Major McKinley by William H. Armstrong

Author:William H. Armstrong [Armstrong, William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Wars & Conflicts (Other)
ISBN: 9780873386579
Google: GRqiryPW_K0C
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: 2000-01-15T16:08:15+00:00

McKinley was initiated into Masonry at Hiram Lodge No. 21, Free and Accepted Masons, in Winchester. The activities of the Winchester lodge had been interrupted during the war, but after the Battle of Cedar Creek, its officers asked General Sheridan for permission to reopen the lodge. One of Sheridan’s surgeons, who was himself a Mason, urged Sheridan to grant the request, arguing that it would give the soldiers an opportunity to mingle with the local people and remove some of the bitter feeling between them, and Sheridan agreed. The soldiers showed considerable interest in Masonry, and more than two hundred were initiated into the Winchester lodge. John B. T. Reed, the master of the lodge, an “intensely Southern man,” conferred McKinley’s degrees on him on the three days before he left Winchester for Camp Stoneman, May 1, 2, and 3. On May 3, McKinley was given a release of his membership, and when he returned to Ohio, he resumed his association with Masonry and continued it the rest of his life.63

Carroll and his staff and the three regiments of veteran volunteers began their five-day march to Camp Stoneman on May 4, an uneventful march except for the surrender of some four hundred Confederate soldiers along the way. The other six regiments of veteran volunteers were already at Camp Stoneman, and all nine regiments were soon organized as the First Division, First Army Corps.64

The veteran volunteers in the First Army Corps had been recruited from honorably discharged soldiers with at least two years of military service. They were to serve as U.S. Volunteers rather than serving in state organizations as previous volunteers had. To encourage enlistments, the popular General Hancock was selected to organize the corps, which became known as Hancock’s Corps. Volunteers were promised a special bounty of three hundred dollars and the right to keep their breech-loading or repeating rifles when they were discharged. Although Hancock and his staff had their headquarters in Washington, all the volunteers that had been raised—about eight thousand men—were stationed at Camp Stoneman, and all were included in General Carroll’s First Division, the only division in the First Army Corps. To establish the new corps’ identity, badges were issued to all the men, who were ordered to wear them on the tops of their caps under penalty of being “tied up 24 hours by the thumbs.”65

The organization of the division was completed in time for the Grand Review of the Union armies in Washington in late May, but Carroll’s request to have the division included in the review was not granted. Instead, General Hancock reviewed the division at nearby Giesboro Point in the company of Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania and Maj. Gen. Christopher C. Augur, who commanded the Department of Washington. Even though McKinley did not participate in the Grand Review, he was able to go into Washington to observe it. He was struck by a motto displayed at the Capitol that said, “The only debt this government can never pay is the debt it owes the brave men who saved the nation,” a statement he often quoted in postwar speeches.

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