No one responded more promptly to the country’s call in April 1861, and throughout the war, than the members of the volunteer fire companies of Philadelphia. At that time there were eighty-seven volunteer companies in existence. Firemen were numerous in all of the regiments recruited in the city, and some entire commands were composed of the firefighters, including the greater part of the 23rd PV, “Birney’s Zouaves,” and the entire 72nd PV, or Baxter’s Philadelphia “Fire Zouaves.” The firefighters were also well represented on the many warships built and manned in Philadelphia.153
Even those who remained at home contributed significantly to the war effort. They volunteered for the Home Guard and the Emergency Militia but continued to fight fires in the city during the war and offered the use of their horses for any emergency service. Twice in the course of the war, at the request of Fire Chief David M. Lyle, the Hibernia Engine Company sent its powerful steam engine, with a detail of men, to Fortress Monroe and Washington for use of the military.154
The first organization of Philadelphia firemen who served in the field was Captain William McMullen’s “Rangers,” a company recruited from the Moyamensing Hose Company for the three months’ service under General Robert Patterson in the spring of 1861.155
The total number of Philadelphia firemen who served in the Union army between 1861 and 1865 is estimated at approximately eleven thousand.156
A noteworthy accomplishment of many of the fire companies was the volunteer ambulance service they established. With money subscribed by the firemen and their friends, thirty-five ornate ambulances were built and maintained at the firehouses. These vehicles were kept in constant readiness for use. Upon the arrival of hospital ships or trains filled with wounded and invalid soldiers, the electronic call “9-6” was sent out and repeated and bells were rung in the fire towers, and immediately, the ambulances sped for the riverfront or the depots. As an example of their service, in the five days before Christmas 1862, the ambulances carried 2,500 patients from the Citizens’ Volunteer Hospital alone to other hospitals throughout the city.
A great rivalry existed between the fire companies in the decoration of their handsome vehicles. In fact, even after the war, the old ambulances were kept as venerated souvenirs, displayed at exhibitions and pulled in parades.157
When the casualties of battle were brought to the city in great numbers, the firehouses became temporary hospitals. Many of the dead of the 72nd PV Regiment who fell at Antietam and Gettysburg were exhumed from graves on the fields where they had fought by their brother firemen and given burial in the home cemeteries.
In Lossing’s History of the Civil War is a report that Philadelphia ambulances carried to the hospitals over 120,000 sick or wounded soldiers without cost.158