Series
Hoosier Union History.
Standing series on Indiana's Union regiments and citizen-soldiers of the Civil War — the documentary table the Memorial Day series sits on.
A standing series on the regiments, brigades, and states that filled the Union ranks during the Civil War. The table the Memorial Day series sits on. Sourced from regimental histories, the National Park Service, the U.S. Army Center of Military History, and the standard secondary literature. New entries added as the research warrants.
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01
Entry 1 of 15 · May 12, 2026
Hoosiers for the Union: An Indiana Memorial Before Memorial Day
What Indiana gave the Union — 129 infantry regiments, roughly 196,000 men, about 24,000 dead. The 27th Indiana finding Lee’s Lost Order in a Maryland meadow. Wallace’s Zouaves, the Iron Brigade’s 19th, the 28th USCT at the Crater. The first entry in a standing Union-history series — the table the Memorial Day series sits on.
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02
Entry 2 of 15 · May 13, 2026
A Brave Black Regiment: The 54th Massachusetts and the Birth of the USCT
The 54th Massachusetts led the assault on Battery Wagner, refused unequal pay for eighteen months rather than accept seven dollars to a white soldier’s thirteen, and opened the door for the roughly 179,000 Black soldiers of the United States Colored Troops. Entry two in the standing Union-history series.
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03
Entry 3 of 15 · May 14, 2026
The Black Hats: The Iron Brigade of Wisconsin and Michigan
The only all-Western brigade in the Army of the Potomac. The 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin and the 24th Michigan earned the name “Iron Brigade” at South Mountain — and lost close to two-thirds of their strength on the first day at Gettysburg, the highest battle-death rate of any brigade in the Union Army. Entry three in the standing Union-history series.
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04
Entry 4 of 15 · May 15, 2026
Two Diaries and a Silence: Three Hoosier Voices from the Union War
The series shifts register. Two Hoosier diaries and a regiment whose voices the archive kept differently. Theodore Upson of the 100th Indiana, First Sergeant William Bluffton Miller of the 75th Indiana, and the men of the 28th USCT — with the archival asymmetry named openly on the page. The fourth entry in the standing Union-history series, the first in its story-driven mode.
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05
Entry 5 of 15 · May 16, 2026
The 28th USCT in Their Own Words: A Correction
Indiana's only Black regiment had a voice during the war — in The Christian Recorder, in letters preserved at smaller archives, in a chaplain's reunion with his own mother on a Richmond street on April 4, 1865. Part One of this series called it a silence. Entry five is the correction.
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06
Entry 6 of 15 · May 16, 2026
Two Diaries, Two Lifetimes Apart
Theodore Upson's diary reached print in 1943. William Bluffton Miller's reached print in 2005. Sixty-two years apart, different publishers, different editorial cultures — and a different kind of testimony preserved by each. The sixth entry in a standing Union-history series, and the close of a three-post arc on the Hoosier diaries.
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07
Entry 7 of 15 · May 16, 2026
The Old Sergeant and the Flag They Saved — A Hoosier Coda
On New Year's Day 1863 a Hoosier editorialist published a poem about a dying sergeant from Shiloh. Five years later, an Illinois general's order designated the first Decoration Day. A Hoosier coda on the trilogy — the soldier-voice of 1863 and the community-liturgy of 1868, side by side.
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08
Entry 8 of 15 · May 16, 2026
The Song That Came After — A Hoosier Coda on Sherman's March
In January 1865 a Chicago publisher released "Marching Through Georgia." The march had ended six weeks earlier. The Hoosiers did not sing this song on the march — the song did not yet exist. They sang it for the rest of their lives, at every GAR reunion and every Memorial Day service, to remember what they had done.
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09
Entry 9 of 15 · May 16, 2026
Wallace's Zouaves and the Hoosier Who Wrote Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace was a Crawfordsville lawyer who raised the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry in April 1861, was blamed by Grant for the near-disaster at Shiloh, redeemed himself at Monocacy in July 1864, and returned home to write the bestselling American novel of the 19th century. The first post under the renamed Hoosier Union History series.
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10
Entry 10 of 15 · May 20, 2026
Oliver P. Morton and the Two Years Without a Legislature
Indiana's Civil War governor kept the state producing soldiers at a rate no one expected — and ran its government for two years without a legislature, in a way the courts later condemned. Post 8 of the Hoosier Union History series gives the documentary treatment to the hardest figure in it.
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11
Entry 11 of 15 · May 21, 2026
Three Cigars and a Lost Order: How the 27th Indiana Found Lee's Battle Plan
Two soldiers of an Indiana regiment, resting in a Maryland meadow, found three cigars wrapped in a sheet of paper. The paper was Robert E. Lee's battle plan. Post 9 of the Hoosier Union History series.
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12
Entry 12 of 15 · May 22, 2026
Symbol of Indiana: The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument and a State's Memory of the Union
In 1902 Indiana finished a 284-foot monument to its Civil War soldiers and set it at the literal center of Indianapolis. Post 10 of the Hoosier Union History series, and the first of a four-part Memorial Day weekend arc on how Indiana remembers its Union dead.
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13
Entry 13 of 15 · May 23, 2026
Hoosier Regiments in Stone: The Indiana Monuments at Gettysburg and Antietam
Decades after the war, Indiana's veterans went back to the fields where they fought and set their regiments in granite — the 27th Indiana's stones at Spangler's Spring and in the Cornfield. Post 11 of the Hoosier Union History series.
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14
Entry 14 of 15 · May 24, 2026
Section 10: Crown Hill and the Resting Place of Indiana's Union Dead
Indianapolis had no ground set apart for its war dead until 1866, when a new national cemetery began gathering them, soldier by soldier, inside Crown Hill. Post 12 of the Hoosier Union History series.
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15
Entry 15 of 15 · May 25, 2026
The First Decoration Day at Crown Hill: How Indiana Began to Keep Memorial Day
On May 30, 1868, ten thousand people walked into a national cemetery in Indianapolis to decorate the graves of the Union dead. Indiana has kept the day ever since. Post 13 of the Hoosier Union History series, and the close of the Memorial Day weekend arc.
15 entries in this series · Back to all posts →