Local Historian Account
An account by local historian, Eileen McGuckian.

McGuckian, Eileen S. Rockville, Portrait of a City. Hillsboro Press, Franklin, Tennessee, 2001. Chapter 4, pp. 47-51. © City of Rockville

Rockville boys found it easy to follow their allegiances.  Although Marylanders were not subject to the Southern draft, many slipped across the Potomac River to join the Confederate army.  Union recruitment became more complex in 1862, when volunteer enlistments began to lag.  From then through the end of the war, President Lincoln and Congress issued numerous conscription calls and a Federal draft office opened in  Rockville to register all men aged twenty to forty-five.  The profile of an average soldier on both sides was a farmer's son under the age of twenty-one.

Lawrence Dawson, a farmer and attorney who provided one of Lincoln's fifty votes in Montgomery County in 1860, and John J. Higgins, a merchant, were appointed Union enrollment officers for Rockville.  Like Richard M. Williams, who provided clerical assitance, and John DeSellum, who drew names from a box, those associated with the Federal draft were "ostracized from society."  A draftee could join a fighting unit, pay a three hundred dollar commutation fee to be excused from this particular draft, or obtain a substitute to serve in his stead.  Lawyers advertised that for a fee they could locate substitutes, and the Sentinel as well as the Baltimore Sun published names of draftees and the substitutes who enabled them to evade service.

Other exemptions from Federal military service were also possible.  Dr. Edward E. Stonestreet, who had opened his office at the corner of Montgomery Avenue and Monroe Street in1853, exempted 233 men for medical reasons in October 1862.  Stonestreet received four dollars per day as examining surgeon for Montgomery County.  His exemption diagnoses included rupture (hernia), lung disease, rheumatism, mental derangement, spinal disease, and hemorrhoids.

Possibly the first from Rockville to enlist in the UNion army was George Patterson,  free black man.  In August 1862, soon after President Lincoln signed a bill emancipating slaves of District of Columbia residents, Patterson joined the teamsters of the Eleventh New York Cavalry.  He was followed by three Rockville slvaes, who probably enrolled in late 1863 or early 1864 when Maryland offered bounties for black soldiers.  James Barber, owned by Olivia Wootton, enlisted in the army.  When Reuben Hill, a slave of Samuel Stonestreet, and William Preston, owned by Chandler Keys, were drafted, these men and their owners were compensated by the federal government.  Preston served in the  Twenty-eighth Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops.

Many local rebels joined the First Maryland Cavalry, CSA, formed by Ridgely Brown, or rode with Elijah Veirs White in the Thirty-fifth Battalion of Virginia Cavalry.  Edward Wootton and James Anderson enlisted in White's unit.  James's father, James Wallace Anderson, lost his job at the post office in Washington for refusing to sign a loyalty oath presented to him in May 1861.  Young James, a teacher and surveyor before the war, became captain of Company D of the Thirty-fifth Virginia Cavalry.  He was captured twice during the war and was held prisoner in Baltimore, Washington, Ohio, Deleware and South Carolina.

The experience of Lawrence Dawson and his family indicates the pain of those times.  Dawson, fifty-four years old in 1861, practiced law in Rockville and operated a large farm on the Rockville PIke just south of the Union camp at the fairgrounds.  His brothers from Dawsonville fought for the Confederacy, his wife Mary Elizabeth (Kiger) was a strong Unionist although most of her Virginia family supported the South, and the Dawsons kept three slaves to work the farm.  Confderate cavalrymen singled out Lawrence Dawson for capture when the arrived in June 1863.

Lawrence and Mary Dawson's daughter Mollie, nine years old at the start of the war, later described how her mother nursed wounded and ill soldiers from both sides, and how one sent her a coffee pot still cherished by the family.  Mollie recalled Union soldiers hidden in the pine woods on the farm and the Confederates who tied their horses to the persimmon tree and demanded dinner.  After her father's capture by rebels in 1863, the child was jeered by her pro-South schoolmates and was forever terrified of men in gray uniforms.

The federal government nervously operated in Rockville among a populace largely sympathetic to the South.  Citizens who discouraged volunteer enlistments, aided the enemy, or engaged in any other disloyal practice asainst the United States were subject to arrest and imprisonment.  To secure control, the U.S. War Department stationed military units in Rockville throughout the war and in 1862, assigned a special provost marshal for Montgomery County.

Mortimer Moulden, a thirty-five-year-old clerk who lived on Jefferson Street near the courthouse, became the Provost Marshal.  His job was to root out fraud and disloyalty against the government and to discourage desertion.  Moulden zealously guarded Federal interests, reporting disloyal citizens who displayed signal lights, disclosed Union cavalry movements, or aided rebel marauders.  From Rockville, Moulden wrote, "Is the Government aware that a letter could  be thrown across the river at the Falls by wrapping it around a stone, thus giving the rebels a chance to learn our movements?  And there are plenty of rebel sympathizers to do it."

Matthew Fields, the feisty pro-South editor and publisher, keenly felt the government's attempts at control.  He learned the printing trade with Jesse Leach, publisher of the Maryland Journal and True American, and briefly partnered with John Braddock Jr.  In 1850, Fields married Rebecca Beckwith and was appointed postmaster of Rockville.  The following year, he was elected sheriff of Montgomery County.  Fields introduced the first issue of the Montgomery County Sentinel on August 11, 1855.  Each Friday, the Sentinel rolled off a hand-operated press located in a log building adjacent to the Field's white frame house at the corner of Washington Street and Commerce Lane (now West Montgomery Avenue).

But politics--local and national--were Matthew Field's passion.  A former Whig who feared Know-Nothings (an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic political party) and hated Black Republicans (Northern abolitionists), Fields left no reader doubting his support of Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge in 1860.  After Lincol's election he editorialzed that "God placed Maryland in the South."

Once fighting began, Fields wrote about Federal heavy-handedness.  The Sentinel reported misconduct of Federal troops and arrests of Rockville citizens whi were considered disloyal.  Three of his printing staff joined the Virginia Cavalry.  in 1862, armed with evidence from Rockville Unionists, authorities charged the editor with disloyalty and on October 4 confined him at Old Capitol Prison in Washington.  There he remained for seven weeks without a trial, until he signed an oath not to bear arms against the U.S. Government nor aid or comfort its enemies.  again with no formal charge lodged against him, in April of 1864 Fields was arrested and taken to Old Capitol Prison, where he remained for two months until Rebecca Fields's appeal to a Maryland congressman effected his release.

[details of Union army presence in town during the Antietam Campaign]

The presence of so many soldiers created problems in Rockville.  Union troops frequently plundered nearby farms for fresh eggs, chickens, pigs, and milk.  In September 1862, Unionists Judge Bowie, James Henning, and John England asked Gen. Nathaniel Banks to protect Rockville and its vicinity from further annoyance and loss.  Banks replied that although it was not practicable to station a provost guard permanently at Rockville, cavalry would be sent out to pick up military stragglers on Rockville roads and farms.