A new book on the Civil War comes out today by State Representative and acknowledged historian Dean Urdahl of Grove City. “Remains of Glory” covers the last two years of the Civil War in its western theater: Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri. Urdahl says, “Most of our Minnesotans who are fighting the war do so in the western theater, and they fight very heroically. The last major battle, for example, at Nashville was won in large part through the efforts of the 5th, 7th, 9th and 10th Minnesota Regiments.” Urdahl says the only regiment of Minnesota’s 11 that fought in the east was the 1st Minnesota, which sustained an 82 percent casualty rate at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Nearly one in four Minnesotans enlisted in the war effort, at a time when the state was only a few years old. Urdahl says, “The population of Minnesota at the Civil War when it started was about 107 thousand, and we had 24 thousand Minnesotans enlist in the war effort, which is a very high percentage comparatively per capita.”
Urdahl says in his book he not only covers Minnesota’s Civil War regiments, but also the personal life stories of some of the men and what the war did to them. His earlier book, “Three Paths to Glory,” follows Minnesota’s regiments during the first two years of the Civil War.