Series
Hoosier Union History.
Standing Civil War series on the regiments, figures, and ground that carried Indiana through the Union war — the table the Memorial Day series sits on.
A standing series on the regiments, figures, and ground that carried Indiana through the Civil War. The series originally drifted into broader Union territory in Posts 2 (the 54th Massachusetts) and 3 (the Iron Brigade of Wisconsin and Michigan); those entries remain here as Hoosier-context pieces (the 54th was an important precedent for Indiana’s 28th USCT; the Iron Brigade carried the 19th Indiana). From Post 7 onward, the series returns to its founding scope: Hoosier Union History. Sourced from regimental histories, primary autobiographies and memoirs, the Indiana Historical Bureau, the U.S. Army Center of Military History, and the standard secondary literature.
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01
Entry 1 of 6 · May 12, 2026
Hoosiers for the Union: An Indiana Memorial Before Memorial Day
What Indiana gave the Union — 129 infantry regiments, roughly 196,000 men, about 24,000 dead. The 27th Indiana finding Lee’s Lost Order in a Maryland meadow. Wallace’s Zouaves, the Iron Brigade’s 19th, the 28th USCT at the Crater. The first entry in a standing Union-history series — the table the Memorial Day series sits on.
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02
Entry 2 of 6 · May 13, 2026
A Brave Black Regiment: The 54th Massachusetts and the Birth of the USCT
The 54th Massachusetts led the assault on Battery Wagner, refused unequal pay for eighteen months rather than accept seven dollars to a white soldier’s thirteen, and opened the door for the roughly 179,000 Black soldiers of the United States Colored Troops. Entry two in the standing Union-history series.
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03
Entry 3 of 6 · May 14, 2026
The Black Hats: The Iron Brigade of Wisconsin and Michigan
The only all-Western brigade in the Army of the Potomac. The 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin and the 24th Michigan earned the name “Iron Brigade” at South Mountain — and lost close to two-thirds of their strength on the first day at Gettysburg, the highest battle-death rate of any brigade in the Union Army. Entry three in the standing Union-history series.
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04
Entry 4 of 6 · May 15, 2026 · Story-driven mode
Two Diaries and a Silence: Three Hoosier Voices from the Union War
The series shifts register. Two Hoosier diaries and a regiment whose voices the archive kept differently. Theodore Upson of the 100th Indiana, First Sergeant William Bluffton Miller of the 75th Indiana, and the men of the 28th USCT — with the archival asymmetry named openly on the page. The first entry in the series’ story-driven mode.
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05
Entry 5 of 6 · May 16, 2026 · A correction to Entry 4
The 28th USCT in Their Own Words: A Correction
Indiana’s only Black regiment had a voice during the war — in The Christian Recorder, in letters preserved at smaller archives, in a chaplain’s reunion with his own mother on a Richmond street on April 4, 1865. Chaplain Garland H. White and the Trail Brothers of Henry County. The fifth entry in the standing Union-history series, and an open correction to the fourth.
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06
Entry 6 of 6 · May 16, 2026 · Capstone of the Hoosier-diaries arc
Two Diaries, Two Lifetimes Apart
Theodore Upson’s diary reached print in 1943. William Bluffton Miller’s reached print in 2005. Sixty-two years apart, different publishers, different editorial cultures — and a different kind of testimony preserved by each. The close of the three-post arc on the Hoosier diaries.
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6.5
Coda · May 16, 2026 · A Hoosier coda after the trilogy
The Old Sergeant and the Flag They Saved — A Hoosier Coda
On New Year’s Day 1863 a twenty-five-year-old Hoosier editorialist published a poem about a dying sergeant from Shiloh. Five years later, an Illinois general’s order designated the first Decoration Day. A Hoosier coda on the trilogy — the soldier-voice of 1863 and the community-liturgy of 1868, side by side.
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6.6
Coda · May 16, 2026 · A second Hoosier coda after the trilogy
The Song That Came After — A Hoosier Coda on Sherman’s March
In January 1865 a Chicago publisher released “Marching Through Georgia.” The march had ended six weeks earlier. The Hoosiers did not sing this song on the march — the song did not yet exist. They sang it for the rest of their lives, at every GAR reunion and every Memorial Day service, to remember what they had done.
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07
Entry 7 · May 16, 2026 · First post under the renamed series
Wallace’s Zouaves and the Hoosier Who Wrote Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace was a Crawfordsville lawyer who raised the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in April 1861, was blamed by Grant for the near-disaster at Shiloh, redeemed himself at Monocacy in July 1864, and returned home to write the bestselling American novel of the 19th century. The first post under the renamed Hoosier Union History series.
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08
Entry 8 · May 20, 2026
Oliver P. Morton and the Two Years Without a Legislature
Indiana’s Civil War governor kept the state producing soldiers at a rate no one expected — and ran its government for two years without a legislature, in a way the courts later condemned. The documentary treatment of the hardest figure in the series: the mobilization, the One Man Rule, and Ex parte Milligan.
8 entries + 2 codas in this series · Back to all posts →