{"id":685,"date":"2010-12-07T19:13:27","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T00:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/?p=685"},"modified":"2011-03-16T23:12:37","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T04:12:37","slug":"james-smith-colwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/2010\/12\/07\/james-smith-colwell\/","title":{"rendered":"1861 (Fighting for Liberty) James Smith Colwell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

James Colwell (Cumberland County Historical Society)<\/p><\/div>\n

Narrative<\/strong>
\nJames Smith Colwell<\/a>, who worked as a lawyer in Carlisle<\/a>, Pennsylvania, was one of the men who answered President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s<\/a> call for 75,000 volunteers after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter<\/a> on April 12, 1861. Colwell joined the Carlisle Fencibles, a local volunteer company under the command of Robert Henderson<\/a>, as a first lieutenant. Six weeks later the Fencibles left Carlisle for Camp Wayne in West Chester<\/a>, Pennsylvania, where they received training and were designated Company A of the 7th Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserve Corps. His wife, Ann<\/a>, had not been happy with that decision. \u201cYou left me without talking about it,\u201d as Ann reminded him. While James admitted that \u201c[he] err[ed] frequently,\u201d he observed that \u201cit [was] nearly always an error of the judgment & not of the heart.\u201d Yet in this case he\u00a0argued\u00a0that it was impossible to get out of the army. \u201cI do not see how I could get out of the service without bring[ing] disgrace and dishonour on myself & my little family,\u201d as Colwell explained. Colwell had in mind his four children \u2013 two sons and two daughters. Colwell’s oldest daughter, Nannie, was about six years old in December 1861 when she announced<\/a> in her \u201cfirst letter\u201d that she \u201c[could] read\u201d and \u201c[sent him] a big kiss.\u201d Colwell was able to return to Carlisle on furlough, but on September 17, 1862 he died during the Battle of Antietam. Local newspapers published obituaries<\/a>, including the Carlisle (PA) American<\/em>, which noted that \u201c[Colwell\u2019s] high moral character and exemplary life had made him a bright example in our midst.\u201d When Civil War veterans in Carlisle established a local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic in February 1881, they decided to call it the Captain Colwell Post.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong>
\nThe best source on James Colwell is David G. Colwell’s The Bitter Fruits: The Civil War Comes to a Small Town in Pennsylvania<\/em> (1998). In addition, the Cumberland County Historical Society<\/a> in Carlisle,\u00a0Pennsylvania\u00a0has Colwell’s correspondence.<\/p>\n

Places to Visit<\/strong>
\nThe Colwell family\u2019s house was located at 145 South Pitt Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. While today the house is a private residence, you can visit the Cumberland County Historical Society<\/a>, which is\u00a0located several blocks away at 21 North Pitt Street. You can also visit Antietam National Battlefield<\/a> in Sharpsburg, Maryland.<\/p>\n

Artifacts<\/strong>
\nThe Cumberland County Historical Society<\/a> has material related to Colwell and his regiment, the Carlisle Fencibles.<\/p>\n

Images<\/strong>
\nThe slideshow below includes images from David Colwell’s The Bitter Fruits: The Civil War Comes to a Small Town in Pennsylvania<\/em> (1998).<\/p>\n

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Narrative James Smith Colwell, who worked as a lawyer in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was one of the men who answered President Abraham Lincoln\u2019s call for 75,000 volunteers after Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Colwell joined the Carlisle Fencibles, a local volunteer company under the command of Robert Henderson, as a first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8651,3974],"tags":[18,156,13],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighting-for-liberty","category-terrible-war-1861-1865","tag-artifacts","tag-images","tag-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2810,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions\/2810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}