- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, a community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagan.

- This is WQLN.

- I am too played out to carry on fighting today.

Water?

Whoa, whoa.

- I thought it'd be whiskey.

- Likewise.

So how'd things turn out for your side?

- Not as intended.

- Seems to be the way of it.

If I had any horses sense I would've stayed home.

- Me too.

- Where's home?

- A long way from here.

You - Erie, Pennsylvania.

- Never heard of it.

- Most haven't.

We've got a lake and a winter that would make white bears think twice.

- You sign up for this circus?

- Do I look like Dan Rice to you?

I was conscripted for the mud turtles of the Pennsylvania 83rd.

- You them yanks on the Sugarloaf?

- We were.

You were there?

- Nah.

Heard about it from some kid from 'Bama before I buried his grave.

He was going on about some bit about a madman on a boulder with, with a ride in crop wheel - That would've been Strong.

- Strong?

- That was his name.

Strong.

Colonel Strong Vincent.

- With a name like that, He was born for the army.

- He was.

The colonel was top rail number one.

If we had more men like him, we might have less wars like, like this.

I know the type.

With all due respect, I don't think you do.

He was something else, like folklore come to life.

I actually knew of him from our years back home.

- Well, Strong Vincent was born on June 17th, 1837 at the home of his grandfather, Judge John P. Vincent, in Waterford.

His father detested idleness in all of its forms.

And there's a quote, "No lazy boys about me.

Don't stand back and wait for the other man to put his hand in.

Get to it yourself."

Despite their wealth, despite their privilege, every one of those boys had their share of chores around the house from splitting and stocking the firewood, to tending the cows, to grooming the horses, to blacking the boots every Sunday.

Yet despite that, there was no man on this earth who loved his children more dearly and more tenderly than Bethuel Vincent.

And when he's 14 years old, Strong Vincent went to work at Vincent, Himrod & Company.

- He spent the next couple of his teenage years as an iron molder, which gave him apparently a pretty strong physique that he carried with him throughout the rest of his life.

He also showed aptitude and so his father put him into the office.

And then at 16 he became the bookkeeper for the foundry.

He felt he needed to go back to school.

He wanted to get, he was quoted a "scientific education", so he went to Trinity College, which was in Hartford, Connecticut.

There he met a young woman, Elizabeth Carter, who was at a teacher at the age of 18 at Ms. Porter's school outside Hartford.

And they began a courtship - Late spring of 1855, a watchman on the street makes a comment, imputing Elizabeth's honor.

Strong Vincent set upon the watchman and delivered to him several blows, which is technically assault.

And his record does not indicate whether he was asked to leave or whether he was expelled.

But whichever the result, it opened the door for him to then transfer to Harvard and for his switch to study law.

And he will take the Pennsylvania bar and he will pass the exam on December 12th, 1860.

And then just a few days later, South Carolina will secede from the union and start the process, which will make Civil War inevitable.

- Erie County was a strongly abolitionist county, so it was far back as 1856 when the Republican Party was a brand new party.

But it represented abolition, freeing the slaves.

The Erie County voters and Crawford County both voted for Fremont, which considering that Buchanan was a favored son of Pennsylvania, and probably only a couple other counties of the 63 counties in Pennsylvania voted for Buchanan, I think that makes a statement.

So by 1860, Pennsylvania went for Lincoln and Erie County went strongly for Lincoln.

As a matter of fact, in 1860, Republicans swept all the county seats in the election, from the legislature to the prothonotary, to all of the line offices that were in the the county courthouse.

You couldn't find a Democrat who won anything in that year.

So Pennsylvania went Republican.

Erie went strongly Republican.

At the time of the Civil War, you either walked or rode to where you're going.

You know, we didn't have trolley lines or cars or anything like that.

So the recruiting station for Erie County, which would stay active throughout the war, was put right smack dab in the center of the county, which was Waterford.

