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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Fall 1993 (Vol. 41, No. 3; incorrectly labeled Vol. 42, No. 3), p. 46-47

The Island Guard
By Richard F. Miller

[Ad from newspaper:]

The Inquirer
Wednesday May 1, 1861
Mass Meeting!
Nantucket is Aroused! Her Daughters at Work!
Town to be Defended from Invasion.

...screamed the headlines of the lead story in the May 1, 1861, Nantucket Inquirer. A little more than two weeks had passed since the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, and the island was in an uproar of patriotic fervor. "Flags seem to be the order of the day," observed the Nantucket Mirror in the April 27, 1861, edition, noting that "... from every available point in town and from the shipping in the harbor floats the banner of our country, the glorious 'Stars and Stripes.'"

Flag waving was just the beginning. Public rallies, replete with bunting, patriotic airs, parades and orations by eminent townspeople, were held at the Atheneum and the Atlantic Straw Works. Students at the Polpis School ceremoniously raised the flag while children and parents alike cheered the cause of Union and President Abraham Lincoln. The temper of the times was such that it was not necessary to schedule a rally for one to take place. When merchant Obed C. Parker raised the national ensign from his store, a crowd quickly gathered and the highly esteemed Nantucket Brass Band hurriedly assembled and performed "national airs" without charge.

Yet, lurking just below the facade of speeches, music, and patriotic display was an anxiety verging on hysteria. Nantucketers shared the conviction that the island would soon be invaded by Confederate pirates. On May 13, 1861, a frightened Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to send a heartfelt plea to President Lincoln requesting a Navy gunboat to cruise Nantucket Sound and protect the island from ". . . the hostile vessels of those in rebellion to our Government."

Few Nantucketers had an accurate idea of who or what a Confederate was. For years before the war began, the Northern press, including Nantucket's two weekly newspapers, the Inquirer and the Mirror, had served readers a steady diet of articles and editorials maligning Southerners and the South. The attack on Fort Sumter served to confirm the worst fears of Northern unionists. To their earlier perceptions that secessionists were drunken fops, cowards, and mentally deranged were now added "true" accounts of rebel butchery of innocent civilians, massacres of unarmed prisoners of war, and, perhaps most frightening to Nantucketers, a series of dispatches claiming that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was assembling a fleet of international pirates to lay waste seacoast communities in the North.

It is easy to understand why the Selectmen, in their letter to President Lincoln, called the rebels ". . . Privateers . . . lawless freebooters [and] lawless pirates . . ." who would invade Nantucket, ". . . levy contributions on the inhabitants . . ." and then—suggesting fears shared by civilians since time immemorial—burn the town and violate the women and children.

There is no record of President Lincoln's response, but Nantucket's citizens didn't wait for help from Washington. Less than two weeks after the outbreak of war, a number of island men of military age banded together and formed an armed militia—an organization that was unthinkable just days earlier. Further, as the Selectmen set forth in their appeal to the President, "... a portion of the Inhabitants of Nantucket are of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and their descendants, and warlike preparations have, by reason of the peculiarities of their doctrine, been always discountenanced."

Nantucket had never had a militia. The island managed to avoid the Indian wars that prompted so many New England towns to create and maintain a permanent military company. During their young nation's war for independence and the War of 1812, Quakers dominated the island's population and pursued a self-preserving policy of neutrality consistent with their pacifist values. Even attacks by both Continental and Loyalist-refugee raiding parties did not compromise Nantucket's neutral stand. That stance was maintained during the conflict of 1812 through the persistent bipartisan efforts of otherwise hotly contesting Democratic-Republicans and Federalists.

Nantucketers who believed that the War Between the States was somehow inconsistent with the Christian principles they had embraced from earliest childhood had merely to consult with island clerics like Reverend Brayton of the Congregational Church or Reverends Bodfish and White of the Methodist Episcopal Church to learn that, whatever may have been true in the past, it was a just war.

