cc >> Welcome, everyone,
to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen.
I work here at the UW Madison Biotechnology Center.
I also work for UW Extension Cooperative Extension, and on
behalf of those folks and our other sponsors, Wisconsin Public
Television, Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the Science
Alliance, and for tonight especially, the Wisconsin
Veterans Museum, thanks for coming to Wednesday Nite at the
Lab. We do this every Wednesday
night, 50 times a year. For many of Wisconsin's 5.7
million residents no place has more resonance on this campus
than Camp Randall. Most people know it as the Camp
Randall Stadium, but before it was a stadium it was the Camp
Randall militia grounds, and before that it was the state
fair grounds. Tonight, it's my pleasure to be
able to have Daniel Einstein talk to us about the Camp
Randall Memorial Park and Arch, and he's going to tell the saga
going all the way back to the 1850s about this most remarkable
touchstone piece of ground here on campus.
It's a great pleasure to be able to have this talk and this topic
because for about the last 20 years I've been walking by this
piece of ground every day on my way to work.
The arch, in particular, has had worser times than it does now.
It looks fabulous now. It has not always been so well
maintained as it is today here in 2012 during the 150th
anniversary of the Civil War and the centennial of the dedication
of the arch which is happening this week.
Daniel Einstein has worked at the UW Facilities Management
Division for nearly 20 years. He's had an ever changing
program management role ranging from campus recycling and tree
inventories to the UW Lakeshore Nature Preserve, and currently
his work focuses on the university's historic
structures, archeological sites, and public art installations.
To put that in context, this campus is one of the few places
I know of in North America that has a continuous record of
10,000 years of human habitation, and the guy that
first told me that was Daniel Einstein.
It's a pretty amazing thing to think about that.
As part of a team of students, staff, and consultants, Daniel
contributed to the preparation of a thousand-page cultural
landscape inventory of some of the university's most iconic
historic properties. The cultural landscape report,
including a part on Camp Randall, can be found online at
the Campus Planning and Landscape Architecture website.
Daniel obtained a master's degree from UW Madison's Nelson
Institute for Environmental Studies, building on
undergraduate studies in environmental education.
It is a great please to introduce Daniel Einstein to
you, and please join me in welcoming Daniel to this very
special Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
[APPLAUSE]
Hello. Well, thanks, Tom, and this is a
wonderful turnout. I guess I would like to begin by
apologizing for the typo on the news release.
My uncle Albert will not be coming.
[LAUGHTER] So if you'd like to cutout.
As Tom indicated, my job here at the university is the historic
and cultural resource manager where I have an opportunity to
engage in research to help inform decisions that the
university makes with regard to our historic properties,
archeological sites, and our public art.
Our presentation tonight is about Camp Randall, and, as Tom
suggested, not the Camp Randall that most people think of when
they hear that place name, but the Civil War camp.
But the context, the lens through which we will examine
Camp Randall, is a cultural landscape which is a term that
perhaps you're not familiar with.
And by cultural landscape I mean that relationship between
people, culture, and the land, and how the land influences
human decisions, and, in return, how humans have impact on the
land. What I really enjoy about my job
is that sometimes I get to play history detective, and it allows
me to piece together stories pulling events and people and
time and space together to develop a coherent narrative.
But that process is sometimes like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
The dog ate one piece, the baby threw something under the couch,
and your best friend has taken a piece and tried to jam it in to
a location that you know is wrong but you can't convince him
otherwise. Sometimes when you're done with
the jigsaw puzzle and you don't have all the pieces, you still
have enough information to have an understanding for the place.
That's a lot like history. Sometimes we know the who and
the when but we don't know anything about the where, but we
can still try and understand how a place is significant even
though we don't have all the information.
If I say something tonight that leaves a hole in the story and
you have that answer, I'd love to hear from you.
The story is seldom complete, and so please let me know if you
have additional information.
Another useful analogy for thinking about history is
something called a palensist, which is a word I had to
practice how to say, palensist. Perhaps some of you who came
here tonight from the medieval times remember...
