Wisconsin Goes To War

Hey, it's Presidents' Day, and one thing presidents have a way of doing is sending people to war, whether they like the idea or not. Thanks to the Scout Report for flashing its searchlight on "Wisconsin Goes to War: Our Civil War Experience," one small part of the unfathomably large University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. At present this collection has both original and transcribed letters from Wisconsin residents involved in the Civil War, from Green County, Madison, Woodlawn, Appleton, Stoughton, Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, Racine, Waupun, Whitewater, Neosho, and more.

If you think I should have listed surnames instead of places, you're missing the point. Most of our Civil War ancestors either wrote nothing or nothing that survived. The trick is to find someone whose writings did survive, who shared their service in the same regiment or company, which often means they came from the same area.