So people coming from Corry or Girard or Erie would have essentially equal distance.

- Erie is called upon to put out a thousand man regiment, which is called the Erie Regiment, because it hadn't started adopting the statewide numbering system yet, on a 90 day term.

Now the thousand-man Erie Regiment, they had to turn people away because they had more recruits than they needed showing up at the recruiting office.

- So the 83rd regiment, there were five companies of a hundred men each out of Erie County.

There were four companies out of Crawford County and one out of Forest County.

And they became the nucleus of the 83rd, most of them from the city of Erie.

- Strong Vincent enlisted, almost as soon as Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers appeared in the two Erie papers.

And he apparently demonstrated a very good sense of efficiency in the military, because very quickly he has made the regimental ajudant, which means his duty is handling all the official paperwork for the regimental commander, who is Colonel John McClane.

- John McClane, who founded the Wayne Guards, the local militia regiment, the Erie Regiment, which was a three month state regiment.

And then the 83rd Pennsylvania, was a well-known individual in Erie County.

As a matter of fact, he was the sheriff of Erie County.

So as a lawyer, Vincent certainly had connections to him.

Vincent had been suspected as something of a marionette or a dude because of his strict discipline.

But the men quickly realized his true leadership and took to him, and so he went from common soldiers being somewhat skeptical to him being, you know, a truly beloved leader of of the unit.

- Where were you when it set in?

- When what set in?

- That all of this is the furthest thing from what they sold us is.

- Yorktown.

- What was it?

- We had spotted McClellan and his entire juggernaut in tow, a hundred thousand strong.

We were so outnumbered.

Our commander, Magruder, he had us marching around in circles, bugling from the trees just to make it seem like we was triple the size army we was.

- No kidding.

- God's honest truth.

I wouldn't be here otherwise.

- I was there - At Yorktown?

- I was.

Colonel Strong had us digging trenches.

There were these daily progress reports that were supposed to go to the top rass about our progress and where the line was.

Most of the regiments ignore the orders, but not Strong.

Seems silly now, - But, orders are orders.

- When did you get pulled into all the fighting?

- Not till we got to Gaines Mill.

That's where I, that's where I learned that there ain't a whole lot about war that makes any sort of sense.

- What happens next is perhaps the bloodiest period in the 83rd Pennsylvania history.

They're badly mauled in a series of battles.

Strong Vincent does not take part in these because by this point he's caught Chickahominy fever, which is also typhoid.

And so he is bedridden.

- On June 27th, 1862, during the Battle of Gaines mills, the 83rd Pennsylvania found itself nearly surrounded by Confederates with only a narrow avenue of escape open to it.

- The 83rd Pennsylvania, as part of Butterfield's brigade, is holding the extreme left flank of the army, just above the floodplain going down to the Chickahominy.

They discovered that they had a whole confederate unit sitting on their flank, which was, you know, which was deadly.

Whenever you get on somebody's flank, you generally take them out.

And so McClane, he was facing west, and he took half the unit and turned it north to take this flank from being overrun.

He was killed.

He was shot in the heart and killed, right at that point.

- Vincent was absent from the regimen due to illness at this exact point.

He rose from his sick bed, despite being delirious with fever, demanded a horse from a hospital orderly, rode to his regiment until he passed out in the saddle and collapsed in the road a few hours later during the march.

But he was absolutely distraught when he'd heard what had happened at Gaines Mills, enough so that it roused him from his convalescence.

- So from the 27th of June to July 1st - they had started that part of the Seven Days campaign with over 550 men - they had 80 men left.

Gives you an idea about how horrendous the fight that they had endured.

One interesting anecdote to all of this was Dan Butterfield, the brigade commander would then call in Oliver Norton, who is the brigade bugler.

And Butterfield could sound a bugle, but he could not write music.

Norton could write music.

So he would essentially hum a few bars and Norton would play something and then they'd lengthen some notes and shorten some notes.

