While Colonel Coon's Second Wisconsin Volunteers were preparing to depart from Camp Randall, the towns and villages of Wisconsin continued to stir. In Baraboo in Sauk County, the organization of a three months' company had begun at a meeting on Saturday evening, April 19th. A few nights later, a second meeting was called for the Sauk County Court House where speeches were made by the leading citizens and the proprietor of the Baraboo Republic was so moved that he volunteered to furnish one recruit armed with a Sharps rifle, the recruit, of course, to be one of the employees of the newspaper. As the organizing continued, a captain and first lieutenant were elected by the members of the company and the name Sauk County Riflemen was adopted. Drawn in four-horse wagons and ac-companied by Rawley's town band, the Riflemen departed for Reeds-burg, where ten more volunteers signed up. Merrimac and Delton were the next communities visited and again recruiting was fruitful. Public subscriptions for support of the soldiers' families amounted to $6,000 during the first week of organization.
     By May 4th the organization of the Sauk County company was virtually completed. The men drilled in Baraboo before the "throng," speeches were made, and the women of Baraboo presented each man with a "tasteful and beautiful rosette in the national colors." The soldiers gave three cheers for the ladies, and the company was dis-missed, to reassemble a few days later for drill in Reedsburg, where the newly elected captain, Mexican War veteran A. G. Malloy, was presented with a sword by the citizenry. The men then moved on to Delton for a citizens' picnic and then to Prairie du Sac. From there the heroes were conveyed to Sauk City by twenty-four teams of horses belonging to the citizens. When the company returned to Baraboo, 108 men had enrolled, including four of the six sons of a Virginia-born citizen of Excelsior. As the Sauk County men waited in Baraboo for orders to report to Madison, living as guests in the homes of the citizens, word was received that no further three months' companies were needed. The entire company enlisted at once for three years. The mustering officer arrived in Baraboo on June 10th and enrolled the men in impressive ceremonies at which the citizens presented the company with a silk United States flag. At last the day of departure for Camp Randall arrived, an event that attracted the largest crowd in the history of Baraboo. Two thousand people gathered to watch the Baraboo Fire Company escort the soldiers to the train, to hear the choir of the Reverend Thomson, to hear an original poem, and to see the Sauk County Bible Society present each soldier with a pocket Testament.
     The Sauk County Riflemen arrived in Madison in mid-June, their uniforms consisting only of gray caps trimmed with green. At Camp Randall the men were issued an all-gray short-jacketed uniform paid for by the state, with a headpiece described by one of the men as "a plug hat with a huge pompon on the front at the top." Assigned to the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers, then in the process of organization, the Riflemen became Company A of that regiment.
     Over in Juneau County, Governor Randall's call was heard by a twenty-two-year-old Ohioan who was visiting in Wisconsin with his father. Rufus R. Dawes knew Wisconsin, having attended the Uni-versity of Wisconsin at Madison for two years before returning to Marietta, Ohio, to complete his schooling at Marietta College. Dawes also knew something of citizens in arms. His great-grandfather was no less a person than William Dawes, who had ridden south from Bos-ton on the night of April 18th, 1775, as Paul Revere rode north toward Lexington and Concord. Drawing up a pledge for volunteers for an unlimited time, Dawes began recruiting on April 24th. He had posters prepared and, with a sense of his own history, announced, "Enlistments Wanted For The Lemonweir Minute Men!" He was joined in his efforts by John A. Kellogg of Mauston,  the Juneau County prosecutor, thirty-three years old, Pennsylvania born, and the grandson of a Revolutionary soldier. Kellogg had entered Wisconsin Territory in 1840 and, although of meager formal education, had successfully read law and been admitted to the bar in Prairie du Sac. At the Madison convention of the new Republican party in 1856, Kellogg had been a member. This experience and his successful cam-paign for the prosecutor's position had given him a wide acquaintance in the state.
     By April 30th Dawes and Kellogg had succeeded in enlisting one hundred men, including many raftsmen from the pineries in the area, rugged men of the outdoors whom Dawes was especially glad to have. At the Mauston meeting at which the company was formally organized, Dawes and Kellogg were elected captain and first lieu-tenant without opposition. After a spirited campaign, the remaining officers were also elected. Then began the efforts to be mustered in. Influential citizens were dispatched to Madison, and Dawes himself went to wait upon the governor. Finally, orders having arrived, the company entrained for Madison on July 6th, assigned to the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers. Each of the members of the company boarded the train armed with a pincushion made by the ladies of Marietta, Ohio, and forwarded to Dawes, Marietta's native son.
     Dawes' company was the last of the ten companies assigned to the Sixth Wisconsin to arrive at Camp Randall. Undrilled and without uniforms, the Minute Men were not an imposing sight. Dawes said:

