Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Administrative Law Blogs -> Within the Scope

Administrative Law

: Within the Scope

Minnesota?s Signature Trait, Then and Now: The Very First to Volunteer

By Eric L. Lipman

On this Memorial Day Weekend, I have spent a lot of time thinking about Minnesota?s men and women in uniform ? those who are serving in a deadly conflict today and those who literally rushed into harms way a century and a half ago.

My thoughts ran to a bitterly divided country, armies mustering for war and a President?s urgent call for selfless volunteers ? in 1861.

When Abraham Lincoln called for 300,000 troops to be mustered, Minnesota?s 1st Regiment was the very first state volunteer regiment to be formally tendered into Federal service. And throughout the horrible conflict that followed, these Minnesotans fought valiantly in the most important battles of the Civil War ? including those at Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg.

The Regiment is best remembered for its valor during the second day of fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg. As the Union line buckled and collapsed along Cemetery Ridge, the 1st Regiment was ordered to engage a much larger brigade from Alabama that was on the march toward the Union positions. Remarkably, the Regiment's orders were to subdue the Confederate brigade and to seize their colors. Notwithstanding the grim scale of such a directive, the small Minnesota unit did directly engage the phalanx of Confederate troops, stopping their advance and obliging the massive force to retreat. The 1st Regiment traded the lives of more than 4 out of 5 of its members ? the highest casualty rate for a single engagement of the entire war ? for enough time for the Union line to be fortified; an act of valor that arguably saved the day, and the still later victory, for the Union forces. During their fateful charge, the unit?s battle flag fell fives times and was raised again each time. And despite their horrible errand, and the piercing rate of casualties that quickly followed, not a single member of the regiment broke from the ranks.

Two decades later, the poet Hanford Lennox Gordon recounted the bravery and sacrifices of the 1st Minnesota Regiment with verses that still ring out the importance of what those soldiers did. Gordon recalls:

Hold them? They held them at bay as a bear holds the hounds on his track;
Steel to steel, banner to banner, they met them and staggered them back;
Two hundred and sixty and two, they held the mad thousands at bay;
Met them and baffled and broke them, turning the tide of the day:
Two hundred and sixty and two when the sun hung low in heaven,
But ah! when the stars rode over they numbered but forty-seven.
Dead on the field or wounded the rest of the "Old First" lay;
Never a man of them faltered or flinched in the fire of the fray,
For they bore the banner of Freedom on the Gettysburg hills that day.
Honor our fallen comrades-cover their graves with flowers,
For they fought and fell like Spartans for this glorious land of ours:
They fell, but they fell victorious, for the Rebel ranks were riven,
And over our land united-one nation from sea to sea-
Over the grave of Treason, over millions of men made free ....

To my mind, this is part of a singularly important chain that remains unbroken across our state?s history. Despite the scale of the callings, our soldiers continue to bravely say ?I will go,? in the hopes that millions of others may be made free.

With gratitude this Memorial Day, and every other day, to those who served and sacrificed.

Full post as published by Within the Scope on May 25, 2008 (boomark / email).