[LAUGHTER] Parchment.
Animal skins were used to write manuscripts.
And if you were writing a particularly long novel and you
ran out of an animal skin, you couldn't go down to the
parchment depot and get a couple of extra skins.
You could, I suppose, kill some more sheep and wait, but the
more logical approach would be to go into the back room and
grab and old parchment and repurpose it by scraping away
the information on that parchment and then writing the
new story on the old manuscript. What happens sometimes, though,
is that the old story bleeds through and confuses the current
manuscript. Cultural landscapes are often
like that. If you know how to read between
the lines, if you know how to look, you may be able to see
both the present and the past simultaneously.
So let's start with just orienting you to the area that
is going to be discussed tonight.
This is a current campus map. On the top, or north end, we
have University Avenue. Breese Terrace to the west.
Monroe Street and Regent on the east.
The property is dominated on the southern sector by athletics and
recreational sports facilities and on the north end by the
engineering campus. There on the east in red is what
we today call Camp Randall Memorial Park.
The historical periods that we will be examining tonight are
the state fairground, the Civil War training ground, and
management by the University of Wisconsin.
As you can see, the state fairground bracketed the Civil
War training camp. That is to say, for three years
before the war and then several years after the war there was a
state fairground at Camp Randall.
[NO AUDI O]
What we have here is a 1914 topographic map.
A topographic map is a map that aligns us in a one-dimensional
plane to see three dimensions. And so some of you who are
familiar with this will recognize that we have
concentric contour lines that represent two-foot elevation
change. So our property, once again,
University Avenue on the north at the top of the page, Breese
Terrace on the left or the west side.
There are three knolls on this landscape, and I might also just
mention that this is a landscape that was created by glaciers and
those represent sand and gravel essentially.
But we have a north knoll, a south knoll, and an east knoll.
Keep these in mind as we go through the presentation because
we'll see them again and again. So this first period, the state
fairground, in 1858 Madison hosted the fair for the first
time and hosted it again after the war.
A total of 11 times during this period the state fair was in
Madison. The first year that it was in
Madison was 1858, and we have a lithograph here that shows the
location of the facilities.
On the high ground at the south end of the fairground, what do
we have? The fine arts hall.
This is the focal point of the state fairground.
On the north end of the property we have a flag pole and military
drill assembly occurring. And then on the east knoll we
have an exhibit tent. One of the fun things
that one can do-- Keep talking?
There's a crackle in the online feed.
Okay. It's not me.
The exhibit tent on the east knoll.
One of the fun things that we can do with these images is when
we do a high resolution scan, we can start looking at finer and
finer detail. Along the outside of the state
fairground we have the animal stalls, and in the center
foreground is a fireman's ladder competition which I always find
kind of interesting because those sorts of traditions
certainly exist in today's state fairground environment.
So here's a close-up view of the south end of the state
fairground. At the top of the page we get a
better look at the exhibit hall, and I just want to mention that
one of our great Wisconsin residents, John Muir, attending
the state fair in 1860 brought a contraption that he called his
time sive and displayed it in that exhibit hall, and as a
consequence was invited to be a student at the university where
he stayed until he dropped out and joined the University of the
Wilderness. We can also see in this close-up
a racetrack near the animal stalls, and in the lower
foreground we can see a fire wagon being pulled by firemen.
Here, again, is the north knoll. We can start to see in some more
detail a military drill. There is a cannon up there on
the hill. Don't know what that's doing up
there. And here in the lower left-hand
corner is the fireman's ladder competition, and it appears that
there are four or five ladders that will be scaled by the
firemen during this competition. Well, let's move right on to the
Civil War training ground period, which lasted about four
years. At the beginning of the war,
Governor Alexander Randall requested the use of the state
fairground for military training.
In his honor, they named the camp after him.
Apparently he tried to resist but they wouldn't accept that.
During the four-year period that the Civil War camp existed, over
70,000 people enlisted and organized at Camp Randall.
