In the days after the US Army’s disaster at Bull Run, the three-months men came home – and Harrisburg could barely hold all the soldiers.

Martin J. Byrne watched it unfold from Camp Curtin in the state capital. A 21-year-old Carbondale schoolteacher who had just joined with the 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery, Byrne wrote to his parents on July 31, 1861. Byrne was the son of Peter Byrne, an Irish-born lawyer who had settled first in New York before moving to Pennsylvania’s Coal Region in the 1840s.

He described how the returning volunteers, their 90-day enlistments expiring, flooded the capital and quartered themselves in the market house, the Capitol, and every available corner of the city.

When the government failed to pay them off promptly, M.J. Byrne recorded, grumbling curdled into open rioting. The men stormed the arsenal attempting to reclaim the arms they had surrendered, ransacked the Jones House hunting for the army’s paymaster, and paraded through the streets with fife and drum in angry protest.

Byrne was witnessing the messy unraveling of the Union’s first summer at war. President Lincoln’s April call for volunteers had assumed a short conflict, and tens of thousands had enlisted for only three months. By the end of July those terms were expiring all at once, just as the rout at Bull Run made plain that the war had barely begun.

Byrne captures the cost of that miscalculation in a single bitter line: paid and discharged with respect, he wrote, many men would have re-enlisted, but treated as they were, the majority “declared they would never again enlist.”

The returning soldiers, Byrne reported, “all complain of Patterson, and call him a double-dyed traitor,” certain that General Robert Patterson could have led them to victory and instead let the enemy escape. Patterson, a 69-year-old veteran of two wars, had been ordered to pin Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley; when Johnston slipped away to reinforce the Confederates at Bull Run, Patterson became the defeat’s first great scapegoat. Byrne shared an unfounded rumor that Patterson allowed Johnston to escape because of family ties to the rebel officer.

Patterson’s three-months army dissolved and he was mustered out within days, never to command again during the Civil War.

From the Carbondale Advance, August 10, 1861

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CAMP CURTIN, 

July 31st, 1861. 

DEAR PARENTS: 

I received your letter, etc. 

Since your departure we have had exciting times In Harrisburg, The three months men (volunteers), returning from the seat of war, on their arrival here were quartered in and around the Capitol, in the market house, and in every available place, until they completely flooded the town.

Through some mismanagement of the part of the Government, they could not immediately be paid off. Some grumbling and signs of dissatisfaction arose, until they broke out into open rioting. They made an attack upon the Arsenal, to obtain the arms they had delivered up; but were defeated by the determined stand made by the guard there. They entered the Jones House and searched it to find the Paymaster. They paraded through the streets with fife and drum, threatening destruction to private property.

We were ordered from Camp Curtin, taking with us a battery; but, the order was countermanded before we reached town. Order was at length restored; and again the next day the rioting broke out, which was again soon quelled. The Mayor judicially ordered that all places selling liquor should be closed, which without doubt took much of the spirit from the rioters. 

Much of this was perhaps owing to some mismanagement of the paymasters. They should have been paid off immediately, and discharged; had this been done, many would have again re-enlisted in the service. But after being treated in such a manner, the majority declared they would never again enlist,– or they would enlist in the service of the State of New York. 

They all complain of Patterson, and call him a double-dyed traitor. They say he could have led them to victory and neglected it. You are perhaps aware that Patterson is the father-in-law of Johnston. 

Yesterday we held an election for “Field Officers.” 

Capt. Rush, from Phila., a West Point graduate, was elected Colonel; Capt. Campbell, Lieut.-Col.: and Capt.’s Lewis and Damfield, Majors. 

We had a military supper from these elected, during which Col. Campbell announced that he held in his hard “marching orders,” for Washington – he did not state the time of departure; rumor however says in a day or two. Our Battery is being completed.

Write as usual, as I shall receive your letter wherever we may be quartered, until I write again, Ever, etc.,

M. J. BYRNE, 

Lieut. 1st Pa. Artillery, Co. B

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Read the previous letter from the Letters from War: 1861 series.

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This is part of an ongoing series called “Letters from War: 1861” that will share correspondence written on the front lines during the turbulent first year of the Civil War.

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