In the summer of 1861, weeks after Confederate troops fired the first shots of the Civil War, educator and abolitionist Frederick Gunn assembled his own troops—about 30 boys and a dozen girls who were students at his Washington, Connecticut, boarding school. Gunn, an early proponent of outdoor education, had led students on camping trips before, but this time he had something a little more regimented in mind. Like the gathering Union forces, they would march—42 miles to be exact—to a beach on the Long Island Sound, where they would set…
