Iowa On the Battlefield

The telegraph has informed us that Col. G. M. Dodge of the 4^th Iowa infantry, has been promoted to a Brigadier Generalship.  Our citizens will be pleased to hear this, as Col. Dodge has deported himself in a manner that entitles him to this distinction.  He has displayed military qualifications that have proven him fully competent to command a brigade.

With every such promotion of our officers additional luster is shed upon our State, which now for the valor of its soldiers ranks as one of the very first in the Union.  Indeed for the number of men that have enlisted, in proportion to the comparative sparseness of its population, and for their heroic daring on the field of battle, Iowa, at this stage of the contest stands as the very first in the Union.  Commanded by brave accomplished officers, the men have dared to follow wherever led, whether to charge with bayonet, or up to the cannon’s mouth.  When commanded to take a battery the response has not been, “We’ll try!” but the ready “We’ll do it!” has ever signified their willingness to shirk no post of danger.

Our soldiers are earning for the State a proud position, and we feel assured that no future act of theirs will sully the honor which thus far has been shed upon it by their glorious achievements.  Even the chivalrous Southerners have begun to draw a line of distinction between the Yankees and the Western boys; but the recent engagement at Newbern, however, has show them that in the Yankees they have a foe worthy their steel, and against whom the chivalry, fighting in a bad cause, is no match.

Let the bravery of our Iowa boys never be forgotten, and when they return, moneyless and many of them wounded, from their stupendous efforts to put down rebellion, let it not be said that the citizens whom they protected in  their rights, and upon whose State they reflected so much honor, ever permitted them to want.  Bravery, such as they have displayed on the field of battle should be a certificate of recommendation to every patriotic citizen.  A generous rivalry should spring up in every community, to encourage those who return maimed from the war and unfitted for the common vocations of life, in such pursuits as they will be enabled to follow.  An idle, disbanded soldiery, living upon a pension inadequate to their daily wants, would be a reflection upon the people of our State, and by no means conducive to a healthy state of society.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, March 27, 1862, p. 2