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
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“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
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