Elsewhere on reddit, I saw this fascinating link featuring photos of Revolutionary War veterans. I see from the ages, some of them lived into the 1860's. It had never occured to me before that there could still be veterans from the Revolution alive during the Civil War and I find it fascinating.
Are there any interviews or any documentation of reactions from Revolutionary War veterans on the Civil War? I'd be very interested to see what the people who lived through the beginning of the country thought of a war that tore their country apart.
Edit: I'd also be interested in any interviews or letters or anything else from these veterans for other major topics from the era, like emancipation, Lincoln's assassination, etc, and not just their reactions to the civil war.
Edit2: I see someone posted reactions from some Northern Vets about the war and they were all decidedly pro-Union and the comment was deleted. Reading that response before it was gone makes me think about an additional question. Were there any SOUTHERN Revolutionary war veterans alive around the Civil War era? If so, I'd very, very much love to hear their thoughts as well.
Something that should be stated first and foremost is that the general public and civil society in America at this time were very cognizant of the fact that the last of the Revolutionary War veterans were of advanced age and dying soon. The last of them died during the decade of the 1860s. Combined with the self-awareness of the fact that the nation which they had been cofounders of in the 1770s was now being undone by civil insurrection via secession in the 1860s, the print media took special interest in these remaining veterans during the war years
In a June 1864 issue solemnly entitled Only Twelve Left, the New York Times reported that the Committee on Revolutionary Pensions gave Congress a resolution to thank the remaining twelve verified veterans of the Revolution (whom the New York Times entitled the '12 Apostles of Liberty') and recommended that these last twelve men be given a more generous federal pension to "smooth the rugged path of life on their journey to the tomb". Copies of the resolution from the committee were also sent to each of the twelve by the Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax.
The New York Herald, the Democratic-oriented competitor to the Republican NY Times, ran a full-page spread in late 1863 where they gave biographical 'sketches of the survivors' to the reader. The Herald reports something interesting in the way these remaining survivors are linked to the chaos of civil war. The Herald reports several more people as Revolution veterans than the Times. Why? Because it included the surviving veterans who were living in the Confederate states, whereas the Times didn't. The Herald article states that "the Southern Rebellion has prevented the payment of the pensioners in the seceded states for the last two years and a half, and of course, there have been no returns from the agencies formerly existing to those states since March 4, 1861. The following list, therefore, includes these in such states who were paid to that date and who are not known to have since died, but it is probable that at least half of these are now dead, as several of them were over one hundred years old at that time".
This is a brief snapshot of what print media was saying about these men at the time, but it shows that people were aware and interested in the quickly vanishing number of veterans, probably especially in the context of the country they'd taken part in forming being threatened with secession and dissolution. There was some very obvious poetic irony unraveling that these men were old enough to see civil war unfold in America. As another user has mentioned, a compiled memoir entitled The Last Men of the Revolution was released in 1864 by Connecticut reverend Elias Hillard, which was produced from interviews with 7 of the remaining men. For the most part, the interviews engage in the early lives of these men and their experiences during the Revolution, rather than their views on contemporary events. Of course, this makes sense. If you were sitting down to interview a World War 2 veteran today, you probably wouldn't pester him with questions on his thoughts about Obamacare, Brexit, and Republican immigration policy. You'd ask him about the war and his experiences in the war. People generally don't see the period they're living in as part of history, but just the daily grind, even if it was during an event as monumental as the Civil War. How often do you consider how the current events and news and conflicts of today will be perceived in 2100, or 2200? Probably not often.
However, there is some mention of their thoughts towards the Confederacy and war listed. This excerpt is from the interview with Samuel Downing, a veteran from the Continental Army's New Hampshire Line who was 103 in 1864:
______
Downing: There's always policy, you know, in war. We made the British think we were coming to take the city. We drew up in line of battle: the British drew up over there (pointing with his hand). They looked very handsome. But Washington went south to Yorktown. Lafayette laid down the white sticks, and we threw up entrenchments by them. We were right opposite Washington's headquarters. I saw him every day.
Hillard: Was he as fine looking a man as he is reported to have been?
Downing: Oh! (he exclaimed, lifting up both his hands and pausing) but you never got a smile out of him. He was a nice man. We loved him. They'd sell their lives for him.
Hillard: What do you think he would say if he was here now?
Downing: Say? I don't know, but he'd be mad to see me sitting here. I tell em if they'll give me a horse I'll go as it is. If the rebels (confederates)come here, I shall sartingly take my gun. I can see best furtherest off!
Hillard: How would Washington treat traitors if he caught them?
Downing: Hang 'em to the first tree!
_____
After this exchange, Hillard recorded "he denounces the present rebellion, and says he only wishes to live to see it crushed out".
In another excerpt from the section on the life of Connecticut veteran Daniel Waldo, Hillard recorded that Waldo as well was 'intensely loyal' in regards to the rebellion and that he "greatly desired to live till the rebellion should be suppressed. He had implicit faith in the ultimate success of the Union arms and the re-establishment of the authority of the National Government over all the states. President Lincoln he deemed honest, but not decided enough. He thought that the leaders of the rebellion should be dealt with in such a manner that no one would dare in the future to repeat the experiment."
Lemuel Cook, another veteran from Connecticut said in his talks with Hillard on the war that "It is terrible, but terrible as it is, the rebellion must be put down!".
Alexander Milliner, A Quebec born patriot who was a drummer boy in the Continental Army, echoed the same language to Hillard. Milliner stated "it is too bad that this country, so hardly got, should be destroyed by its own people." Hillard stated that Milliner "inquires every day or two about the army and express the desire to live to see the rebellion crushed. At the outbreak of it, he wanted to take his drum and go down to Rochester, and beat for volunteers. Two years ago in September, he presided over a meeting for raising recruits for the 140th New York Regiment. His presence at the meeting it is said, caused great excitement and enthusiasm".
That image of a 102 year old man beating his drum in the streets is an intriguing one indeed!
All in all these are the observations on the civil war that I could find from Hillard's 1864 text. These men generally echoed the same sentiment that the majority of people in their states echoed; anti-secessionism, and pro-Union sentiment. One thing that I would be particularly interested in are the recollections and musings of any remaining Revolutionary War veterans who lived in the Confederacy during the war. Hillard only interviews men who live in Union states, and this is at a time when common citizens of the United States feel a close affinity to their states and supported a very regionalist local style of government. It really was the Civil War that introduced the concept of a strong and centralized federal government superseding the states. I can't find any similar text that was produced including the perspectives of veterans from the seceded states. If anyone is able to find such a thing, I'd be very interested in reading it.
This was my first time reading excerpts from The Last Men of the Revolution. My impression is that this text was really groundbreaking for its time in giving accounts of contextualized historical memory to a new generation nearly a century on, in a historical moment of civil war that made the observations of these men particularly poignant.
I've asked a similar question here recently and got a lot of really great answers.
You might be interested in giving the thread a scroll.