the selectmen of the individual towns. In practice, however, towns passed over drafted men who produced exemptions, pulling another name instead.Concern over the likelihood of a draft fueled interest in the process of being exempted. “Several correspondents write to us to inquire who are the ‘three surgeons’ in this county authorized to give exemption from military service,” the Winsted Herald reported on August 1. The report continued that “We do not learn that they have yet been appointed. Dr. H. Allen Grant of Enfield is Surgeon General, and it is understood that he will appoint deputies immediately.”7 Henry Allen Grant was born in Georgia in 1813, but was educated in the North, rarely returning to his birthplace. He, like Dr. Beckwith, graduated from Union College; he practiced medicine in Albany, then moved to Paris for specialized instruction in surgery. He returned to set up a practice in Hartford, and his skill led to his appointment as surgeon general of his new home state. He would later become a hero for his work in treating the wounded following the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. Particularly notable was his reconstruction of the jaw of Private George B. Smith of the Sixteenth Connecticut. Through Dr. Grant's revolutionary surgery, Smith was able to regain the use of his jaw.8In the first week of August, Grant selected three doctors to examine prospective soldiers in Litchfield County: Beckwith in Litchfield, Sidney H. Lyman in Washington, and James Welch in Winsted. Potential draftees were warned that they were personally liable for “heavy penalties” if they accepted an exemption certificate from any other doctor.9 The cost of an examination, whether a certificate was granted or not, was twenty-five cents.10 J. M. Coggswell, editor of the Housatonic Republican, took these announcements at face value, telling his readers who may have had medical concerns to “obtain the document immediately, as it will save trouble and haste when they are required to show them.”11 The Litchfield Enquirer identified the three medical examiners, explained the process, and sarcastically hoped “much comfort may it do” those seeking a certificate.12 The Winsted Herald, however, was quick to see the potential danger of the examinations to the state's recruiting effort. Identifying the county's three examining surgeons for its readers, editor T. M. Clarke expressed his desire that they will ‘be just and fear not’ in the discharge of it. Hitherto the slightest pretext has procured an exemption; and it has been a not infrequent thing for physicians to go round their particular friends and leave certificates of exemption without even an application. The fact is, that most men who can perform their ordinary business can do military duty, and should do it. To such, let no certificates be issued. If, when drafted, they are actually unfit for service, the regimental surgeon will soon enough discharge them. There is no danger that the three gentlemen named above will be too sparing of their certificates — we only fear that they will be too free with them.13If Clarke was wrong in supposing that regimental surgeons would be thorough enough to exclude those unfit to serve, he was correct that up to that point it had been easy to get an exemption. Of course, to that point there had been no conscription; an exemption was not needed to avoid the service.Still, Clarke was right to worry. Immediately after the announcement of the names of the county's examining surgeons, their offices were overrun by those seeking exemptions. “From all we hear and see,” the Winsted Herald proclaimed about the examiners, “they have an abundance of business now.”14 Reporting on its hometown, the Herald noted Dr. Welch was “besieged in his office by the swarms of applicants for certificates of exemption from military service. The Doctor makes thorough business of his examinations, and does not recognize his own certificates of former years.” Welch was quoted as saying, “These are war times now, we'll begin anew.” This statement suggests that references to earlier certificates were for exemption from militia service. When one potential conscript presented Welch with a stack of eighteen prior certificates, the Doctor asked, “You are well enough to work?” The applicant replied that he was, and Welch replied, “Then you are well enough to fight.”15 This reply made Welch something of a hero, with a variant of this reply—usually phrased as “If you can work a little, you can fight a little” appearing in newspapers across the state.16If Welch's proclamations became something of a patriotic rallying cry, events taking place in Litchfield quickly brought scorn and accusations against Josiah Beckwith. The crowds in Litchfield were even bigger than those in Winsted. “We have observed Litchfield,” the Winsted Herald reported, “to be lively with not precisely the lame, the halt and the blind—but so