Faced with the specter of bloodthirsty rebel pirates lurking just beyond the horizon, the people of Nantucket lost no time in sanctioning the martial bent of the island's young men. Specially convened Town Meetings appropriated funds to outfit and arm the fledgling militia, now officially designated the Island Guard. Included in the budget was an amount sufficient to purchase ".. . two bronze cannon with accouterments . . ." to serve as shore batteries to protect the harbor in the event of a seaborne invasion.

Shortly after the Town Meeting approved the expenditures, a hundred muskets and a stock of ammunition were delivered for the use of the Guard. Private subscriptions paid for their uniforms and provided headquarters space. But there were those Nantucketers reluctant to leave the defense of the island exclusively to the all-male Guard. One letter to the Mirror suggested that the threat of "piratical invasion" required not only that ". . . every man should have his gun...," but that ". . . even the ladies should be provided with light rifles."

At its peak in the summer of 1861, the Island Guard numbered about sixty citizen-soldiers. Drills in the manual of arms and close-order marching were an almost daily occurrence, many of which took place right on Main Street. Contemporary accounts note with satisfaction that the Guard ". . . presented a decidedly soldier like appearance . . ." which helped to allay the fears of the sponsoring community.

In July, A. P. Moore, editor of the Inquirer and co-commander of the Island Guard, stated that the two rifled cannon the town had purchased ". . . would be of little use were a boat's crew of pirates to land in the night or on most parts of our shores." But he assured his readers that there was no cause for alarm, as ". . . the Home Guard would easily dispose of such visitors in a summary manner."

If calming islanders' fears by showing the flag was an important part of the Guard's mission, the record shows that they performed splendidly. The annual Nantucket High School picnic featured the Island Guard marching with the Nantucket Brass Band for an afternoon of ". . . music, dancing, sweetmeats and military tactics." A few days later, the Guard figured prominently in the town's July Fourth celebration. Dressed in their new uniforms, they marched through town in the morning, performed exercises in target shooting at the Fairgrounds that afternoon, and sponsored a soiree at the Pantheon Hall in the evening. All through that summer of 1861 the Island Guard could be counted on to provide just the right flourish to welcome distinguished visitors, at flag presentations, and representing Nantucket at war rallies throughout the state.

It was inevitable that the war that created the need for a Nantucket militia would be the cause of its eventual demise. As fears of invasion by rebel forces diminished, William Summerhayes, co-commander of the Guard, petitioned Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew to accept the Island Guard as a distinct military unit of company strength to serve with one of the many Massachusetts regiments then being formed. The Governor did not approve, so members of the Guard began to fall out in order to enlist in one or another of those regiments.

Summerhayes was commissioned as a captain by the colorful soldier-politician General Benjamin "Spoons" Butler. A. P. Moore sold the Inquirer and left Nantucket to muster into the 45th Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, but never made it. He was killed in a train accident en route to the 45th's Leadville encampment near Boston. Other members of the Guard joined islander George Nelson Macy to serve with the "Bloody 20th" Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, and many others enlisted in the United States Navy.

By November of 1861 the Island Guard had served its purpose and no longer had a place in the Nantucket community. The few remaining guardsmen hosted a fair to raise money to pay off outstanding debts and to close out the organization's books. By then, Quaker roots notwithstanding, Nantucket could boast of at least one-hundred-eleven sons serving with Union forces on land and at sea.

That autumn had brought other, sadder news to island families. Along with the rest of the 20th Massachusetts, Macy's Nantucketers had undergone their baptism of fire at the Union disaster of Balls Bluff. Some died, some were wounded, and others were taken prisoners by the Confederates. The names of the dead and wounded printed in island newspapers then were just the first of many more to come as nearly four hundred of Nantucket's young men went off to the war which nearly one in four did not survive.

Rebel forces never did invade Nantucket. By war's end, the only harm islanders suffered from the tiny Confederate Navy were a few small claims resulting from the damages inflicted by the famous rebel cruiser Alabama on commercial vessels in which islanders had a financial interest. As the casualty lists grew longer, islanders learned that the real enemy was not the Confederate-backed "lawless freebooter," but rather an army of young men much like the island boys but dressed in butternut instead of blue, young men who, just as ours did, left their homes convinced that God was on their side.