Editor's Note: Students enrolled in Western Illinois University Professor Greg Hall's Illinois history seminar during the Fall 2025 semester each wrote 700-word summaries of their research papers about McDonough County history, and Dr. Hall generously provided these summaries to The Community News Brief. We will be publishing these over the next few months as part of McDonough County's Bicentennial celebration coverage. We greatly appreciate Dr. Hall and his students for contributing to our historical retrospectives.
Glory, travel and pain … the story of the men who served during the war from McDonough County has both highs and lows. McDonough County during the Civil War sent 2,734 men to the war. During the war, the men of McDonough County spent a majority of their time in the Western Theatre. Contrary to the rural nature of the county, the men of McDonough County saw the future of naval and military warfare, and as well as American military doctrine. The men of McDonough would enlist and be drafted into the Illinois infantry and cavalry, with the majority of the men serving within the infantry.
The men of McDonough were a part of the 16th, 28th, 55th, 59th, 64th, 65th, 72nd, 78th, 84th, 119th, 124th, 132nd, 137th and 151st Infantry Regiments, and the 2nd, 7th, and 11th Cavalry Regiments. These regiments would see the very first and last engagements within the Western Theatre, but also within the war in general, starting with the battle of New Madrid and Island Number 10, and the Carolina campaign under William T. Sherman. The men of McDonough would see action at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Murfreesboro. Many men from the county did not die in the battle that granted the moniker “Butcher” to Ulysses S. Grant, Shiloh, but rather in the later campaigns.
The battle of New Madrid and Island Number 10, saw some of the first combat with Ironclads, a revolutionary evolution of naval technology that would change combat forever on the seas, these ironclads would help the men of McDonough County take both the city of New Madrid, but especially with the fortified island. The men from this region would be some of the first within the city after the surrender of the Confederate forces, although the victory came with hardships. They faced poisonous snakes and enemy fire simultaneously, while trying to work in the cypress swamps.
Many men from McDonough County would die during the campaign to take Vicksburg, after the men left the swamps, they headed up in elevation to the mountains.
Some of the McDonough County soldiers had been stationed in the Nashville, TN area after Shiloh, and after Vicksburg, the Confederacy was split in two. Now was time for General Sherman to bring the battle to the heart of the rebellion, Georgia. The men moved from the northwest corner Georgia down to Atlanta, fighting the Confederate army all the way. Next the men of McDonough County would see the future of American military doctrine, total war and “shock and awe.' Sherman began tearing the state up destroying enemy infrastructure and taking supplies all the way to the sea, “The March to Sea” was the first time the American military engaged in total war, and would shape not only how the American military engaged in combat, but also cemented the memory for south of the “Devil” Sherman.
Battle was not all for the county’s men, as some were sent to Andersonville, the deadliest prisoner of war camp within the entire United States. Union soldiers were left in an openair prison with little to no supplies in which the men were let out to get supplies themselves, and disease and elements took many Union lives, including men from the county. Downpours within the prison would drown prisoners who slept in hovels that they had dug to get out of the wind.
After the war, many of the regiments' leaders were promoted for their performance in the war, during the war; however, McDonough County’s men were promoted many a times to higher positions, sometimes from private all the way to leading their company. Others were promoted by the president himself. Almost 3,000 men served in the Civil War from McDonough County, a new and rural county, but they were engaged in some of the most important battles in the entire war. The men from the county were present. The men came from an agricultural county and saw the beginning of the industrialization of war. Even though the men were a tiny portion of the Union Army, coming from a new county from a state almost 50 years old, they saw what modern historians would kill to see today.