far as we can see, stout, able-bodied men, anxiously enquiring the way to the Doctor's dispensary. Even as early as four o'clock in the morning they have besieged the doctor's door, and late at night the glimmer of the night lamp betrays the examiner still engaged in his patient and laborious examinations.”17 In the coming days, months, and years ahead, Dr. Beckwith became a controversial figure, but no one ever accused him of not working long hours.He was accused of accepting payment in exchange for certificates, of playing party politics, of using his position as a medical examiner to make a statement about the war, of “caring more for these [men] than for the nation others were struggling to save,” and, more ominously, of cooperating with those having “secession proclivities.”18 A common sentiment about Beckwith's practices was expressed by W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris, who wrote in their 1868 book The Military and Civil History of Connecticut During the War of 1861–65, “Stout young fellows bent over canes, and feigned excruciating rheumatism, or moaned agonizing internal and invisible maladies. Every day someone received the twenty-five cents exemption, flung away his staff, and walked off with a firm step.”19While the county's Republican newspapers were severe in their criticism of Beckwith, notable in the accounts discussed above is the absence of specific names. The papers were typically merciless in their exposing those with differing views from their own, especially if those views were anti-war. Yet, in criticizing Beckwith directly, they presented hearsay rather than evidence. What does exist in terms of primary source evidence are Beckwith's account books.Dr. Beckwith kept records of the men he examined between August 7 and August 12. An analysis reveals some general trends about Beckwith's operations. At an approximate average age of 32 years old, the men who sought exemptions were older than the men who made up the Nineteenth Connecticut, being formed at that moment at a training camp a mile and a half from Beckwith's home. This fact is unsurprising when dealing with alleged physical infirmities. Furthermore, few of the men who came to see Beckwith had only one malady recorded. More common were diagnoses like those of Richard Morrall of Plymouth who was found to be deaf, missing his thumbs, and suffering from poor circulation, or a thirty-nine-year-old man from Harwinton who Beckwith found to be struggling from “great depression,” a fractured sternum, and kidney disease. A third general observation is that Beckwith's account books strongly suggest that men from the county's more distant towns traveled together to see the doctor. On August 11, for example, Beckwith saw five consecutive men from Roxbury, seven from Plymouth, and five from Washington.20What is most remarkable about the records kept by Beckwith is the sheer number of men who sought exemptions. Beckwith saw 321 men on August 7 alone; this was, perhaps, his first day as a medical examiner. It is an indication of the cursory nature of these examinations that if each examination took five minutes, it would have required nearly twenty-seven hours to see all 321 of these men. Beckwith recorded a malady and issued a medical certificate for 307 of the 321 men examined that day. On August 8, 141 men were given a certificate. Beckwith issued 183 more certificates on August 9. Fifty-four men were seen on August 12, a lower number for reasons that will be explained below. Forty-one of those men received a certificate. In total, Beckwith issued 672 medical certificates between August 7 and August 12, 1862.21Assuming half of the county's 47,000 residents were men, and—as is evident from the 1860 census—about 40 percent of the male population was of military age, there were approximately 9,400 Litchfield County men who were subject to the draft. Those that sought a medical exemption were to a certain degree a self-selected sample. Still, it is astounding that 7.3 percent of the county's eligible military population showed up at Beckwith's door in a single six-day period.22Two other pieces of data stand out in reviewing Beckwith's account book. On August 7, Beckwith examined 282 men; of those, 117, or 41 percent, were from Plymouth. While Plymouth in 1860 still included the land that would become the town of Thomaston, it was by no means a major population center. With 3,244 residents in 1860 it was virtually tied with Litchfield as the county's third largest town yet had only 7 percent of the county's population. Nearly one-fifth of the town's men of military age showed up seeking an exemption from Beckwith on just one day. Plymouth had a larger industrial base than most of the county, and therefore those could have a greater number of work-related injuries. While there were missing fingers and toes ascribed to Plymouth men, they did not appear in larger numbers in the