And an important distinction needs to be made between
enlisted and were soldiers because over this four-year
period some of the enlisted men came back for a second
go-around. But nonetheless, 90,000 men
enlisted in the army during the Civil War period in Wisconsin.
70,000 moved through Camp Randall, so roughly
three-quarters of all men who served in the Civil War moved
through Camp Randall, organized and mustered out at the end of
the war. Of those who came to Camp
Randall, many did not return. Statewide, over 12,000 lost
their lives either to disease or being killed in action.
Typically they stayed only a few short weeks, maybe a month,
before they were moved to the front.
It was an opportunity for them to be given their uniforms,
their weapons, and to engage in rudimentary drills.
At one time, over a thousand men could be in camp, and at the
period towards the end of the war accommodations were
available for over 5,000 men at one time in Camp Randall.
One can imagine with that many people in such a small area the
resource demands would have been significant, not to mention
popularity of the latrine. Twenty-seven infantry regiments
eventually moved through Camp Randall, including several
companies of artillery and sharpshooters.
This is one of the earliest drawings of the camp in 1862.
John Gaddis, incidentally, has a whole sketch book of his
experiences as a foot soldier, and some of them can be seen at
the Wisconsin Veterans Museum up on the Capitol.
The exhibit hall on the south knoll has now transitioned and
has been replaced by headquarters.
Off in the distance we see the mountains.
Perhaps they were the Rocky Mountains.
[LAUGHTER] Perhaps they were what we would
call today University Heights. It's important when looking at
some of these images to remember that the map or the sketch is
not reality. Perspective can be distorted.
Nonetheless, there we have the mountains of western Madison.
[LAUGHTER] Along the center of the training
ground is a drill ground where military drills
were performed. And at this early stage the
enlistees were being housed in tents.
Let's move to a sketch which I believe is the most accurate
depiction of the camp, and that's the handout that you have
tonight. And this is the piece of
evidence that I use to fit together many of the puzzle
pieces. It is a measure drawing prepared
by Napoleon Bonaparte Van Slyke, whose name you ought to know
because he was a prominent Madison citizen, but at the time
of the Civil War he was the quartermaster and was
responsible for submitting this plan.
Orient you to this plan. It's a little different
perspective. Monroe Street, Randall Street,
University Avenue, and, once again, we see the headquarters
building on the south knoll. On the north knoll, we now see
the General Hospital. The officers' quarters can be
seen along the northern section of the camp with the enlisted
men's barracks right behind. Here, an extension of Dayton
Street, is the camp gate, the only way in and out of Camp
Randall. And over here we have the prison
yard. Now, some of you are probably
wondering if that's the prison yard associated with the
Confederate prisoners of war, and that's a piece of the puzzle
that I haven't quite been able to fit yet.
For those of you that are not familiar with the story, towards
the beginning of the war in 1862 there was a battle on the
Mississippi River. Thirteen hundred Confederate
soldiers were captured and sent to Camp Randall.
At the time, they weren't prepared to accommodate those
prisoners, and the story goes that they set up a very hasty
stockade to hold the prisoners. It was spring.
It was cold. It was wet.
There was a long siege. Many of the men who came to
Madison were already sick with pneumonia or dysentery or other
communicable diseases, and unfortunately 140 of them died
here in Madison. They were buried in Forest Hill
Cemetery, and that is how today we have the northern most
Confederate rest in the country. I do not believe that this
prison yard is the location where the Confederates were
confined but I just don't know. Let's move on to a lithograph.
This one from 1864. Monroe Road is here on the left
side of the screen which connects to Monroe.
An oak woods is represented on the west side of the camp which
we would now call University Heights.
And then in the foreground, we have the Milwaukee and Prairie
du Chien Railroad, a very convenient transportation link
for the camp that is trying to supply the needs of 5,000
people. So troop movements are expedited
by the close proximity of the railroad to the camp.
Here we have an enlargement of the same lithograph.
