After the organization of the regiment, on the
twenty-seventh, they are marched from Camp Yates to the armory, where they
receive their arms—the Harper's Ferry altered musket—after which the regiment
marches to the depot and embarks for Alton, Illinois, where the regiment
arrives at 4 P. M., and are quartered in the old State Penitentiary. With men
who were eager for war—whose hopes of martial glory ran so high—to be quartered
in the old criminal home, grated harshly, and they did not enter those dark
recesses with much gusto.
During our stay here, the regiment was every day marched out
on the city commons by Colonel Cook, and there exercised in the manual of arms
and the battallion evolutions, until they attained a proficiency surpassed by
none in the service.
SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh
Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 7
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