One of the early Coastal History columns I wrote some five years ago was about the Civil War. I don’t remember the subject, but I tossed out a line like this: “We are lucky the Confederates never reached the Maine border.” Soon after, I received a three-page letter from my uncle, Gene Reynolds, who informed me that I was wrong. He brings it up every time I see him, and last week he gifted me a book called “Confederates Downeast.” I guess it’s time to set the record straight.
We have no holy Civil War battlegrounds in Maine, such as Gettysburg, but we had at least a couple of minor skirmishes that helped Mainers feel like they were involved.
With the slow spread of real news at the time, combined with the rapid spread of rumors, it seems that our citizens often felt that they were in danger of imminent attack. Such was the case in Calais, near the Canadian border. Some rumors suggested that a seized steamboat was going to be used for raiding towns on the St. Croix River. Others said confederates were riling up the Passamaquoddy natives, who were going to rise up and slaughter the whites. Finally, it was learned that Confederates were coming into town to rob the bank.
This turned out to be true.
A force of three Confederates and one Union deserter walked into the Calais Bank, tossed down a few gold coins and demanded greenbacks. One held his hand suspiciously near a gun in his pocket. Unfortunately for the would-be robbers, the townsmen were quite riled up and armed. Four men behind the counter drew weapons and another group of armed men instantly streamed through the door. One of these managed to shoot himself in the foot, but there were no other casualties. The Confederates admitted they had planned to rob the bank, set fire to the town and hoist a silk rebel flag that one man held in his pocket.
Another incident happened in Portland Harbor, where a revenue cutter was seized and stolen by a band of Confederate raiders led by Lt. Charles Read. Read had been raiding shipping along the east coast, but with the Navy after him he took a Maine fishing schooner and burned his own ship. Dressed as fishermen, the rebels went into Portland Harbor to steal a ship called the Caleb Cushing and burn two unfinished gunboats sitting at Franklin Wharf.
The gunboats were in no danger, as it turned out, but Read did manage to overpower the skeleton crew aboard the Cushing and head for open sea. The ship was armed with two cannons and 800 pounds of powder, but the cannon balls were hidden in a secret room behind a mirror in the captain’s cabin. Read never found them, and the crew refused to talk. Soon he was being pursued by two armed steamships, which were guided in his direction with flag signals from the observatory on Munjoy Hill.
Lacking the hidden cannonballs, the Confederates loaded the ship’s cannon with ballast stones, pieces of metal and even potatoes and hard cheese. This was as effective as you would imagine, so Read soon abandoned and set fire to the ship. The Cushing exploded when the fire hit the gunpowder stores. By then everyone was in small boats, including the captured crewmen, and nobody was killed. The rebels were taken to Portland, where a mob awaited them, but the Army escorted the prisoners to the local fort. The city was in a general state of uproar for some time after that, expecting more raids that never came.
So indeed, I was wrong about the lack of Confederate action in Maine. I doubt the residents of Pennsylvania or Virginia would be much impressed, however.
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