And eventually on that hot sultry July night, they created "Taps".

And of course we know it now for not only lights out, but for memorializing fallen soldiers.

But Oliver Norton, school teacher from Erie County, and Dan Butterfield were the ones that created "Taps".

And on the 4th of July, 1862, the regiment holds an election for new officers.

And Strong Vincent, is elected colonel.

He got his training under Butterfield, who was not a West Pointer, and McClane, who was not a West Pointer, but they, as non-West Pointers, had been extremely effective commanders.

And so he was stepping up to where they were eventually.

- In the winter of 1862, 1863.

When Elizabeth informs Strong that she's pregnant, she does so by sending him a telegram, informing him that there is urgent family business that requires him immediately at home.

And that is the guise on which he's granted emergency leave.

Not quite the emergency he probably feared, but a happier emergency as it were.

And while he's home in Erie, he does have his photograph taken at the Dolph Brothers photographic studio at Farrar Hall on what's now Perry Square.

That's the 1863 photograph of him in full uniform as colonel.

That is the last known photograph of Strong Vincent.

And he's preparing to go back to the regiment in Virginia near a quiet creek.

Elizabeth presents him with a riding crop and says that she wants him to carry this as a token of her, and he will do so to the point where when the Battle of Gettysburg rolls around, he leaves his sword fully strapped to the saddle of his horse and is just running around the battlefield with a riding crop.

- Vincent had been promoted to command the entire brigade, not just the 83rd, but the four regiments.

So he's commanding at this point about 1500 men with little over 300 in the 83rd Pennsylvania.

By early June, Lee takes the initiative and starts to move his army across the Blue Ridge Mountains and down the Shenandoah Valley.

But Joe Hooker recognizes that something is going on and he orders the Union cavalry to cross the Bull Run Mountains into what's called the Loudoun Valley, and then up the Blue Ridge to observe where the Confederates are.

So for better than a week, there was maneuvering in the, in the Loudoun Valley.

And finally, a series of pretty intense cavalry fights with Alfred Pleasanton, who's the commander of the Union Cavalry.

And there's Jeb Stewart's Confederate cavalry and Hooker sends a message to George Meade, commander of the Fifth Corps, "Send a division over to help Pleasanton."

And actually Meade only sends one brigade and it's Vincent's brigade.

Vincent's brigade takes a 20 mile detour to the west and they engage in the third of three days of very intense fighting.

And they have a dozen or so mile running fight, keeping up with the cavalry.

Vincent performs brilliantly.

He dominates the battlefield.

The 83rd performs as the excellent regiment that they are.

Truly an elite regiment commanded by a truly gifted officer.

- Truth be told, always wanted to go to Philadelphia.

- What for?

- You ain't happy to be back in your home state?

- I said no such thing.

You couldn't put a tax on the excitement I got a few days ago when the Colonel rode into the camp and told us that we were coming home.

The 83rd, we hadn't been home since my daughter, Nora, was born.

Almost two years...

But then suddenly we were back, except now the fighting was on our doorstep.

Colonel Strong didn't have to say too much to us, no one needed to recount what was at stake.

He was going to use anything in his possession to defend what he held so dear.

- You know, over the years there's been a lot of discussion about why the battle was fought at Gettysburg.

In reality, it was a place that all the roads came to and both armies were marching towards.

And it could have happened anywhere, but it started here.

And no one really knew what the plan or the Southern Army's attack plan would look like on July 2nd.

And as it turned out, Robert E. Lee, he decided to make a major assault against the left end of the Union line.

And it just so happened that Little Round Top would become the key of this attack.

- The wild card in all of this was a Union Corps commanded by Daniel Sickles.

Sickles moved his corps out from a fairly compact line, almost a mile into a V formation.

He needed twice as many men to cover that.

And it was right at that point of the line that General James Longstreet, Lee's right hand man, his old warhorse, came down to attack the Union left.

