subject index to the Levi B. Downs Papers
Alphabetic index to the Schoff Civil War Collections
| William L. Clements Library
The University of Michigan Schoff Civil War Collection Soldiers' Letters 57-58 |
Downs, Levi B., 1839-1884 Rank: Pvt.; Lieut. (1864 July 9) Regiment: 1st Connecticut Artillery Regiment (Heavy). Battery I (1861-1865)
107th United States Infantry Regiment (Colored). Co. B (1864-1866)Service: 1861 May 23-1866 November
In May, 1861, Levi B. Downs, a mechanic from Cheshire, Conn., enlisted in the 4th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, which was redesignated the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery the following January. After a quiet winter performing garrison duty at Fort Richardson, Va., the 1st Heavy Artillery was attached to the Army of the Potomac for the Peninsular Campaign, engaging in siege duties at Yorktown and participating in several engagements through the month of July. By September, they had returned again to garrison duty, serving at Fort Scott in Arlington Heights.
Downs, who had periodically had health problems while in the service, became gravely ill in July, 1863, with a condition that resulted in aural suppuration and a disfiguration of his face. Hospitalised for more than two months, he was slow to recover his strength but was managed to keep his finances in order by running a small sutler's shop. In May, 1864, after the 1st Conn. Heavy Artillery were called into action at Drewry's Bluff and during the opening stages of the Petersburg Campaign, Downs received a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 107th U.S.C.T. and was ordered to Louisville, Ky., to recruit. He served briefly with the 109th U.S.C.T. while his own regiment was being organized and was then posted at Louisa and Louisville, Ky., before being returned to Virginia in October.
Conscious of the danger in which he was placed as a white officer in a "Colored" regiment, Downs nevertheless appears to have thought himself fearless in battle. The 107th U.S.C.T. took part in the Battle of Fair Oaks on October 27th-28th and in a major skirmish near Dutch Gap Canal in December, 1864, and in both engagements acquitted themselves well under heavy fire. In March, 1865, they were ordered to North Carolina to cover the rear of Sherman's army as they advanced northward, but when the remnants of the Army of Tennssee finally capitulated, the regiment was assigned to occupation duty in eastern North Carolina. Seemingly wasting no time, Downs met and married a young Unionist woman from Plymouth, N.C. whose family had fallen on hard times. After the regiment's reassignment in December, 1865, to guard duty at a Freedmen's village near Arlington, Va., he made numerous attempts, all unsuccessful, to resign his commission, citing the cessation of hostilities. Nevertheless he remained with his regiment until ordered to return to Lexington, Ky., to be mustered out in November, 1866.
The economic opportunities available to a northerner in early Reconstruction North Carolina appealed to Downs, but he was somehow never fully able to capitalise on them. For over a year beginning in September, 1868, he was employed as a Clerk in the Claims Division of the Freedmen's Bureau at Plymouth, N.C., working mainly under the director of John M. Foote, processing claims for back pay and bounties filed by African-American veterans. Thereafter, Downs attempted to establish himself as a trader in fish (1870), as a collector of customs at the port of Plymouth, and every year, he continued to try, always unsuccessfully, to make a living at farming. Downs' crops seldom came up to expectations and his attempt at letting his farms out for share cropping also seems to have failed. Each year, too, his wife, Fannie, and their children battled disease. Two of the Downs' first four children died in their infancy, and Fannie herself succumbed in about 1880. Leaving North Carolina and his dead wife behind, Levi Downs returned to Connecticut with his surviving sons, Charlie (b. 1869) and David (b. 1874), and possibly a third, younger son in tow.
Downs was active in veterans' organizations, including the G.A.R. and the organization of veterans of Batteries I and B of the 1st Conn. Heavy Artillery, and he kept in touch with some of his fellow soldiers in the 107th U.S.C.T. From one of his fellow veterans, E.T. Lamberton, he learned that additional pay was owed him for his service in the 107th, and he was in the process of applying for this pay when he became seriously ill, and after spending seven months in the Veterans Hospital in Hartford, Conn., he died on December 12th, 1884. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery, Waterbury, Conn.
Levi Downs is neither a very prolific, literate, nor perceptive writer, but his letters have a value in that he filled several important roles during the Civil War. The Downs Papers include three sorts of materials: first, correspondence between Levi Downs and his sisters Louisa, Mary, Nancy, and Ann (Mrs. E.W. Frost); second, materials relating to claims for bounty money and pay in arrears, all handled by Downs as clerk to the Claims Agent for the local branch of the Freedmen's Bureau between December, 1868 and December, 1869; and finally, documents relating to Downs' military service, including commissions and returns. Downs' diary includes only very sporadic entries during 1864, and these only very brief. They do include notes on both Drewry's Bluff and Cold Harbor-Petersburg.
Downs' letters to his sisters provide comparatively little information on the military side of the war, although there are some good letters written while he was serving with the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery describing the siege at Yorktown, and some fairly good descriptions of life on the Richmond front when with the 107th U.S.C.T. His post-war letters provide a case study of the attempts of a Union veteran to establish himself in tough economic times by taking advantage of business opportunities in the occupied south. His record, unfortunately, is one of very limited success. An excellent and very long letter from another officer in the 107th U.S.C.T., E.T. Lamberton (1882 August 17-25), suggests that Downs' economic hardships and inability to capitalize on the Reconstruction economy were not unique. Lamberton details his own efforts at making a living and relates news he has heard from of the hard times faced by several other of their fellow officers.
The series of bounty claims and claims for arrears in pay, dated between December, 1868 and December, 1869, includes letters written by and on behalf of veterans of "Colored" regiments, including the 14th Heavy Artillery, the 35th, 36th, 37th and 38th U.S.C.T. (all but the 38th raised in North Carolina), and the 1st and 2nd U.S. Colored Cavalry. The majority of these letters are routine inquiries written on behalf of former soldiers by pension agents, friends or surviving relatives, though several letters addressed to Oliver Otis Howard (and forwarded) appear to have been written by the veterans themselves. One letter, from Marcus Hamilton, a Private in Downs' Company during the war, is a request for support in an application for a pension for having been wounded at Fair Oaks in October, 1864. Downs complied.
An unusual assortment of materials is associated with the Downs Papers. Included are a pair of Down's spectacles, his sword as an officer of the 107th U.S.C.T., a Civil War-era gutta percha core to a "baseball", his military belt buckle, a matchcase, a $20 Confederate bill and $2 bill from the Citizen's bank of Waterbury, and reunion ribbons for the 14th and 15th annual reunions of Companies I and B of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery (1884 and 1885). These have all been transferred to the Prints Division for storage. There are two photographs of Downs, a small one on a calling card with the notation, 4th Conn. Vols., and an outstanding tintype in an oval thermoplastic cameo case, taken while an officer in the 107th U.S.C.T.
Taylor, John C. History of the First Connecticut artillery and of the siege trains of the armies operating against Richmond, 1862-1865 (Hartford, 1893).
Walker, Edward A. Our first year of army life... (New Haven, 1862).
subject index to the Levi B. Downs Papers
Alphabetic index to the Schoff Civil War Collections
 Homepage |
 Manuscripts |
 Collections |  Staff |
 Hours and policies |
|---|