The 5^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry

Like many volunteer colonels, Amasa Cobb had some trouble figuring out the drill manual. He caught on quickly, however, and helped to create a stable and efficient regiment.

Colonel Allen addressed the 5^th: 'When the order "Forward" is given, you will start at double quick. You will not fire a gun. You will not stop until you get the order to halt.' After a pause, the future secretary of state for Wisconsin delivered the clincher: 'You will not get that order.'

In the wake of the Battle of Williamsburg, one of the first battles in Major General George McClellan's Peninsula campaign in the spring of 1862, the commanding general issued the following tribute to the 5^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry: "My lads, I have come to thank you for your gallant conduct the other day. You have gained honor for your country, yourselves, your state, and the army to which you belong. Through you, we won the day, and Williamsburg shall be inscribed upon your banner. I cannot thank you enough for what you have done. I trust in you for the future, and know that you will sustain the reputation you have won for yourselves. By your action and superior discipline, you have gained a reputation which shall be known throughout the Army of the Potomac. Your country owes you its grateful thanks. As for myself, I can never thank you enough."

That effusive praise from McClellan illustrated just how far the 5^th had come in less than a year of duty. Mustered into Federal service on July 13, 1861, with the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Amasa Cobb of Mineral Point, as its colonel, the 5^th was originally part of a brigade commanded by fellow Wisconsinite Brig. Gen. Rufus King that included the 2^nd and 6^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry and the 19^th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. State officials hoped that when the 7^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry joined the Federal Army it would replace the Indiana regiment and make King's unit an all-Badger brigade.

Instead the 7^th was added and the 19^th Indiana stayed put. The 5^th, however, was not destined to remain in what would become the Iron Brigade. In September the regiment, along with the 6^th Maine Volunteer Infantry, 43^rd New York Volunteer Infantry and 49^th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, was placed in the 1^st Brigade, 2^nd Division, IV Corps of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.

Cobb, a skilled politician, was a novice military officer, and it showed on the drill field. Hancock would bark orders to the regiment, and Cobb and his men would invariably become confused, prompting Hancock to bellow; "Colonel Cobb, where the damnation are you going with that battalion?" The men of the 6^th Wisconsin would hide in the willows near the 5^th's camp and taunt their fellow Badgers with their imitation of Hancock: "Colonel Cobb, where the damnation are you going with that battalion?"

The 5^th soon proved its worth, however. As the Confederates retreated from Yorktown in early May 1862, Hancock's brigade was part of the Union pursuit. On May 5 at the Battle of Williamsburg, the 5^th Wisconsin led Hancock's afternoon march against the Confederates' left flank. After advancing through two abandoned redoubts, Cobb's troops skirmished with Rebels holding a third fortification.

The 5^th Wisconsin held their position until Brig. Gen. Jubal Early's Confederates advanced. The regiment was then ordered to withdraw. According to Cobb's report, his regiment, despite Rebel fire, fell back in good order and rejoined the rest of the brigade. At that point, Hancock sent his full brigade forward against the 5^th North Carolinians. "Gentlemen, charge!" Hancock ordered - a far cry from the harsh words he had heaped on Cobb and his men on the drill field.

The report of the adjutant general of the state of Wisconsin described what happened next. "[T]he whole line moved forward with a shout and a well directed fire, driving the enemy before them like chaff, they fleeing in wild confusion, leaving the field, over which they had just pursued the retiring line of the 5^th, literally strewn with their dead and wounded, and leaving their battle flag behind them, which was captured by a member of the regiment."

After Williamsburg, the 5^th Wisconsin's brigade was transferred to the 1^st Brigade, 2^nd Division of the VI Corps. During the remainder of May, the 5^th slowly moved along with the rest of McClellan's army up the peninsula formed by the York and James rivers toward Richmond The regiment, with the wing of the Army of the Potomac north of the Chickahominy River, saw no action in the Battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), May 31-June 1, the fight that cost the Confederate army its commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, who was wounded and soon replaced by General Robert E. Lee.

For nearly the entire month of June, the two great armies faced each other, a mile or so apart, within sight of the church spires of the Confederate capital. The men of the 5^th did picket duty and, like most of their fellow soldiers on both sides, spent their time, in the words of Private A. W Stillwell," digging, entrenching, mortifying, and dying in the Chickahominy swamps."

There were lighter moments as well. The Georgia brigade of Robert Toombs was opposite the Wisconsinites, and one morning a Georgia soldier stepped out from behind a tree, waving a copy of the Richmond Examiner. "We returned the salute by raising the New York Herald," the 5^th's James R. Strong later recalled. Soldiers from both sides exchanged papers and reached an agreement not to fire on each other until and unless the other side advanced. For days afterward, according to Strong, the Georgia soldiers would "come out in an open field without arms and pick cherries in plain sight of our boys."

The lull ended in the last week of June when Lee launched an offensive on the 25^th designed to drive the Federals away from Richmond. During what came to be known as the Seven Days' campaign, the 5^th was almost constantly engaged, the men averaging only two hours' sleep a night, according to one soldier.

Though Lee's plans failed to unfold as designed, the Rebels did drive McClellan's army back to Harrison's Landing on the James River. From there, the 5^th later marched to Fort Monroe and shipped out to Alexandria, Va. They were among the reinforcements that arrived too late to save Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia from defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29-30. The next month, the 5^th missed out on heavy fighting at the Battle of Antietam as it remained in the rear guarding artillery. McClellan, restored to Union command, turned back Lee's invasion of Maryland. For a short while, Cobb commanded the brigade after Hancock moved to the II Corps during the battle.

