Iowa is a young State, but it is the home of heroes. With the present war she has begun a war
history that yields in splendor and honor to that of no State in the Union, and
no country on the globe. Her soil is the
birthplace of a new chivalry, and he has become the mother of a new race of
heroes. Her soldiers are as modest as
they are brave. They are not fierce
braggarts. They are as gentle and
tractable as children.
But when the storm of blood begins they are the guiding and
governing heroes of the tempest. Where
the harvest of death is to be reaped, they are the foremost of the
reapers. Where a perilous assault is to
be made, somehow or other there is always an Iowa regiment, or the wasted
shadow of and Iowa regiment, to lead it.
It was so at Wilson’s creek; it was so at Belmont; it was show at Fort
Donelson; it was so at Shiloh; it will ever be so throughout the war.
All our Western troops have been heroes, but the Iowa troops
have been heroes among heroes. The “Iowa
First,” “Iowa Second,” “Iowa Fourth,” and “Iowa Seventh,” are bodies of men who
would have given an additional luster even to Thermopylae, Marathon, Austerlitz,
or Wagram, and all Americans may be proud of Iowa. – St. Louis News.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette,
Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, May 2, 1862, p. 2
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