The Price of a Name by Kevin Hampton

“The last terrible battle has reduced this brigade to a mere skeleton; there being scarcely enough members to form half a regiment, the 2nd Wisconsin, which but a few weeks since, numbered over nine hundred men, can now muster but fifty-nine. This brigade has done some of the hardest and best

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World War WHERE? by Russ Horton

When Janesville native Louis Wayne Tyler was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, he probably imagined eventually being deployed to the European or Pacific Theaters. He might have considered the possibility of going to North Africa or the China-Burma-India Theater. He may have even heard stories of

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The Polar Bear Expedition by Andrea Hoffman

While France and Germany served as the battleground for the vast majority of Wisconsin troops during World War I, some soldiers–including Captain Ralph E. Ramsay of Beloit, Wisconsin–found themselves stationed far away from the Western Front.   During the summer of 1918, President Woodrow Wilson acquiesced under pressure from Great Britain

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The Statue on the Square by Guest Author Bob Drane

Have you ever noticed, amidst the festivities of a Farmer’s Market Saturday on Madison’s Capital Square, the moment when visitors come upon the statue of that soldier on King Street – a young man in uniform, standing tall, eyes fixed on the horizon, somehow intent on moving forward on behalf

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Wisconsin’s Fighting Flag by Kristine Zickuhr

Although Wisconsin became a state on May 29th, 1848, it did not have a state flag until decades later.  You might not know that the first version of Wisconsin’s state flag participated in the hardest battles of the Civil War. The ladies of a community often sewed flags for the first

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The Archivist Chronicles: Civil War History Mystery

Each of the thousands of objects in our collection has a story behind them. Ideally, our staff records that story at the time the item is donated—but sometimes we have to uncover the story ourselves, even after more than 100 years have passed. These “history mysteries” are a challenging but fun aspect

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Spencer Bronson: Witness to Murder

On April 14, 1865, during a performance of the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth slipped into the theater box and shot President Abraham Lincoln at point blank range before fleeing. Lincoln died on April 15th, becoming the first American president to be assassinated. Booth

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