We can start to see, again, the headquarters building on the
south knoll, the parade ground just below, the prison yard, and
the railroad. Are you starting to see a
pattern here? The headquarters building on the
most prominent location, and the hospital also on top of a knoll.
For those of you who have spent time on a farm, you probably can
appreciate that when you have animals and lots of people
there's manure. And when it rains, there's mud.
And so where are you going to put your most prominent, you
most important facilities? On the high ground.
Here's the same lithograph. The General Hospital with its
three wings. The officers' quarters now in
two locations. One along the fence; one near
headquarters. And now comes the time where we
create our own palensist where we overlay a current map with
the map from 1865 to locate on the ground where the original
Camp Randall was located. Not surprisingly, the
headquarters are over by gate number nine where the Wisconsin
Club, that wonderful suite for the high rollers, can be found.
The General Hospital is right on top of Breese Terrace near the
Congregational Church. The officers' quarters would be
located where engineering research is today.
The camp gate would be located on the northeast corner of the
McClain Center. Interestingly, the basketball
court at the Shell is where the prison yard might be.
And finally, not surprising, the parade ground right on the
football field. After the war, the property was
scraped clean. That is to say, the buildings
were sold off for scrap lumber and the fairgrounds
reestablished themselves.
Fairs were held once again for eight years until 1892 until
the fair permanently moved to West Allis.
At that time, the Agriculture Society sold the property to
some private investors who had interest in residential platting
of the property. This was upsetting to the GAR.
The GAR is the Grand Army of the Republic, the dominate veterans
organization representing veterans of the Civil War.
On the right of the screen is the badge of the GAR, modeled
after the Medal of Honor. One of the most vocal voices in
the GAR was Josiah Rood, whose title was Custodian and
Wisconsin Department Patriotic Instructor, which is a great
title that I had no idea existed.
[LAUGHTER] A patriotic instructor,
it turns out, is kind of a public relations lobbyist,
advocate, teacher, historian, and Josiah Rood is the voice
through which much of the remainder of this
presentation we'll be hearing. The GAR, with Josiah Rood,
petitioned the state legislature to intervene and purchase the
property before it's developed for residential plats.
The legislature responds and dedicates $25,000 to purchase
approximately 52 acres. So roughly $500 an acre for the
former military grounds. The legislation, despite what
the GAR had hoped for, stipulates that the grounds will
be used for the exclusive use of the university.
No mention is made of preserving the site as a memory to the
soldiers who were stationed there during the war.
The university proceeds with its plans to make use of the
property for agriculture, athletics, and military drill.
At one time, the university operated an experimental Ag
station in the southwest corner of the property where they grew
pharmaceutical plants, some of which were cannabis which were
hoped would be a great medicine. We can see here the south knoll.
No more exhibit hall, no more headquarters, but clearly
defined on the landscape. University Heights is similarly
bare. It suggested that the needs, the
firewood needs of the people at Camp Randall exhausted the trees
in the University Heights area. And here in the middle ground is
the first football field and grandstand, built in 1894.
Any idea where this view was taken?
University Hall was the original name for Bascom Hall, built in
1859. And if you think about it, all
of the other lithographs and sketches also had this
perspective to the southwest. They were all done from the dome
on Bascom Hall. Here in 1906 is a landscape
designed by OC Simonds, a famous landscape designer.
Clearly, he has not been given any direction to include
memorials to the Civil War in this design.
He sites a gymnasium, an ice hockey rink, tennis courts, and
relocates or reorients the track and the football field.
No memorial to the Civil War veterans.
Well, that upsets the GAR and Josiah.
And they, again, go to the legislature and appeal for a
memorial park. The legislature responds, offers
$25,000 for the creation of a monument, and asks the memorial
park commission, made up of GAR members, to delineate the
boundaries of a new park. Here's, in the words of Josiah
Rood, the appeal. And you can sort of hear the
desperation in this old veteran's voice.
Many of his comrades are now in their 70s.
"We ask you not to delay this matter.
