Clark County WI
Civil War Unit Histories
Compiled by Paul Forester, Janet Schwarze, Allan Wessel & Ken Wood
3rd Wisconsin Regiment
Our Civil War Veterans who fought with this Regiment |
(1) William Aldrich (2) Joseph Arms (3) Volney Austin (4) George Brooks (5) George F. Dailey (6) Henry Davids (7) John E. Delack (8) John Delsick (9) Simon C. Farmer (10) William Fricke (11) Henry Fuller (12) L. V. Gander (13) Isaac . Gotchy (14) Albert Harriman (15) James Harvey (16) Nelson Marsh (17) William Mead (18) Michael Oleson (19) N. Parker (20) Henry Rundle (21) Jacob Schnieder (22) Jacob Sieber (23) H. H. Tompkins (24) George West. |
Service
The Third Infantry was organized at Fond du Lac, WI and mustered into the service of the United States on the 29th day of June, 1861. The regiment left the state on the 12th day of July following, reporting at Hagerstown, MD, from which point it marched to Harper's Ferry. Shortly thereafter the Third was assigned to Patterson's Army and its first year of service was principally upon the upper Potomac and in the Shenandoah Valley, participating in a number of engagements, the most important of which were Winchester and Cedar Mountain.
When the Union army under General Pope was being pressed northward by the Confederates in August 1862, the portion of the army in which the Third was serving was united with the army under General Pope, and shortly thereafter General McClellan assigned as Commandeer in Chief, and as a part of this force the Third participated in the battle of Antietam. In the early part of 1863, with the Army of the Potomac, participated in the campaign of Chancellorsville, VA, and the subsequent battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863. On July 13, 1863, the Third was sent to the city of New York to assist in quelling the draft riots in that city, and encamped in the City Hall park until September 5, when the regiment returned to Virginia. In the latter part of that month the Twelfth Corps, of which the Third was a part, was transferred to southern middle Tennessee as a part of the Army of the Cumberland. The Third was stationed at Stevenson, AL, from the 3rd day of October, and during the latter part of that year and the early part of 1864 was engaged in guarding important lines of railroad communications in southern middle Tennessee and northern Alabama.
On the reorganization of the Army about Chattanooga for the advance upon Atlanta under General Sherman, the Third was assigned to the Second Brigade of the First Division of the Twentieth Army Corps commanded by General Joseph Hooker, and as a part of this organization participated in the Atlanta Campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta, May 1 to September 8, 1864; the "March to the Sea", Atlanta to Savannah, November 15 to December 21, 1864, and from Savannah through the Carolinas, January 1 to April 26, 1865, until the surrender of the Confederate forces under General Johnston April 26, 1865. Thereafter the Third participated in the Grand Review at Washington. On June 15 was transferred to Louisville, KY, was mustered out of the service of the United States on the 18th of July, 1865, returned to Madison, WI on the 23rd of July and was shortly thereafter disbanded.
Regimental Statistics
Original strength, 979;
Gain -- by recruits in 1863, 70, in 1864, 284, in 1865, 7; by substitutes, 299; by draft in 1864, 179; in 1865, 110; veteran reenlistments, 237; total, 2,156;
Loss -- by death, 240; missing, 7; desertions, 51; transfers, 98; discharged, 945; mustered out, 810.
Address by General E. E. Bryant
We meet in these fair October days, a few old
companions in arms.
We meet in prosperous times.
Our beloved country reposes in all the tranquility of peace.
In its sheath the saber slumbers and the cannon’s lips are cold.
All the energies of this great people - magnificently terrible when directed in
war - are now in myriad lines of activity achieving a marvelous development. A
freer, lovelier land was never home for man. A more prosperous; happier were
never among the favored of God. The flag of the Union, around which we rallied
called it "Old Glory," floats over all, over every part of the great domain, and
there is, now, In all the land, no dreamer, no prophet of evil, who conceives it
possible that, through secession, there can ever be a destruction of this union
of states. The ties of union and fraternal feeling between the two sections once
rudely snapped asunder in the whirlwind wrath, are again knitted-together in a
firmer, stronger one real union than ever before.
In these peaceful days we are come together. In this beautiful northern city by
the majestic river that flows unvexed to the sea we assemble, many of us to
clasp again the hands that were grasped in parting more than a quarter of a
century ago.
There is much to remind us that we are well forward in the middle age of man.
Busy years have come and gone. Care and work and thought and time have graved
their marks upon us. A sturdy generation of men full-matured in manhood are now
bearing the burdens of life, yet their memories are but faint of the eventful
times when we first came together. There are boys and young men now of the best
age for soldiers, who have been born since the war. We find them in our own
homes and they even come to our they even come to our firesides to wed own
daughters. They call us "old fellows"-and, well they may. What with whitening
locks and thickening wrinkles, a sobered way of looking at life, a gait a little
drooping, size a little altered, and forms a little less shapely than in earlier
days, the recruiting sergeant would look us over and say that in the great
emergency we might do for "home guards," but that our day for enlisting as
soldiers had gone by.
