The History of the 3rd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry
The Hard-Fighting 3rd Wisconsin Lost Nearly 60% of its Members in Two Hours at Antietam
The guns had scarcely ceased to echo across Charleston Harbor when President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 Union volunteers. On April 15, 1861, one day after the fall of Fort Sumter, Wisconsin Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from the U.S. War Department informing him that his state was to provide one infantry regiment of 780 men. But Randall shrewdly foreseeing that there would be a much greater need for men, set about securing the enlistment of all state militia companies.