The very youngest of that rapidly diminishing army of boys
and young men who rescued our country from disillusion is now
nearing his allotted three score and ten.
We are marching rather rapidly down the sunset slope and will
not be very long before we shall have gone into the camp beyond
the river. If we are to rejoice in the fact
of this memorial, it must be built before long."
Well, aside from being a little overwrought and Victorian, I
think it's an interesting appeal.
Here we have the veterans who, nearing the end of their lives,
they don't have a place where their legacy can be remembered.
What would Madison be without a controversy?
The Park Commission comes up with a plan which is immediately
opposed by the major newspapers. In this case, the Wisconsin
State Journal and Richard Lloyd Jones asks for a real artist to
design the arch because, as he puts it, a draftsman from a
quarry and a tombstone cutter have been hired to do the work.
Instead of the draftsman from the quarry, they renegotiate the
contracts, and the job assignment is given to Lew
Porter, some of you may recognize that name, a local
architect who's responsible with Alan & Conover for the Red Gym
and Armory. Well, finally, the day comes for
the cornerstone exercises. Not many months later.
At this time, a time capsule is placed in the base of the arch,
and the newspaper article reports that the GAR and the
Women's Relief Corps and the Ladies of the GAR inserted their
rules, regulations, and rituals in the box.
The Sons of Veterans put their membership badge.
The university added it's role of alumni from 1849 to 1911 with
pictures of the university, reports from the patriotic
instructor, photos of Camp Randall from 1861, as well as
newspapers of the day, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the
Wisconsin State Journal, and the Madison Democrat.
Wouldn't it be cool to be able to get to that time capsule?
The other charge for the commission was to establish the
boundaries of the park, which they did.
They established a 6-1/2 acre boundary which did not last.
That is to say, by 1954 the athletics department was looking
to build a practice facility and requested that this portion of
the established park be given over to the athletics
department. Veterans groups opposed but were
not successful. As a compromise, the building
was named the Memorial Practice building.
Today we refer to is as the Camp Randall Sports Center.
Again, in 1986, the athletics department requested additional
land for construction of the McClain Center, and this time
around when the veterans groups objected, the legislature agreed
to a compromise whereby the polygon marked B was traded for
land on the south end of the shell marked A.
So the boundaries have changed twice now since 1913.
Well, finally the dedication day arrives.
The GAR chooses to have an encampment and reunion as part
of their celebration June 18th and 19th, 1912.
Josiah Rood writes a booklet. And, again, if it weren't for
Josiah Rood, this story would certainly have been lost.
It only took 50 days from that cornerstone laying exercise
until the dedication. At this reunion, 560 veterans
show up and hundreds of visitors join in for days of schmoozing
and reminiscing about the wartime.
Josiah wrote in the dedication booklet: On top of the knoll
where the old guardhouse used to stand, Comrade Pratt had erected
a tent a hundred feet long, and nearby stood a rest tent put up
by the Ladies of the GAR. With a piano, chairs, and
rockers even for the weary. At the foot of the hill, the
Ladies of the Relief Corps had erected a big mess tent with the
commissary department where we got excellent meals, ice cream
included for 25 cents. Just west of the tents stood two
wartime cannons. And here is probably the most
iconic image of the dedication. The following day where
speeches, patriotic anthems, dedicatory prayers by Reverend
McKay, one of the park commissioners, the Star Spangled
Banner was played and the firing of a salute.
And if you'll indulge me for just a moment, when I get a hold
of a high resolution image I start to look for things in the
background. The unintentional subjects in a
photograph can sometimes tell you so much more than you
expected. What I want to point out here is
that just beyond the heads of these veterans and their family
members we can see residences on the University Heights.
Right here is the building known as Buell's Folly.
It was one of the first residences in the University
Heights area on Ely Place. So-called folly because who
would ever build out at University Heights so far out of
town. [LAUGHTER]
And then adjacent to it is the Gilmore House, built
in 1908, and some of you may recognize that as the Frank
Lloyd Wright airplane house. So there it is in 1912.
