History's Headlines: Captain Thomas Yeager and Allentown’s First Defenders
Written by CWRT Board Member Frank Whelan Feb 6, 2021
WFMZ.com
“Now the capital was ringed by rebellion.”
- Margaret Leech, “Reveille in Washington 1860-1865”
By 1911 the Civil War had been over for a long time, almost 50 years in fact. But one issue still understandably rankled in the eyes of many local people. Everyone in the Lehigh Valley knew that it was militia units from eastern Pennsylvania, among them the Allen Infantry commanded by Allentown’s Major Thomas Yeager, that were the first to answer Lincoln’s call for troops to defend the capital in 1861. Those units had gone through a hellish mob of secession supporters in Baltimore and been housed in the unfinished Capitol building on their arrival. So, it rankled Yeager’s family members that year when it was being questioned by a New England regiment’s veteran in a newspaper that they were the first to reach Washington. Taking up his pen, Yeager’s nephew, Thomas P. Yeager, a retired U.S. army military man, was moved to note the facts:
“An anonymous writer to the New York Sun, who signs himself “Company K 6th Massachusetts Volunteers” is mistaken in his assertion when he says he saw the Pennsylvania First Defenders held up in Baltimore as Boston troops were fighting their way through the mob there, April 19, 1861. On that day the Pennsylvania First Defenders were already in Washington, having arrived the night before. What the Boston man saw was Colonel Small’s Philadelphia Regiment, which unfortunately did not get through the mob that day. To a Pennsylvanian, furthermore, the Boston soldier is laughably mixed up in his geography. He says the Pennsylvanian First Defenders he saw in Baltimore, 19 April 1861, were en route from “Philadelphia to Washington” whereas the truth of history is that the First Defenders went direct from Harrisburg to Baltimore and thence to Washington, on April 18, 1861, after having been sworn in at Camp Curtin.”
The letter writer went on to note that a letter that Major Yeager had written in 1861 showed the truth. But chances are good that if the anonymous man from Boston saw the reply to his letter in the Sun he wrote it off as just one of long series of skirmishes between the New England Yankees and those they regarded as the “dumb Dutch.” Even today it is possible to find historians of that war who confidently give pride of first place to the men from Boston.
Everyone in 1861 sort of knew it would come to this. If Abraham Lincoln was elected, the South would leave the Union. But like many people across the country, those in the Lehigh Valley had their own concerns. For local farmers spring meant the fields had to be plowed. Iron makers were looking for a good year of recovery as the effects of the Panic of 1857 had begun to fade. Investors in local real estate were pleased with the growth in downtown Allentown, especially around 7th and Hamilton Street. Among them was Thomas Yeager, a young merchant with impressive sideburns whose major project in the 1850s had been a row of handsome brick dwellings in the 500 block of Walnut Street known after him as Yeager’s Row. Brick homes were something relatively new for Allentown.
But the background noise from the rest of the country came into Allentown with the click of the telegraph key. And try as they might, no one could ignore it. In 1859, the year of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Yeager formed a militia unit, the Allen Infantry. Most were Allentown citizens and Yeager had trained and drilled them to the best of his ability. But one of the men later admitted that they had little if any idea of what war meant. He noted most thought of it as some sort of excursion. One by one as southern states left…
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