Excerpt from History of the Ninety-Seventh Regiment of Indiana Volunteer InfantryComrades of the 97th Regiment, Indiana Infantry Volunteers:Twenty-five years have rolled away, with their sunshine and shadow, since we were mustered out of service. Our first reunion was held at Worthington, Indiana, in September, 1888, and our second at Spencer, Indiana. At our first reunion it was determined that a history of the regiment should be written, which duty was courteously assigned to me. I then felt, and still feel, that the history will fall short of your expectations. But, feeling it to be the duty of a soldier to obey orders, at your command I have written this history. It must, in the nature of things, be incomplete. The time has been long since we, as boys, marched to the tunes of "The Girl I Left Behind Me" and "The Greene County Hang On, " and memory, ever treacherous, has let slip many things I would love to remember. But, if I cannot repaint the picture of your battles, and your marches and struggles for the supremacy of the dear old flag of the Union, and all the details of three years, covered over, as it is, with the dust of a quarter of a century, I will endeavor to bring out some of its most prominent features, which will at least give you an outline upon which someone in the future will improve.The companies that composed the 97th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers were enlisted in the 7th Congressional District during the months of July and August, 1862. The whole country, at that time, seemed to be turned into a military camp.Every day, for weeks, meetings were held and speeches made. Dinner was brought in the baskets of patriotic women, and after dinner one man took the flag, another a fife, another a drum, and marched up and down in front of the crowd, "beating up" for volunteers. The favorite tunes played were, "Yankee Doodle, " "Jay Bird, " "Greene County Hang On" and "The Girl I Left Behind Me." The ten companies composing the regiment were made up in the following counties in the district: Companies A, C, E and G, in Greene county, Company B in Clay county, Company D, in Putnam county, Company I, in Sullivan county, Company H, in Owen county, Company K, in Vermillion county, and Company F, in Greene and Owen counties. About August 25, 1862, all these companies found a rendezvous at Camp Dick Thompson, near Terre Haute. Here the regiment was organized and mustered into service September 20, 1862, by Capt. James Biddle.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.