6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment
|6th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry|
|Active||July 16, 1861 to July 2, 1865|
|Engagements||Battle of Second Bull Run
Battle of South Mountain
Battle of Antietam
Battle of Chancellorsville
Battle of Gettysburg
Battle of the Wilderness
Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
Battle of Cold Harbor
Siege of Petersburg
Battle of Weldon Railroad
Battle of Five Forks
The 6th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It spent most of the war as a part of the famous Iron Brigade in the Army of the Potomac.
The 6th Wisconsin was raised at Madison, Wisconsin, and mustered into Federal service July 16, 1861 for a term of three years. It saw severe fighting in the 1862 Northern Virginia Campaign, fighting at Brawner's Farm during the early part of the Second Battle of Bull Run. During the subsequent Maryland Campaign, the 6th attacked Turner's Gap in the Battle of South Mountain, and then suffered considerable casualties battling Hood's Texas Brigade in the D.R. Miller cornfield at Antietam.
During the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Lt. Col. Rufus R. Dawes led a counterattack on Joseph R. Davis's Confederate brigade of Mississippians, many of which were sheltered in an unfinished railroad cut west of town. The 6th forced the surrender of over 200 enemy soldiers. The regiment later served that year in the Bristoe and Mine Run Campaigns.
Total enlistments and casualties
The 6th Wisconsin Infantry initially mustered 1029 men and later recruited an additional 601 men, for a total of 1,630 men. The regiment lost 16 officers and 228 enlisted men killed in action or who later died of their wounds, plus another 1 officer and 112 enlisted men who died of disease, for a total of 357 fatalities.
- Colonel Lysander Cutler - May 28, 1861, to November 29, 1862 - promoted to brigadier general.
- Colonel Edward S. Bragg - March 10, 1863, to June 25, 1864 - promoted to brigadier general.
- Colonel John Azor Kellogg - December 10, 1864, to July 14, 1865 - mustered out.
- Rufus Dawes - served as a lieutenant colonel - US congressman, father of vice president Charles G. Dawes
- John J. Jenkins - served as a private - politician and jurist
- Adam Gale Malloy - served as a captain - was later brevetted a brigadier general
- Benjamin Sweet - served as a major and lieutenant colonel - politician, was later brevetted a brigadier general
- John Tester - served as a first lieutenant- was later a businessman and politician
- List of Wisconsin Civil War Units
- Iron Brigade
- Wisconsin in the American Civil War
- Herdegen, Lance J., "Those Damned Black Hats!" The Iron Brigade in the Gettysburg Campaign, Savas Beatie LLC, October 2008. http://www.savasbeatie.com
- Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers (1890) on Internet Archive