Cobb won election to Congress in the fall of 1862. He had earned the nickname "Honest Cobb" when he declined a bribe in connection with a land grant while in the prewar legislature. Thomas S. Allen replaced him as colonel of the 5^th. Allen had transferred from the Iron Brigade's 2^nd Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. Cobb would take up arms again in 1864, as colonel of the newly formed 49^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.

After Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside followed McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac, the 5^th took part in the ill-fated assaults on Confederate positions on Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Kept in the rear of the Federal lines, the 5^th was spared the horrendous casualties suffered by those ahead of them, counting only one man killed.

In January 1863, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac. Among his reforms was the establishment of a "Light Division" in the VI Corps of handpicked regiments, and the 5^th was one of those selected.

During Hooker's spring offensive against the Army of Northern Virginia, the VI Corps, under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, was ordered to cross the Rappahannock River, take Marye's Heights, and then push on to fall on Lee's rear some nine miles away at Chancellorsville.

The Light Division was chosen to make the attack. Allen addressed the 5^th: "When the order 'forward' is given, you will start at double quick. You will not fire a gun. You will not stop until you get the order to halt." After a pause, the future secretary of state for Wisconsin delivered the clincher: "You will not get that order."

Sedgwick ordered that the percussion caps be removed from the men's rifles to prevent the soldiers from stopping and firing, but Allen, avowing that the 5^th would follow their orders, did not relay the command.

Under heavy artillery and rifle fire, the men of the 5^th reached and leaped over the stone wall at the base of Marye's Heights - a barrier Burnside's attack five months earlier had not even reached. They clubbed and bayoneted the startled Rebel defenders, then drove them off the fortified heights. In what Allen later termed "a terrible but glorious three minutes" - other observers measured the attack at more like six minutes - the 5^th lost 44 killed and 123 wounded, but gained Marye's Heights.

They also earned the praise of the war correspondent of the London Times, who wrote that the 5^th's brave charge matched anything seen on the fields of Waterloo. Unfortunately, the news was not as bright for the rest of Hooker's army, as Lee defeated the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville and then capitalized on his victory by launching an invasion into Pennsylvania.

Reassigned to the 1^st Division of the VI Army Corps as part of Brig. Gen. David A. Russell's brigade, the 5^th was ordered north in pursuit of the invading Rebels on June 13. The corps averaged 20 miles a day on the march, crossing the Potomac on June 27 and reaching the Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg on July 2, the second day of the great battle. In this case it had marched 37 miles in 24 hours.

Posted to guard the left flank of the Army of the Potomac, then led by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, the 5^th came under artillery fire but saw no combat and suffered no casualties in the battle. The regiment joined the pursuit of Lee back to and across the Potomac, beginning July 5. The Wisconsin troops continued the pursuit, with occasional skirmishing, until July 25, when they camped at Warrenton, Va.

At the end of July, the 5^th found itself detached for duty in New York City. There, with other regiments, it helped enforce conscription in the wake of antidraft riots in the city.

Four days later, seven companies were sent to duty in Albany, the other three to Troy, Kingston and Poughkeepsie, all in upstate New York. In early October, the bulk of the regiment moved on to Goshen, county seat of Orange County. By October 17, the regiment was reunited at Governor's Island and shipped back to Virginia.

Rejoining the Army of the Potomac, the 5^th took part in the vicious fighting in the Wilderness in early May. Two companies, D and G, flanked a Rebel advance, capturing the entire 25^th Virginia Volunteer Infantry and its colors on May 4. The next day, the 5^th successfully withstood a Rebel flanking attack until the rest of the division could come up and repulse the Confederates.

The regiment was heavily engaged in the fighting at Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harbor as Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and General Lee slugged their way toward the war's inevitable end. At Cold Harbor on June 1, the 5^th arrived "barefooted, ragged and almost exhausted with fatigue and lack of sleep" to join in a futile attack on the Confederate works.

In early July, Rebels under the 5^th's old adversary from Williamsburg, Jubal Early, broke out of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and advanced to within sight of the Federal capital at Washington, which was defended only by artillery, militia, government clerks, and 100-day soldiers. Grant sent the VI Corps to bolster the defenses, and Early was driven off on July 12.

The day after that battle, the 5^th's three-year enlistments expired, yet the men agreed to man the capital defenses for a few more days to ensure that Early's invaders had truly been driven off before heading back to the Badger State to be mustered out of service. But the 5^th Wisconsin's history of service was not over. The men who re-enlisted, together with some new recruits, were formed into an independent battalion, about three companies strong, commanded by Captain Charles W. Kempf of Company A.

Under Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, the battalion squared off again against Early at Snicker's Gap and Cedar Creek in October. When seven more companies of recruits were sent from Wisconsin, the 5^th was reformed as a regiment, with Allen as the colonel. The unit, then called the 5^th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry (Reorganized), rejoined the VI Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the trenches before Petersburg.

When that besieged city and Richmond finally fell in early April 1865 the 5^th helped pursue the remnants of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. At the Battle of Sailor's Creek, Sergeant Angus Cameron and six privates from the 5^th accepted the surrender of Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell, one of six Rebel generals captured in the fight that cost the retreating Lee nearly half his army.

Three days later Lee surrendered at Appomattox. That was not the end for the Badgers, however, for they did not all muster out until July 11, 1865. After that date, the survivors of the 5^th Wisconsin, which lost 749 men killed and wounded, were finally able to go home.

This article was taken from: Marvel, William.  “From Wisconsin's Wilds to Appomattox Court House, the 5^th Wisconsin Infantry Performed Steadfast Service.” (American’s Civil War, July 2004), 20, 59, and 60. It is used with permission.

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