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(CIVIL WAR--PENNSYLVANIA.) Samuel B. Dick. Diary tracing the rapid formation of the Meadville Volunteers after Fort Sumter. [56] manuscript diary pages, plus [15] pages of memoranda extending through mid-July. 12mo, original limp calf, minor wear; a few leaves coming disbound, otherwise minimal wear. Meadville, PA and elsewhere, 1 January to 22 June 1861
Before the war, Samuel Bernard Dick (1836-1907) was a prominent young banker in the small western Pennsylvanian city of Meadville. He was the son of a recently retired United States Representative John Dick, an early anti-slavery Republican.
Dick began this diary during peacetime, and his entries are filled with investment deals by day and billiard games by night. His big excitement was a trip to Washington: "Inauguration of Lincoln as president, & I spent the day looking at it from different points" (4 March). He dined with California Senator Milton Latham one night, and on 5 March he met Lincoln: "Penn'a delegation called on the president & Gen'l Scott & Sec'y Dix, Holt & Staunton." (Secretary of War Joseph Holt and Secretary of Treasury John Dix were each serving their final day in the Buchanan cabinet.)
The diary is of most interest in showing how quickly Fort Sumter galvanized men like Dick into action. On 15 April he was doing his civic duty on a jury. Over the next four days, he was not only interested in Meadville's response to the rebellion--he was leading it: "Eve., courthouse at public meeting for volunteers. . . . Downtown all day forming a military company. . . . Enlisted today. . . . About town all day hearing war news. . . . Downtown all day recruiting men for the war. . . . War meeting at the courthouse & elected captain at Corinthian Hall."
The next two months were filled with recruiting and drills and encampments, all before the company had even formally organized or mustered. On 18 May Dick brought his troops out for a review in distant Chambersburg, PA, and on 25 May he was visited by General George A. McCall to establish a better training camp near Meadville. On the morning of 31 May, he and other members of the company had their photographs taken in Meadville, and his penultimate entry was on 21 June: "Camp making ready to go . . . in the three years' state service."
The company was formally organized a few days after the diary ends as Company F, the Meadville Volunteers, in the 9th Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment, which went on to fight at Gettysburg and many other battles. Dick commanded the entire regiment at Antietam. After the war, he was elected mayor of Meadville in 1870, and followed his father into the House of Representatives from 1879 to 1881.
With--a cabinet card portrait of Dick in uniform, taken by Broadbent & Taylor of Philadelphia at their 1877-1884 address, around the time of Dick's Congressional term.