     As the company approached Camp Randall, they were met by two thousand men of the Fifth and Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers, drawn up in line of battle to welcome the newcomers. At the entrance to the camp, Dawes was greeted by First Lieutenant Frank A. Haskell, the regi-mental adjutant of the Sixth Wisconsin. Mounted, splendidly uni-formed, and already soldierly in his bearing, Haskell directed Dawes to "form the company in column by platoon" and march to head-quarters under the escort of Hibbard's Milwaukee Zouaves of the Fifth Wisconsin, the best-drilled military company in the state. In the first of many difficult situations in his military career, Dawes responded that he would be glad to comply, "but it is simply im-possible." Thereupon, accompanied by the Zouaves, the Minute Men walked at their own gait to headquarters where Colonel Lysander Cutler of Milwaukee greeted them. Colonel Cutler advised Dawes that his company was designated as Company K of the regiment, but unofficially the Minute Men had already been christened by their Sixth Wisconsin comrades-the name was "Company ~.
     As the Juneau County men looked around at Camp Randall, they learned something of their Sixth Wisconsin comrades. Two of the companies of the regiment were from Milwaukee, each composed exclusively of members of one national group. Company D was the Irish company, known as the "Montgomery Guards." Company F, the "Citizens' Corps Milwaukee," was composed of Germans. Both of its lieutenants had European military experience. Another German unit was Company H, the "Buffalo County Rifles." Its captain, J. F. Hauser, had been educated at the military school of Thun in Switzerland, was a veteran of European warfare and had been on Garibaldi's staff.  The German officers were not the only veteran soldiers of the regiment. Colonel Lysander Cutler, fifty-three years old buf as "rugged as a wolf,”  according to Captain Dawes, had commanded Maine militia troops during the Aroostook Indian wars of 1838 and 1839.  Although born in Worcester County, Massachusetts, Cutler had lived most of his colorful life in Maine. Reared on a farm, he had also learned the clothier's trade, surveyed, and taught school. Having founded his own woollen mill in 1843, Cutler made a fortune within ten years. Then his mill burned down and the fortune disappeared with it. Undaunted, he succeeded in rebuilding the mill and in en-larging his holdings to embrace other factories, tenements, a foundry, a gristmill, and a sawmill. As a leading businessman, Cutler was elected to the Maine senate, college trusteeships and a railroad directorship, but he was financially ruined by the panic of 1856 and moved to Milwaukee to start his career over again.
    Cutler's first Wisconsin employment was for a mining company that wanted a man to go west into the Indian country to investigate its claims. Cutler went, although it was a job with clear and present mortal danger, and he remained with the mining company until its operations stalled financially. The coming of the war found Cutler in his own grain and commission business, and with unlikely public employment as the fish inspector for Milwaukee County.  Although events were to prove him a successful volunteer officer, he was at first arbitrary and overzealous in his treatment of his junior officers. When the Sixth reached Washington, Cutler instituted a system of examinations for officers who were not acceptable to him. Seven captains and lieutenants were dropped from the regiment almost at once. There was bitter feeling in the regiment, especially where the examinations resulted in the replacement of the officers of the "foreign" companies by men of different national stock.  But the replacements were good men, and Cutler could later point to the record of the Sixth as a vindication of his policy. Julius P. Atwood of Madison, a Vermont-born lawyer and former Madison county judge, was Cutler's second in command. B. F. Sweet, from Chilton, the county seat of Calumet County, was the major. Of unknown New York antecedents, Sweet had arrived in Wisconsin in 1857 and had been admitted to the bar and elected to the state senate. Atwood was to resign because of ill health shortly after the arrival of the regiment in Washington.   Sweet then assumed the lieutenant colonelcy, and Edward S. Bragg of Fond du Lac became the major of the Sixth. Destined to be a national political figure after the war, Bragg was a native of New York, where he had been educated at Geneva College and admitted to the bar. Entering Wisconsin in 185o at the age of twenty-three, Bragg had at once be-come active in Democratic politics, had been elected prosecuting attorney of Fond du Lac County and a Douglas delegate to the 186o Democratic Convention at Charleston.
     Although never an officer of field grade in the Sixth Wisconsin, regimental adjutant Frank A. Haskell, who had greeted Dawes' company at Camp Randall, was also to be closely identified with the Iron Brigade. A grandson of a New Hampshire captain of the Revolu-tion, the thirty-three-year-old lieutenant was a native of Tunbridge, Vermont. Preceded by his lawyer brother, in 1848 Haskell had left the family's farm and moved to Columbus, Wisconsin, where he was associated with his brother and served as town clerk. In 1850 the youth had traveled to the East to attend Dartmouth College. Graduating in 1854, he returned to Wisconsin, this time to Madison, where he entered the practice of law in the firm of Julius P. Atwood, now one of his superior officers. Like Lucius Fairchild and Thomas S. Allen of the Second Wisconsin, Haskell had been active in the Governor's Guard, and had assisted in the organization of the Ander-son Guards, another military company. When the war broke out, Haskell was elected first lieutenant of the Anderson Guards and accompanied them into the Sixth Wisconsin.
     The Sixth did not linger long at Camp Randall before proceeding to the seat of war. On July 16th, fully equipped by the state except for arms, the regiment was mustered into Federal service, 1,084 men strong. Leaving for Washington late in July, they encamped on the way at Patterson Park in Baltimore, just two miles from old Fort McHenry. Like their earlier numerical counterparts from Massa-chusetts, the Sixth contended in Baltimore with the "Plug Uglies," who attacked the regiment's camp at midnight on August 5th. Countering with brickbats-only two companies had as yet been armed, the Wisconsin men successfully held off the attackers with but a single casualty. Wandering through the beleaguered and darkened camp, Lieutenant Kellogg fell into a pit, apparently dug by his comrades for sanitary purposes. The lieutenant was not really hurt, and the regiment quick]y discovered that it was not prudent to twit him as the only casualty of the "Battle of Patterson Park." The other result of the fracas was the prompt issue of arms to the rest of the regiment. The weapon available was a Belgian musket, not the soldiers' favorite since, as one of them recorded,