By the way, Buell's house was designed by Lew Porter.
So here we have his arch forming a portal which frames an earlier
project of his. Well, nothing goes right with
this arch, and because of its hasty construction, within years
it shows signs of settling. They try to repair it with the
installation of some anchors. That is not adequate, and by
1919 there is a call for it to be torn down and rebuilt.
That never happened. But in 1920, the only surviving
plan for the arch can be found, and it appears that the
recommendation is to replace the interior brick work of the
hollow arch with reinforced concrete.
Don't know if that ever happened.
I don't think you need to worry if you walk through it.
Not guaranteeing that. The statuary on the arch.
For those of you that were paying close attention to those
dedication photos, you'll notice that there are no statues in
front of the arch. In their haste, the statues had
not arrived. Josiah was not pleased.
Once installed, the two statues, representing a young enlisted
man on the right and a veteran, I should say a young enlisted
man on the left and a veteran on the right, can be seen here in
these current images. But it's not just a member of
the GAR. Remember on his breast pocket
you can see the badge of the GAR as well as a lapel pin.
Turns out that the model for this statue is none other than
the park commissioner himself. [LAUGHTER]
How's that for a legacy? Doesn't happen anymore.
Looks like Robert E. Lee.
On the top of the arch is Old Abe.
Old Abe was a bald eagle that traveled with the 8th Wisconsin
into 36 battles. He survives, returns a hero to
Madison where he gets a well deserved retirement, and lives
in the Capitol. Here he's shown posing on one of
the cannons in the Capitol Park. Unfortunately, he dies when a
fire in the Capitol results in smoke inhalation.
He's stuffed and placed in the museum where, in 1904, he's
consumed by yet another fire. However, he does live on in the
mascot of the 101st airborne, which was headquartered in
Milwaukee in 1921. You also may remember Old Abe as
the mascot of the Case Agricultural Implement Company.
They trademarked him right in 1865 and only retired him in the
last few decades. By the way, there was also a
mascot of the 8th Wisconsin, a dog named Frank.
Why Frank is not on the arch, I don't know.
[LAUGHTER] So now we come to one
of those history detective stories, one of the mysteries of
the commemorative objects in Camp Randall.
How many of you have seen this strange little wooden structure
in Camp Randall and have wondered what is that and how
did it get there and how come we don't know anything about it?
Well, I wondered the same thing, and it took me a long time to
uncover what I believe is the whole story.
Now, one of the things that art historians and archeologists do
is try and determine the provenance of an object.
That is to say, look for the object's resume.
Where has it traveled from its time of origin until today?
The story of the arch is one that I think represents an
object that has true provenance to the Civil War camp.
What's peculiar about this particular structure, though, is
that there are no doors. You walk around it and you say
if this is a guardhouse, how did they get in and out?
No hinges. No doorknobs.
Just oak panels. But if you start looking a
little bit closer, on the gable end of the structure you'll
notice in the lower right-hand corner that there is a modern
lag bolt holding up the panels of the gable end, whereas the
lower panels appear to be hand-wrought iron spikes.
That gave me a clue that there was something about this
structure that had been modified.
That and the fact that a guardhouse with thin boards on
the roof would hardly serve to protect anyone.
Well, I found a newspaper article from 1914 that I think
resolves the problem. If you remember, at the end of
the war the buildings of the camp were sold for surplus.
A farmer in Madison purchased what was then called the
guardhouse and hauled it back to his farm and made it into a corn
crib. When he died 50 years later,
some of his old war veteran friends remembered that this
structure had come from Camp Randall and decided to offer it
back to the newly formed Memorial Park.
The newspaper article describes the structure as being 18 feet
by 40 feet, having a double layer of two-inch oak planks,
fastened with spikes riveted on both ends, with portholes about
two feet apart, check, check, check.
The portholes being four inches wide, eight inches high, and
then the clue that help to really bring this whole story
together, the portholes were sized to make it impossible for
a disorderly to make his escape through them.