But still - begging the pardon of those young lads and gentlemen - we insist
that we are "the boys,"
We are the boys of 1861.
It is the lot of most of the sons of men to live their appointed time, do their
appointed work and die - their lives uneventful, their names soon fading out of
memory, their work on earth forgotten. Of such the German poet said that they
"on earth in silence wrought, And their graves in silence sought."
It was not our fate thus to live out all our days. We were not different from
other boys of our age or from any of the generations of boys that grow up. All
the races that blend to make this composite. American people are the best
soldier races of the world. No generation of American, English, Irish, German or
Norwegian boys ever lived that did not have in them superb material for
soldiers. The "dude" and the dandy, the clerk, the book keeper, no less then the
farm - bred boy and artisan or mechanic, the school boy and student in these
piping times of peace, could and would, did his country need it, became in a
short time the steady, sturdy soldier, cool in danger, brave in action, faithful
on guard and useful in every military requirement.
In every able-bodied one of them, with but rare exceptions, is the embryo
hard-rider of the cavalry, to live in the saddle, to make those gallant raids,
to be the eyes and ears of the army or the artilleryman to stand to his gun when
shell are flying and caissons bursting about him, or’ strong reliable
infantrymen, to bear the hard brunt and strain of the battle.
And these young men of each generation as they come upon the stage of manhood
are the grand army of the American republic. We need no great standing army.
Better than a great war establishment; better than forts bristling with cannon,
better than navies on the seas or coasts fortified until impregnable; better
than picketed frontiers; better than all of these is the great reserve army of
American boys. The record of what they have done is an earnest of what they can
and will do when occasion calls. That record written with sword and bayonet in
the most glorious of the annals of war is before the world, and all the nations
take due notice and govern themselves accordingly.
Yes, we are " the boys"; old age may come. It may settle upon us, as in the
order of nature it must, and doubtless, it will come a little earlier to us all
for the hard wear we had in our soldier days but still we shall always be " the
boys."
There is something in the comradeship of arms, something in the rich memories of
the past that makes us feel as though we were still young. Says the poet- "Life
is but thought, so think, I will, That youth and I are housemates still." We
shall always be "the boys." There will stand out in all the coming years, long
after our bodies are dust, a historic picture, viewed with pride by all
Americans, of the, "boys of 61."
The story, the song, the orator’s glowing sentences, the artist’ masterpiece
will keep ever fresh the memory of those gallant legions. The student of history
will read with rapt interest the story of their deeds. The fields where they
fought will be visited by myriad's, as spots sacred in the midst of our fair
land. The graves where they sleep will be sacred shrines; and the future
citizens will be proud to trace their lineage to the soldiers who shed such
glory on soldiership under Sherman, Sheridan, Meade, Thomas and the
unconquerable Grant.
The boys who fought in the Shenandoah, who made every river bank and hillside in
old Virginia historic ground, who, served under Grant in that most brilliant
campaign of wars, ending in the investment and surrender of Vicksburg, who made
Gettysburg the most renowned of battlefields; who fought at Lookout Mountain,
who stormed Mission Ridge, who fought inch by inch the way from Chattanooga to
Atlanta, who started out with Sherman at "right shoulder shift," and the long ,
sweeping route step on the famous march to the sea; the boys who fought at
Shiloh, at Stone River at Chickamauga; who made that fearfully bloody campaign
from the Rappahannock to the James, and thence by superhuman endurance closed
about the shattered legions of Lee at Appomattox - the boys who swept from
Atlanta to Savannah, thence through the Carolinas and over their old Virginia
battlefields to their old camps about Washington and made their last review
before the immortal Lincoln - the boys who fought with bravery never excelled,
yet with no malice in heart, who were generous and considerate to the foe, who
could change greetings and tobacco on the picket line with the enemy, and next
day meet him in shock of battle, who cared for the wounded enemy as for the
friend, and shared their rations with the vanquished captive, throwing about the
stern figure of courage unsurpassed the tender grace of chivalry - these, "The
boys of '61," are a generation chosen to stand out in all future times as the
ideal soldiers of liberty. They fought not from love of arms but from highest
sense of duty. They conquered not to devastate. They vanquished not to destroy,
but to befriend, and there are few of those once their enemies that do not now
rejoice that in the providence of God the flag of the confederacy went down
before the banner of Union.
And wherever patriotism glows in the heart - so long as men hear with emotion
the story of brave deeds done in noble cause - while valor and high courage are
held in honor among men - while it is deemed heroic to dare and suffer for
country and man - there and so long will the future generations read with
glistening eye and swelling heart those pages that tell of the mighty campaigns
and valiant deeds of "the boys of '61."
Gen. E. E. Bryant
Source: Address to 3rd Wisconsin Association 1890
Related Links
Burials of Greenwood, Wisconsin Civil War Soldiers.
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