Organization & Pre Civil War
Created as a social club in New York city in the fall of 1858, the Highland Guard or 79th New York It was created with the help of the St. Andrews and Caledonian Societies of New York and wealthy financial backers like Samual M. Elliot and James Cameron, the brother of the secretary of war. The organization had no actual connection to the 79th Cameron Highlanders of Scotland. Only in name and in tartan did they identify with the 79th of the British Army.
Their original duty was to parade, train as heavy artillery, and also provided a guard for the Prince of Wales when he visited the United States and did the same for the Japanese Ambassador.
The unit started as a Scottish American fraternity, the 79th without knowing it, set themselves up to take part in nearly every major engagement of the Civil War and become one of the most known and traveled regiments in the Union army.
Read more about this topic: 79th New York Volunteer Infantry
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, organization, civil and/or war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.”
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“We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... children do not take war seriously as war. War is soldiers and soldiers have not to be war but they have to be soldiers. Which is a nice thing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)