nsibilities, or professional or
official duty had to yield to the necessities of the hour. Every
interest was alike threatened, and no balancing of individual excuses
could for a moment be tolerated. The women nobly seconded the appeal
to arms, and assisted in the work of preparation. Personal and social
distinctions were levelled, and in response to roll-call there
appeared the lawyer, the physician, the preacher, the magistrate, the
banker, the merchant, the manufacturer, and the railway official in
his multifarious forms, side by side with the humbler civilian--all
animated with patriotic zeal in the common cause.

Mayor McKnight, who subsequently himself joined a company named in his
honor and commanded by Captain Nathan M. Eisenhower, on the 11th sent
William M. Baird, Esq., to Harrisburg to keep the home authorities
informed as to the arrangements for the calling out and reception of
the Reading militia. On the evening of the 12th, Mr. Baird telegraphed
that the companies should hold themselves in readiness to march, and a
little later communicated an order from headquarters to Captain
Franklin S. Bickley, who was in charge of the first company organized,
and the only one then ready, for his command to leave for Harrisburg
the next morning by the first train.

This company had its rendezvous in the second story of the building at
the southwest corner of Fifth and Washington streets. Its roll
originally contained 94 names, but the number of men who actually
marched was but 64. Sergeant William H. Strickland was left behind to
recruit the company up to the standard, and afterwards brought a few
additional men to Chambersburg. The commanding officers were all of
them men of some experience in military affairs, and proved themselves
worthy of their positions. Captain Bickley had been a commissioned
officer in the Pennsylvania Reserves; First Lieutenant Lewis H.
Wunder was a veteran of the Mexican War; and Second Lieutenant Charles
H. Richards, though never in actual service, had had a long connection
with the militia before the war. In the ranks of the company were a
few old soldiers, who were generally to be recognized by the coolness
of their bearing.

At this point it will be appropriate to give the names of the seven
companies which were raised in Reading, or its immediate vicinity, and
left in response to the Governor's call, with the dates of marching
and their regimental assignments. Several other companies