William and the American Civil War
Just 6 months after William and Mary were married, the United States plunged into war. The American Civil War was fought from April 12,1861 to April 9, 1865. In the month of July, 1863 William registered for the draft as a person of Class I, subject to do military duty in the Eleventh Congressional District, consisting of the counties of Adams, Blackford, and Hamilton in the State of Indiana. Between 1863-1865, there were four drafts that included the recruitment of 776,000 individuals.
The War Registration document on this page shows the following information for William:
Name: William Smith
Residence: Hamilton Co., Indiana
Class: 1
Congressional District: 11th
Age on 1 July 1863: 27
Estimated birth year: 1836
Race: White
Marital Status: Married
Place of Birth: Germany
Remarks: One finger short
Most Hamilton County men joined the 39th, 75th and 101st Indiana Infantry. However, no evidence so far suggests that William joined either of these.
In fact, this is the only record found so far that associates him with the Civil War at all. He and Mary had two children born during the height of the war - Allen, born in 1862 and Elmer, born in 1864. Plus, the fact that William was “one finger short” might have been viewed as a handicap, which may have kept him out of the war entirely. Tinners worked with sheet metal having sharp edges and tools used to cut and shape the metal. It’s quite plausible he lost part or all of a finger as a result of his trade.
At the war’s end, 277 men were known dead from Hamilton County.
Click image to enlarge
Figure 10: Civil War registration, enumerated during the month of July, 1863.
On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate troops to the Union's Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, marking the beginning of the end of the grinding four-year-long American Civil War.
Relief at the war’s end soon returned to grief as the nation learned on April 14, 1865 that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, had been assassinated. A well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth shot the President in the head as he watched the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the following day in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first American president to be assassinated. Lincoln's funeral and burial marked an extended period of national mourning.