                        "you could most always tell when they were fired by finding yourself on the ground" from the recoil.
 
    After several more days in Baltimore, the Sixth entrained in cattle cars for Washington at midnight and reached the city before day-light on the following morning. The men then slept briefly on the pavement in front of the post office, washed up at the fire hydrants in the streets, and went into camp on Meridian Hill. On August 23rd they were reviewed by Brigadier General Rufus King to whose com-mand the Sixth Wisconsin, Fifth Wisconsin, and Nineteenth Indiana had been assigned. Dawns believed that the regiment had made a poor impression, largely because of "that contemptible brass band of ours," which played so slowly that as the soldiers passed the review-ing stand, "we had to hold one leg in the air and balance on the other while we waited for the music!" The caliber of the regimental band was really not surprising. Whether or not Colonel Cutler was particularly unmusical, it was recorded that whenever a soldier was apprehended for misconduct, his comrades shouted, "Put him in the brass band." On August 26th the men of the Sixth got their first view of General McClellan when he reviewed all of the troops en-camped on Meridian Hill. In an example of the strange personal attraction that McClellan possessed, one of the men of the Sixth wrote a letter home that day about how the "boys are all carried away with enthusiasm for McClellan."
    The Sixth Wisconsin left their encampment on Meridian Hill on September 2nd and moved to a position near the Chain Bridge. Re-maining on the Maryland side of the bridge, they were engaged throughout September on picket duty between the Chain Bridge and Falling Waters. Here Captain Dawes discovered difficulty in preventing looting by his Minute Men:

                    it "was impossible for me to restrain men who had been starved on salt-beef and hardtack, when they were scattered over four miles of territory and sneered at as Yankees by the people."

Indeed, the twenty-two-year old captain was apparently unusually sensitive to the temptations of his men, because he went on to say,

                                                                                        "The fact is I ate some pig myself."