Stories of the Badger State

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

The Third opened the battle at Cedar Mountain, and very soon after that was at Antietam, where it lost two-thirds of the men it took into action. The Fifth also was prominent near by, and the Iron Brigade, behind a rail fence, conducted a fight which was one of the chief events of the engagement.

At the battle of Corinth, several Wisconsin regiments and four of her batteries won some of the brightest honors. In the various official reports of the action, such comments as the following are frequent: "This regiment (the Fourteenth) was the one to rely upon in every emergency;" a fearless dash by the Seventeenth regiment, one general described as "the most glorious charge of the campaign"; there was an allusion to the Eighteenth's "most effectual service"; in referring to the Sixth battery, mention is made in the reports, of "its noble work."

At Chaplin Hills, in Kentucky, a few days later, the First Wisconsin drove back the enemy several times, and captured a stand of Confederate colors. The Tenth was seven hours under fire, and lost fifty-four per cent of its number. General Rousseau highly praised both regiments, saying, "These brave men are entitled to the gratitude of the country." The Fifteenth captured heavy stores of ammunition and many prisoners; the Twenty-fifth repulsed, with withering fire, a superior force of the enemy, who had suddenly assaulted them while lying in a cornfield; and the Fifth battery three times turned back a Confederate charge, "saving the division," as General McCook reported, "from a disgraceful defeat."

At Prairie Grove, in Arkansas, at Fredericksburg, and at Stone River, still later in the campaign of 1862, Wisconsin soldiers exhibited what General Sherman described as "splendid conduct, bravery, and efficiency."

Men of Wisconsin were also prominent in the Army of the Potomac, during the famous "mud campaign" of the early months of 1863. At the crossing of the Rappahannock, theirs was the dangerous duty to protect the makers of the pontoon bridges. In the course of this service, the Iron Brigade made a splendid dash across the river, charged up the opposite heights, and at the point of the bayonet routed the Confederates who were intrenched in rifle pits.

At Chancellorsville, the Third Wisconsin, detailed to act as a barrier to the advance of the Confederates under Stonewall Jackson, was the last to leave the illfated field.

At Fredericksburg, not far away, the Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine led a desperate charge up Marye's Hill, where, in a sunken roadway, lay a large force of the enemy; this force, a few months before, had killed six thousand Union men who were vainly attempting to rout them. This second and final charge overcame all difficulties, and succeeded. As the Confederate commander handed to the colonel of the Wisconsin regiment his sword and silver spurs, he told the victor that he had supposed there were not enough troops in the Army of the Potomac to carry the position; it was, he declared, the most daring assault he had ever seen. Such, too, was the judgment of Greeley, who declared that "Braver men never smiled on death than those who climbed Marye's Hill on that fatal day." The correspondent of the London Times also wrote, "Never at Fontenoy, Albuera, nor at Waterloo was more undaunted courage displayed."

In the campaign which resulted in the fall of Vicksburg, in 1863, numerous Wisconsin regiments participated, many of them with conspicuous gallantry. It was an officer of the Twenty-third who received, at the base of the works, the offer of the Confederates to surrender.