Excerpt from The Story of the Fifty-Fifth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, 1861-1865 The following unambitious pages have been written at the solicitation and for the gratification of a little brotherhood of war-scorched and time-harried survivors of one of the regiments constituting General William Tecumseh Sherman's first Western brigade; a regiment that followed him from the drill-ground of 1861 at St. Louis, to the triumphal review at Washington in 1865; that earned by sacrifice rarely equalled the right to inscribe upon its banner the names of nearly all the famous battle-fields whereon Sherman had any command, from Shiloh to Bentonville; that left graves of its battle-martyrs in the soil of eight rebellious commonwealths; that during the four years of its service travelled nearly twelve thousand miles, campaigning in every state south of Mason and Dixon's line, save three at the extreme corners of the Confederacy - Delaware, Florida and Texas. The three comrades detailed to share the composition of this volume are severally responsible for the opinions advanced in, and the fashion of, their own portions only of the narrative, and to each individually belongs the praise or blame due to his special contribution. Their labors have been entirely gratuitous. Their facts have been gleaned from every available source, but chiefly from careful collation of numerous army letters and diaries of soldiers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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