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On an April day in 1861, citizens of Beaver County stopped in front of post offices, stores and factories to read this placard: "War! War! To arms!! Fellow citizens arouse! The Rest of Peace is broken. War's alarms are upon us. We are threatened with immediate invasion by the South." Then followed statements as to the fall of Ft. Sumter, the seizure of the armory at Harper's Ferry, and a summons to a public meeting at the Court House Monday, April 22,1861, at eleven o'clock. Among those who signed this call was the fiery attorney, Thomas Cunningham, Daniel Agnew, Thomas McCreary, James Darragh, and S.B. Wilson. Beaver County played a noble part in the struggle for the maintenance of the Union. Eleven of the 270 regiments which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sent to the battlefields of the Civil War had one or more companies recruited in Beaver County. Among these was the Thirty-eighth Regiment, of the famous military organization known as the Pennsylvania Reserves, under the command of General George McCall. The Pennsylvania Reserves wrote a grand record on the battlefields of the Peninsula under General McClellan and in subsequent battles of the Civil War. Company "H" of the Reserves came from Beaver County. Its captain was John Cuthbertson of New Brighton. This was the first company recruited from Beaver County for the Civil War.
Another famous regiment, to which Beaver County contributed Company "D", was the 100th Pennsylvania Volunteers. This regiment was known as the "Roundheads." It was recruited by Colonel Daniel Leasure. When he was advocating the organization of this regiment at army headquarters at Washington, General Scott said, "We'll call them the Roundheads." This was a compliment to the then Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, who was proud of his descent from Cromwell's celebrated Roundheads. The name, however, was a most appropriate one for this regiment, because it was recruited among psalm-singing Presbyterians and Covenanters of Lawrence, Beaver, Washington, and other southwestern Pennsylvania counties. Dr. Gyla McDowell, former head of the English Department of Geneva College, and whose father fought with the Roundheads, has finished a history of this celebrated regiment. It will be an important contribution to the literature of the Civil War. One of the most stirring monuments among the hundreds upon hundreds which commemorate the men and heroic deeds on the fields of the Civil War is that to the Roundheads on the battlefield of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, the bloodiest day of the Civil War. Firmly grasping his musket, the Roundhead stands with his back to the Antietam, his head high and lifted up; and on his face is stamped that abhorrence of slavery, that hatred of oppression, that love of righteousness and that faith in God that fought the Civil War through to a victorious conclusion.