Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/87

 a regiment of independent drilled companies. One regiment was required of our State by the President’s Proclamation, and on the 17th of April Governor Kirkwood issued a call for ten companies to be ready for service by the 20th of May. Public meetings were held and intense enthusiasm prevailed throughout the State; party lines were forgotten and in a few weeks more companies were raised and offered than could be accepted. General McKean, a graduate of West Point Military Academy, was called upon by the Governor to aid in organizing the First Regiment of Iowa Volunteers. J. F. Bates was appointed colonel; W. H. Merritt, lieutenant-colonel; Asbury B. Porter, major, and G. W. Waldron, adjutant. Young men from all occupations hastened to enlist; lawyers, doctors, teachers, merchants, farmers, mechanics and laborers volunteered as privates. Public meetings assembled in every part of the State; patriotic speeches were made; women made flags and uniforms; martial music fanned enthusiasm and the ranks were filled to overflowing. The companies marched away to camp cheered by friends and neighbors, who gathered to bid them a sad “good-by.” Few realized the horrors of the terrible war that confronted them, and it was well that the tragedies of the future were mercifully hidden from them and the friends they left at home. Bravely they went from luxurious homes, from log cabins, from the quiet farm life, the village shop and the city office to become soldiers. War’s miseries were unknown to them. The long marches beneath the burning sun, the chilling blasts of winter storms, camping at night without shelter amid rain and sleet and sinking exhausted by the wayside, the wary months in camp amid the deadly malaria of swamp, wasting away with disease in dreary hospitals, the indescribable horrors of the battlefield where every form of mutilation rends the human body, the hasty burial in unmarked graves, the hideous tortures of prison life.

Could it have been known in the beginning of the Civil