The History

      In 1863, federal army recruiting officials believed there were as many as 300 Union deserters hiding out in Monroe County's heavily forested ravines, with more draft resisters and bounty jumpers joining them as conscription went into effect.  

       In October, 1864, as the nation was preparing for the Presidential election, the federal provost marshal for Pennsylvania ordered 94 men of the Stroud Independent Cavalry Troop from Philadelphia to Stroudsburg to round up deserters and draft dodgers. The men signed up for 100 days of service, and for 20-year-old Private Leander K. Dease, it was a fatal choice. He was patrolling near the home of Jacob Miller in Price Township looking for deserters when he was shot and fell dead from his horse. The killer was never identified. During the months the detachment was in Monroe, there were ambushes, skirmishes and at least one death among the deserters and draft dodgers.

     The situation wasn’t unique to Monroe County. In Columbia and Luzerne counties and elsewhere, the patriotism that marked the first half of the war had eroded in some areas under the strains caused by war, including the return home of veterans maimed by the fighting and the suspicion that military leadership was lethally incompetent. Resistance to the draft motivated many incidents where neighbors banded together to protect draftees who didn’t want to go, and the house-to-house searches for the draftees by Union soldiers created more resentment.  Clashes became more common, and more and more troops – including some accompanied by artillery – spread out across the state to enforce laws supporting the war effort.  Reports grew of meetings being held where speakers urged armed resistance to the draft, leading to speculation that Copperhead influencers were at work. (Copperheads were a northern political faction who opposed the war and sought an immediate peace settlement with the Confederacy. The word “copperhead” was coined by the New York Tribune newspaper in 1861 to associate war opposition with a snake that ‘sneaks and strikes without warning'.)

At the same time, many still fervently supported the war and were intolerant of dissent in the ongoing crisis of a nation at war.

Newspapers, which in the 1860s were opinionated even in their news coverage, threw fuel on the fires. One in Monroe County went so far as to advise residents to fight off the troops sent to round up deserters.

The worst of the situation came in nearby Columbia and Luzerne counties, where a regiment-size Union force rounded up nearly 100 suspected Confederate sympathizers and draft resistance organizers. Forty-five men, aged 19 to 68, were subsequently sent to Fort Mifflin near Philadelphia. Poor food and living conditions sickened most of them, with one 56-year-old man dying.  After six weeks, trials began before a three-officer military commission, with a fourth officer as prosecutor and civilian attorneys as defense counsel.  The charges were conspiring to resist the draft law and uttering disloyal opinions intended to weaken the government. Neighbors testified for and against the men, and in one case, Robert L. Colley testified against his own older brother, Stott Colley.  14 men were tried, eight were found guilty and sentenced to up to two years of hard labor. six were found not guilty and released. The trials were suspended as the war ended, with the last of those imprisoned released without trial in May of 1865.

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