records than men from other towns. Furthermore, Plymouth men arrived in numbers nearly five times greater than men from Litchfield, a town of almost the same size. Also, there is no direct evidence that these men sought an exemption because they opposed the war. However, while Litchfield and Plymouth sent virtually identical numbers of men into the army over the course of the war—299 for Litchfield and 296 for Plymouth—the number of those men from Plymouth who were draftees rather than volunteers was 250 percent higher than Litchfield, and the numbers of deserters from Plymouth was nearly 60 percent higher. Taken together, these pieces of data do beg the question of whether there was significant anti-war sentiment in Plymouth.23A sampling of the 84 exemption certificates issued for men in Woodbury gives insight into the conditions Beckwith diagnosed. Twelve exemptions, one in seven, were for hernias. As many of the men who served in the Civil War would find out, hernias were common among laborers in that era when manual labor was more common. An analysis by Chen Song and Louis L. Nguyen of health data of Union Army veterans revealed that by 1900, over 25 percent of all veterans had suffered a hernia, in many cases a result of the work of entrenching, clearing trees, or building roads done during the war. In the mid-nineteenth century “because no reliable treatment was available to offer a complete cure” for a hernia, a man “had to cope with it for the rest of his life.”24 Service in the army was out of the question. Ten percent of those granted certificates were diagnosed with “general weakness,” a vague term that certainly may have contributed to questions about Beckwith's practices. Eight percent were diagnosed as either having lung disorders or being deaf. The 1860 census reports that 0.12 percent of men in Connecticut were “deaf mutes,” slightly lower than expected.25 Given the greater frequency with which nineteenth-century Americans suffered from diseases that could cause deafness, like meningitis and chicken pox, it can be safely assumed that the census understated the true number of Connecticut men with profound hearing loss. This would suggest there should have been 42 individuals in the entire town who were either deaf or with significant hearing problems; six deaf residents of Woodbury appearing before Beckwith was statistically possible. The remainder of the men from Woodbury presented an assortment of varied illnesses with heart problems, piles (hemorrhoids), rheumatism, swollen lymph nodes, foot problems, varicose veins, blindness, fractures, liver problems, and knee problems contributing to multiple exemptions. There were three additional drafts after August 1862. Per the law, men needed to secure a medical exemption for each draft. Yet not one of the 84 men from Woodbury who received a certificate in August 1862—most from Beckwith—served in the Union army; they either paid a commutation fee, hired a substitute, or received a medical exemption from a doctor other than Beckwith, who was no longer examining potential soldiers at that point. This would seriously argue against the charges of Beckwith's corruption.26It appears few people at the time stopped to seriously consider the accuracy of the charges leveled against Beckwith or the veracity of the medical conditions of those who received certificates. Litchfield County had a long history of vigilantism, and many citizens took matters into their own hands with those they deemed cowards.27 Most notable among them was John Hubbard, a prominent Litchfield attorney. Born in Salisbury in 1804, Hubbard was admitted to the bar in 1828 and practiced in Lakeville. He served in the state senate and as a prosecutor before moving to the county seat and opening a legal practice in 1855.28 In the summer of 1862, Hubbard was the Republican candidate for Congress. It is unclear if Hubbard's actions were politically motivated, but each day Beckwith examined applicants for certificates Hubbard traveled from his home on South Street to the town green where the line to see the doctor formed. There, Hubbard, often joined by Edward Seymour (a first cousin once removed of Beckwith's wife), mocked and badgered the applicants, making sure the men were aware of “the need and peril of the nation, and set for the meanness of shirking duty to the flag and country.”29 Croffut and Morris maintained that Hubbard and Seymour were successful in their efforts, and that “almost every day, a number thoroughly ashamed of their despicable intentions banished pretended ills, stood erect in manhood, and enlisted for three years of the war.”30 (Those men assembled on the green to see Beckwith were within a stone's throw of the recruiting headquarters for the Nineteenth Connecticut.) Perhaps this is true; it certainly makes for a good story. There are, however, no specific names mentioned.The newspapers were the most vicious in assaulting