"Recruiting The Regiment: A New State Answers The Call To War" Topic

"News of the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861 was announced from the pulpits of small-town churches and elsewhere on a peaceful Sunday morning in Wisconsin. "The effect…can hardly be told upon those who had persistently insisted…that no American would ever open fire upon an American flag," one man remembered. A hired hand working on a farm in Juneau County said the mood of the citizenry changed almost at once: "War, war, war, was the theme of every fireside and gathering. The people felt that the secessionists had forfeited all their rights under the constitution by treasonably making war against our government."

The hot words and excitement of morning gave way by afternoon to what one man called "a palsied numbness." Sunday schools were "not well attended by the older boys that day," he said. "They were out on the corners listening, thinking, and talking…. There was very little loud expression, and no boasting or cheers. The saloons were not patronized by even those who habitually frequented such resorts. There was a most ominous quietness among those who gathered on the streets… This semi-silence was more expressive than can be described."

Wisconsin joined the Union just a dozen years before and the new state on the far-off frontier was allotted only one regiment of infantry in President Abraham Lincoln's first call for volunteers. The 90-day 1st Wisconsin Regiment of Active Militia was quickly raised for the various militia companies, outfitted in militia grey uniforms, and sent to the war front in Washington…"
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Armand

A good read, thanks!

A votre service mon ami!

Armand

And three of the Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiments became part of what would become the excellent Iron Brigade. In their first engagement at Brawner's Farm they defeated the already famous Stonewall Brigade.

The rookies of the brigade gave up not one foot of ground in a stand-up fight that cost them heavily. The only troops that gave any ground at all were those who were shot and fell backwards, falling back a foot or two as they fell wounded or dead.

See Mr Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton.

Keith Rocco has done an excellent artillery print of the brigade's attached artillery battery at Antietam.

Other sources for the Iron Brigade are:

-The Iron Brigade by Alan Nolan.
-The Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers by Rufus Dawes.
-History of 24th Michigan of the Iron Brigade by OB Curtis.
-Giants in Their Tall Black Hats: Essays on the Iron Brigade, edited by Alan Nolan and Sharon Vipond.
-Those Damned Black Hats: The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign by Lance Herdegen.
-Personal Recollections of the Civil War by John Gibbon.

John Gibbon, who was an artillery officer, wrote The Artillerist's Manual, an excellent volume on the artillery of the period.

Wisconsin was one of the few states that actually sent replacements to its regiments in the field with the armies.

Thanks Kevin!

Armand