All along I was assuming that the guardhouse was the place
that the guards were staying and not the place where you guard
the prisoners. If you looked at the Van Slyke
map as well as the Kurtz lithograph there, near the main
gate to the camp is a building that scales to about 40 feet.
And so my guess is that is the guardhouse from which they
remodeled an artifact, a relic, and brought back to Camp
Randall, and it now does not look like the old guardhouse,
but it is a representation of what once was at Camp Randall.
The fact that it's located next to the gate also seems to make
sense to me because if this was a place incarcerate the
disorderly, when the enlisted men either left camp with a pass
or without a pass, got drunk, and then tried to come home,
this would be the likely place to place them before they could
get their full punishment. So let's now talk quickly about
the cannons at Camp Randall. Soon after the establishment of
the park, three cannons show up in this picture, probably from
1917. Eventually, eight years ago
there were five cannons of which I could identify only one with
any provenance associated with Wisconsin Civil War activities.
In front of the shell is located one of the cannons that we had
to deal with. They were mounted on wooden
carriages that had no provenance.
That is to say, were built sometime in the early 1900s as
bad replicas for carriages. Despite maintenance by the
university, they had rotted. We evaluated the cannons with
the curator from the veterans museum and decided that some of
them could stay at the park, but perhaps the more appropriate
place for them would be in museums.
So one of the cannons went to the Kenosha Civil War Museum,
and two of them were transferred to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum
on the Capitol Square. When you're moving a cannon and
you send out a news release that there's going to be a loose
cannon on campus... [LAUGHTER]
The media love it. Here we are removing the
900-pound tube from the carriage, and eventually we
restore it to an all metal carriage that was generously
gifted to us by the members of the Sons of Union Veterans of
the Civil War, the Henry Harden Camp Number 2.
They also assist us along with some other veterans
organizations to purchase additional historically accurate
but all metal carriages which will hopefully stand the test of
time. The other cannon story that I'd
like to share with you is the so-called Shiloh cannon.
The Shiloh cannon does have provenance.
That is to say, it was captured in the Battle of Pittsburgh
Landing, another name for the battle at Shiloh, and it was
spiked. That is to say, when an
artillery piece is overrun in the battlefield often what they
will do is disable it by driving a spike into the touch hole,
which is that portion of the cannon tube where you light off
the charge. You see, I learned a whole lot
about cannons. And then shipped off to Madison
within weeks of the battle. Here it was engraved with the
words "Captured by the 14th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers,
Spiked by 1st Lieutenant George Stanley."
That's pretty good provenance. And because of the importance to
Wisconsin history, we decided to move this cannon over to the
Veterans Museum. If you wonder how you move that,
you get three really clever machinists from physical plant,
and they set up a hoist and an A-frame, and they moved it as if
it were five pounds. Finally, I'd like to share with
you two commemorative plaques that are located on the interior
walls of the arch. As you walk through the arch, on
the left side you'll see an accounting of all the regiments
that were raised in Wisconsin. That is, in Madison as well as
in Milwaukee and Racine. On the right side is another
panel which ends with a cautionary note, lest we forget.
And I'd like to close now with the words of Josiah Rood as he
is appealing to the legislature. His time is coming to an end.
It's not easy for those of the present generation to understand
how much Camp Randall means to us.
Because of associations connected with the place, it is
sacred ground. Our young people of today, even
those who are students at the university, know almost nothing
about it. We old soldier citizens of
Wisconsin do not believe this ought to be.
We believe our future citizens should be taught to cherish our
patriotic traditions and that we should so mark our historic
spots that they cannot be forgotten.
I think Josiah would be glad to know that his arch still stands
a hundred years later. And that we do recall that
horrible time in our history and the great sacrifices that were
made to end slavery. So next time you pass through
the arch, think about the boys of Camp Randall
who never returned. And think of Josiah Rood,
who continues to speak to us, lest we forget.
Thank you. [APPLAUSE]