Beckwith and those with exemptions. The Housatonic Republican, typically more reserved in its editorializing than the Litchfield Enquirer or Winsted Herald but still partisan, was unsparing in its criticism. Their venom was not directed at Beckwith but at the “army of exempts—the Bombastes Furiosos, who have shouted and bawled ‘Preserve the Union’—the chaps who have suddenly discovered that they are afflicted with all sorts of ills—more than ordinarily fall upon humanity—the fellows who have hitherto been the boasters and braggarts, whose power, and strength, and work be their natural praise.”31 The attack became harsher and tinged with sarcasm: These are the much to be pitied unfortunates, who now breathe more freely than they have for a week past—because they've got certificates! The facial portions of these sufferers have resumed their wanted symmetry—because they have got certificates! Their legs appear to have regained their former power of locomotion—because of certificates! Backbones have become stiffened, sundry coughs have abated, lame legs, arms, backs, etc., have been cured miraculously within seven days—because of certificates! . . . And it is strange, “passing strange,” that all these ills and diseases should have come so suddenly manifest, and have lasted for such a brief time. As it is, we are glad that all these cures have been effected, or that all these certificates have been granted. We have found out who are the lame and the halt, we have learned more of human nature, though, what we have learned is discreditable to humanity, and we have had considerable fun over the skeddadling to Litchfield for exemption certificates.32The Republican hedged its bets by declaring that “some of these persons, no doubt, are legally exempt” but added that “there are a number of sneaks, who gladly make any petty physical failing an excuse for not doing their duty like men.”33 In presenting the story of the medical exemptions the Republican focused on those seeking certificates rather than on Beckwith. However, the paper was wrong in saying some of the men were legally exempt; in securing their certificates they were all legally exempt once the selectmen rubber-stamped their paperwork.The Litchfield Enquirer suggested that those who had secured medical exemptions be dealt with through public mockery, calling for the formation of an “INVALID GUARD for mutual protection.” The paper proposed organizing the unit by medical condition, with a company for the “lame, and the halt, and the blind”, another for “the short of wind, and the short of sight, and the short of leg, “and a third for “the asthmatic, and the gouty, and the consumptive. . . . ” Further emasculating was the paper's call to “let a little child, or an old woman in breeches, lead them.”34Most vociferous in its condemnation of Beckwith or the applicants was the Winsted Herald. Six articles on the topic appeared in the August 15 issue alone, including one that dubiously announced the “gratitude” with which most residents of the area had greeted the news of the draft as it meant “our wearied brethren on the James [River] were to be succored, and the rebellion, insolent with victory, was to feel the might of the awakened North.” These were at risk, however, and in assessing blame the Herald pointed its finger squarely at Beckwith and those it alleged were posing as infirm, all of whom it considered to be Confederate sympathizers. “Then, however, came the day of exemptions,” editor T. M. Clarke wrote, “cripples and disloyal came first, but so little judgment (or honesty) was shown that all alike got certificates.” Desire for certificates proved contagious, and the fever swept the county: “The loyal man seeing his disloyal neighbor thus exempted, presently becomes dissatisfied and hies away to the surgeon. He, too, has cut a finger while paring apples or been frost or flea bitten at some point in his history, and he too gets a certificate. Each excuses his own shame by reference to his neighbor's.”35 The Herald warned its readers of where all this was leading: “And so the thing has gone on, justice trifled with and the spirit of the law so flagrantly disregarded, that we must now with sorrow confess that the welcome with which the measure was at first received has in many instances, perhaps generally, changed to a deep indignation which it will need but little to fan into open hostility when the draft is finally made.”36 If this was a creative, revisionist take on why the draft was unpopular, the Herald left little doubt about where the blame lay. It was “originally in the law, secondly in the surgeons. It is within bounds to say that not one half of the certificates which have been granted should have been granted; while some surgeons (as Dr. Beckwith, for instance, at Litchfield) have seemed to proceed upon the principle that they were authorized to issue a certificate to every man who would pay twenty-five