It was, he hit it with tremendous force, and basically after some hard fighting, shattered the Third Corps.

- And Sickles, the fit of peak demanded, "Shall I withdraw back to my original position?"

and Meade, somehow managing to cling onto his temper, snapped at him.

"No, General Sickles, you may as well stay here.

The enemy has let you get to this spot, but they will not let you leave it without a fight."

Meade, while Sickles in the Third Corps noted, Little Round Top, Sugar Loaf Hill, off to the left.

As part of Sickles's original position, it was to hold the hill.

Now Meade is noticing the hill is undefended.

- At that point, the new commander of the Fifth Corps, George Sykes, arrived on the scene ahead of his troops.

The aide went to Sykes.

Sykes then sent back to the head of his column to his first division commander, a guy by the name of James Barnes, to send some, a brigade to Little Round Top.

Problem was, Barnes wasn't there; he was probably drunk.

He was not with the troops.

Who was heading the whole Fifth Corps, the whole 12,000 men of Fifth Corps?

Strong Vincent with his brigade.

- Vincent says, "What are your orders?

Give me your orders."

"General Sykes has directed me to tell General Barnes to send a brigade to hold that hill yonder."

And Vincent looked at the hill, looked back at the young captain and said, "I will take the responsibility of moving my brigade there myself."

And that's the important thing to note.

There was never a direct order issued for Strong Vincent to move his men to Little Round Top.

- Vincent realizes where the Confederate attack is gonna come from - from the south.

And so he gets up on top of the hill.

Confederate batteries almost a mile away, spot the two horsemen and the brigade flag, and they start throwing shells at them.

If Vincent had hesitated, if he'd waited for direct orders, if he had not been decisive, he had not taken responsibility, the Confederates would've captured the key point in the south part of the battlefield without opposition.

- You disobey orders and things don't work out, you're in a lot of trouble.

But in this case, Colonel Strong Vincent disobeyed his orders, brought his troops to Little Round Top, and it was a key moment in the battle.

- As the battles going on, it's important to note that Vincent's brigade numbered around 1,335 troops and they were being attacked by around 2,390 Confederate troops.

And all of a sudden, from the right flank of Vincent's line, comes the sound of chaos.

The 16th Michigan, the smallest of Vincent's regiments is breaking.

They're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Confederate pressure being applied against them.

Vincent just charges forward with his riding crop.

He's slapping it against the soldiers.

He's cursing them.

He's shouting at them.

He's telling them to get back into line and they're not listening.

So he hops onto another boulder.

This is a larger boulder, one of the more familiar, large, flat top boulders from closer to the summit of Little Round Top.

And he gestures with his riding crop.

He yells, "Don't yield an inch, boys!

- Don't give an inch."

- And almost immediately he's shot through the left pelvis and groin and drops on the boulder.

- "What death more glorious can any man desire than to die on the soil of old Pennsylvania fighting for that flag."

- On July 3rd, George Meade had requested of the War Department, Vincent be promoted to brigadier general, as he was mortally wounded.

On the fourth itself, Vincent's promotion was approved by the War Department.

Telegraphically news of that arrived at headquarters that morning and Vincent was informed of his promotion.

He was aware that he was now a brigadier general.

That evening he became semi-comatose.

He would lapse in and out of consciousness.

And when he was conscious, he was mostly too exhausted to speak.

And at a little before noon on July 7th, 1863, and according to Amos Judson, with the Lord's Prayer on his lips, Strong Vincent died at the age of 26.

- I appreciate the water and the help.

- And I the company.

- I'm sorry about your commander.

A lot of good men got less than they deserved.

- Maybe next time we can talk a little more.

- I don't think we should talk so much, but perhaps we could do to listen a little bit more.

- Say amen to that.

You ever find yourself up here again, come to Erie.

- Must be some lake.

- Sunsets ain't half bad either.

- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, the Community Assets Grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

- We question and learn.