History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry

Book excerpt: It will be remembered by those connected with the military service that towards the end of the late Civil War, there went through the camps and barracks of the volunteer soldiers agents of publishing houses busily engaged in procuring material for "company histories," and still more anxiously soliciting subscriptions for the same. These histories were mere broadsides or charts, giving the name and rank of each man, with a few other personal facts, compiled from the muster rolls, and in addition an abstract of campaign movements, battles, and so forth; all the information being brought up to date of subscription. Of course as permanent and final records such publications would be failures, there being no "next" in which to "conclude" their stories.While the Sixth Minnesota Infantry Regiment lay at New Orleans, one of the visitations described occurred to it (this being a very successful one), and thereupon a member of Company E proposed to a comrade the getting up of something of the kind among themselves, to be of home manufacture. Time permitting, the work was then commenced, continued in the field, and kept up with current events till the order for return home of the command to which the company belonged. Serious illness of the compiler, and the scattering of the members of the company, prevented the finishing of the work at the intended time, and caused its indefinite postponement.As a contribution, though humble, to material for some future history of the part taken by Minnesota in the war for the Union this little book has been completed and published, and the writer would be greatly pleased if its appearance should stimulate the necessary research for the putting on record in somewhat similar form of the histories of other companies of our state regiments.