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Monument Rededication Recalls Sacrifice Of Civil War Soldiers

November 15, 1987|by FRANK WHELAN, The Morning Call

Just the year before, President Franklin Pierce had declared the slavery question settled by the Compromise of 1850. But Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas opened up the can of worms again with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Slave owners on one side and abolitionists on the other were pouring into the new territory hoping to make it go their way. In less than a year, arguments would give way to guns and "bleeding Kansas" would dominate the press.

But most people in Allentown had more pressing concerns. The city was expanding. Neighborhoods on 10th Street had been farmland only 10 years before. Now the growing iron industry and the rise of a new professional class were leading to a building boom that must have stretched limited city services.

The original Allentown Cemetery laid out by William Allen in 1762 was full. And the Allentown Cemetery Park, founded in 1846, would never be able to meet the needs of a growing community. So when J.D. Lawall, J.F. Newhard, William S. Young, Nathan Dresher, Lewis F. Schmidt, Benjamin J. Hagenbach and Mifflin Hannum gathered to form the Union Cemetery Association and offered the 1,200 plots to the public, it attracted a great deal of interest.

The first lots were sold for $6 apiece. Perhaps to avoid charges of favoritism, lot location was chosen by a lottery. Demand was so great that the price was raised to $10 a lot. The first person to be buried at Union Cemetery was John Diefenderfer, who died on Sept. 25, 1854.

As the 1850s slipped away, more change came to Allentown. Railroads opened up the city to New York and Philadelphia. Irishmen poured into the 6th Ward, and country people flocked to the city. Men became rich in the booming real estate market and saw it all melt away in the Panic of 1857. And the Union Cemetery quietly did its job as a burying ground.

From outside the Lehigh Valley came the rumbles of a nation unable to contain its anger. Like most of the North, the people of the Lehigh Valley had little understanding or interest in the plight of the black man. But a threat to the Union could not be condoned or ignored. In 1861, it had reached a time of testing that took iron workers from their furnaces and clerks from the office stools.

Perhaps the most outstanding Lehigh Valley clerk-turned-soldier was Thomas Yeager. The Civil War was only hours old when this captain of the Allen Infantry, which he had formed in 1859, was on his way with the "First Defenders" to Washington. It was Yeager, a man of energy and daring, who led his troops through the rioting citizens of Baltimore. Once in the Washington, he shrewdly spread rumors among the Southern sympathizers in the nation's capital that 10,000 troops were on the way. It helped keep the Rebel army at a safe distance.

When his three-month enlistment with the First Defenders was up, Yeager joined the Pottstown-based 53rd Regiment. He quickly was shown to be on a fast track for promotion. It was as a member of this regiment that Yeager was attached to the Army of the Potomac, under the overall command of Gen. George B. McClellan.

Given to Napoleonic poses, McClellan looked every inch the general. The troops called their shortcommander "Little Mac." His campaign to march up the Peninsula, between Virginia's York and James rivers and on to Richmond, seemed a certain success. Among those joining the expedition to glory was the 36-year-old Maj. Yeager.

When Gen. Joe Johnston's troops attacked, they surprised Federal forces. The fighting in the tangled undergrowth was confused. Johnston was wounded and put out of commission. His place was taken by a military aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis named Robert E. Lee.

By the end of May 31, the South had forced the Union forces back. The next morning, near a place called Seven Pines, a Union brigade headed by Gen. William H. French came forward to aid their hard-pressed comrades. In the brigade was the 53rd Pennsylvania Volunteer regiment and its young Maj. Thomas Yeager.

Accounts of the action between the Union and Confederate armies on June 1, 1862, are as confused as the fight itself. Some have Yeager leading a gallant if foolish bayonet charge. Others believe brigade commander French led the charge, and Yeager was caught in a cross fire of Confederates.

In another account, he was scouting the dark woods during the battle looking for Rebels. Spotting this easy target, the nest of sharpshooters took aim and put three bullets into Maj. Yeager and 11 into his horse. No one can say which account is true. But the next day it was all the same to Yeager's aide James Hamman - the young major was no more.

When news of Yeager's death came back to Allentown, the city plunged into mourning. Local Civil War scholar Dick Matthews believes that Yeager was one of the first if not the first battle death to come home for burial. It took several weeks for Yeager's body to find its way back to the Lehigh Valley. And it was to Union Cemetery that he was taken for burial.

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