cents for it, without regard to physical considerations.”37That the Winsted Herald would suggest that half the certificates were invalid without providing its evidence was par for the course for the county's newspapers. More unusual was the paper's willingness to see that the masses heading for the surgeon's offices were not necessarily motivated by party politics. “The dishonest applicants for certificates come not exclusively from any one political party,” the paper announced. “The Republicans, if not as deep in disgrace as anybody, are at least so deep in that they have small claims to especial credit as supporters of the war.” This was as far as the partisan paper was willing to go in its criticism of its party of choice.38The Winsted Herald, deciding that neither the law nor the surgeons could be trusted, determined that its readers would be the best judge of the veracity of the medical conditions diagnosed through the examinations. Therefore, it printed the names of the men who had presented certificates of exemption to Winchester's selectmen through August 14. In this way, newspaper readers learned about the medical conditions of fifty-two residents of their town, including that John Brooks had lost his testes, that C. B. Webb suffered from fistula in ano, and that John Woodruff had tender testicles.39 There is no way for the paper to have known this in August 1862, but of the fifty-two men whose names were printed only two may possibly have served in the Union army later in the war. The Herald listed John Leo as exempt because of a deformed ankle; a John Leonard of Winchester volunteered for the war effort in November 1864. C. A. Bristol was granted a certificate for deafness; Charles A. Bristol volunteered from Winchester in December 1863, joined the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery (which began its career as the Nineteenth Connecticut), and was promoted to corporal in the war's final days.40 That less than 4 percent of the men with certificates from August 1862 served—and those by choice—and the fact that men needed a new exemption for each draft, suggests that the medical examinations the Herald thought might doom the war effort were accurate.To seek a medical exemption was to risk ridicule, sometimes in a manner that brought attention upon individuals. Lucius W. Clarke of Winchester found this out. He was one of the hundreds who descended upon Beckwith's office on August 7 and emerged with a certificate proclaiming him exempt from military service “for the reason of congestion of lungs with bloody expectoration, affection of the heart, general weakness . . . [and] other disabilities.”41 Eight days later he found himself singled out in the Winsted Herald, a small article devoted entirely to him. Above a reprint of the certificate issued by Beckwith, editor T. M. Clarke wrote, “A very deep sympathy has been excited in our community by the distressing condition of an estimable fellow townsman—the gentleman named in the following certificate now on deposit with our selectmen. Only one short month ago this afflicted and of health-bereft individual was considered one of the soundest, heartiest, and most vigorous youths of his village. His perfect health, manly vigor and unimpaired constitution were matters of his own frequent boast. Alas we know not what a day may bring forth! Poor Lucius, here he lies!”42 Sarcasm and ridicule were nothing new in nineteenth-century American newspapers, but they were usually reserved for public figures. In seeking to avoid the draft, even for what may have been perfectly legitimate reasons, men opened themselves up to the possibility of public scorn.The press reaction to what the Housatonic Republican termed the “Army of the Exempt” was predictable from partisan newspapers. More revealing of public attitudes, perhaps, was the reaction of town officials. Woodbury, for example, made the medical certificates presented to its selectmen public, and the details of them appeared in a published broadside of unknown authorship entitled, “LIST OF CERTIFIED COWARDS IN WOODBURY! AS PER SURGEON'S CERTIFICATES.” No attempt was made to distinguish between those who may have been looking to avoid the draft and those with genuine medical concerns. Furthermore, while the medical condition listed for each man is nearly word for word from Dr. Beckwith's report, the sarcastic tone added by the broadside's author(s) made clear its intent to shame those listed. The broadside began by making the familiar argument that the men who sought exemption for truly valid reasons could have been exempted by an examining surgeon after they appeared for military service. That this would excuse men who, by that point in the process, were being counted toward quotas did not seem to be taken into consideration, nor was the fact that the medical exam for recruits often took place at the very end of a regiment's initial training. To rely upo