Among the many regiments that marched away from the State of Wisconsin, following the "Stars and Stripes," the most beautiful flag that was ever kissed by the dews of heaven, keeping step to the weird, wild music of the fife and drum; leaving their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sweethearts, and, what was harder still, their wives and prattling babes behind, and resolutely setting their faces toward the march, the comfortless bivouac, the hospital and the field of carnage and of death, were the Fourteenth, Sixteenth and Eightieth Regiments of Infantry. They were made up of companies from all parts of the State, and of men from every walk of life, they were composed of men who had enlisted, not as mercenaries of soldiers of fortune, who fight foe fame, plunder or empire, but as volunteers in the grand army of their beloved Republic; to fight, and die if need be, for a great principle, and to preserve a priceless heritage for their posterity. They had laid aside their robes of peace and put on the habiliments of war. They had set their faces toward the foe, and you could see written upon those faces a grim determination to win the war upon which those faces a grim determination to win the war upon which they were entering. Our great captain, Grant, did but express the feeling of his men when he uttered those determined words: "We will fight it out on this line of it takes all summer."

What an ovation we received from the loyal people of our State as we marched away! How little we, in fact, knew of what was in store for us here, and of the test to which we would be subjected in a few short days!

Brevetted Captain, David Goodrich James, formerly a member of Sixteenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry