Dying Wisconsin Soldier, The

DESCRIPTION: The sun sets on "a forest Where a dying soldier lay... Far away from his dear Wisconsin home." He recalls his life, and his beloved sister, and how he answered when his country called. He dies and is buried by the Potomac
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1946 (Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin), with an earlier version from c. 1925
KEYWORDS: death soldier family farewell Civilwar derivative
FOUND IN: US(MW,So)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, pp. 225-226, "The Dying Wisconsin Soldier" (1 text, 1 tune)
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 152, "The Wisconsin Soldier Boy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #628
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Dying Ranger" [Laws A14] (lyrics)
NOTES [465 words]: Roud, understandably, lumps this with "The Dying Ranger" [Laws A14]. There is no question but that this is derived from that; many lines, and even whole verses, are identical. But there are enough alterations to make it clear that this is a deliberate rewrite -- although not a very specific one; there are really no references to particular places or people in Wisconsin.
Still, the soldier died by enemy fire near the Potomac. Most Wisconsin regiments in the Civil War served in the west; only a handful were sent east to join the Army of the Potomac. And only a handful of those were in service early in the war, when the front was close to the Potomac. The three major exceptions were the 2nd Wisconsin, which served as early as Bull Run, and the 6th and 7th Wisconsin, which were later combined in the famous Iron Brigade (first brigade, first division, first corps, which made an amazing stand at Gettysburg and was slaughtered).
If we wanted to suggest an actual regiment, all three are good candidates, with the 2nd Wisconsin perhaps the best: According to William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War 1861-1865, 1881; fourth edition 1888 (I use a photoreproduction of the 1898 Albany Press edition which does not list a publisher!), p. 8, the 2nd Wisconsin had the highest percentage of soldiers killed in the entire Union army (238 out of 1203 total enrolled, or 19.7%). Another good reason for it to be the regiment is that it (unlike the other Wisconsin regiments I'll list below) was at First Bull Run (where it lost 25 killed, according to Fox, p. 393), so it was the obvious Wisconsin regiment to mention if this song was written early in the war, and a man mortally wounded there would likely have been buried near the Potomac. It was also engaged at Gainesville (part of the Second Bull Run campaign), where it lost 86 men, and the battle of Antietam near the Potomac, where it lost 30 men. Thus somewhat more than half of its killed were killed close enough to the Potomac to possibly be buried there.
The 2nd wasn't the only Wisconsin regiment to fight in the east and have heavy casualties. The 26th Wisconsin was fifth on the list on p. 8 of Fox, with 188/1089 killed (17.2%),-- but it was in the XI Corps, which had no reputation at all and was German (Fox, p. 399), so it is not a strong candidate for this song. The 7th Wisconsin was a better candidate, effectively tied for fifth on the list (281/1630 killed; 17.2%), though it didn't lose as man men near the Potomac; the 36th Wisconsin of Gibbon's division of the II Corps was #17 (157/1014, 15.4%, but it had few casualties by the Potomac, based on Fox, p. 400); the 6th Wisconsin lost 244 of 1940 (12.6%l Fox, p. 396). So Wisconsin certainly left many good men on the battlefields of the east. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: Pet225

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography