Firemen with flags rallied to nation’s cause
The conclusion of the four-year-long 150th anniversary of the Civil War is a good time to remember how some firemen put down their hoses to pick up flags and firearms.
In the spring of 1861, when southern states began to secede, The New York Times reported that “the extreme danger to which the Federal Capital is now exposed…has prompted an appeal to the New-York Firemen to organize into a Regiment…to assist in defending it from the threatened invasion.”
Firemen were summoned because they were “inured to hardship” and accustomed to working as a team in dangerous circumstances. The article said that “one fire company…volunteer[ed] en masse, while Brooklyn…proffered 300 of her hardy sons.”
Naturally, those firemen wanted flags to carry into battle, and “a stand of colors was presented to the regiment,” The Times said, “on behalf of the New-York Fire Department.”
The president of the Fire Department told the firefighters to take the flags, “place them in the midst of your gallant band, and wherever the fight is the thickest, and the bullets fly the fastest, let these banners be borne, and…remember the proud motto emblazoned upon them: ‘The Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave.’…Bring it back, though it be tattered and torn in the fight….Swear by that flag to live, for that flag to die!…These banners will ever wave in triumph, even though it be in the midst of ruins.”
The chief exhorted them to “spring with the same alacrity to the performance of your duty, at the call of the bugle, as though the old familiar note of the fire-trumpet fell upon your ear. Do this, and you will succeed. Let no man’s heart fail him; be firm, be united, be true to each other, have confidence in your commanders and yourselves, and when you return we will rejoice with you over the glories you have won, and weep with you over those that may have fallen.”
Also presenting flags to the firemen was the wife of John Jacob Astor Jr. She remarked that giving them the banners was “an honor second only to that of commanding such a regiment as I see before me.”
As the men marched onto a boat to take them to Washington, “three cheers were given for the presentations” of flags. The tune that played them aboard was “The Red, White and Blue.”