The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War 1861-1865 (The American Civil War)

The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War 1861-1865 Leander Stillwell The 61st Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The 61st Illinois Infantry was originally organized at Carrollton, Illinois and mustered into Federal service on February 5, 1862. The regiment suffered 3 officers and 34 enlisted men who were killed in action or mortally wounded and 4 officers and 183 enlisted men who died of disease, for a total of 224 fatalities. The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, the War of the Rebellion, or simply the Civil War (see naming), was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 in the United States after several Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy" or the "South"). The states that remained were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories. Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.