The Badax Tigers: From Shiloh to the Surrender with the 18th Wisconsin Volunteers

When the Badax County Tigers left the small town of Viroqua, Wisconsin, in the autumn of 1861, they had little notion of what military service would demand of them.

The Badax Tigers were as common a company in as common a regiment as may be found in the annals of the Civil War. They marched, camped, and fought their way through four years of service with their fair share of battle honors and few blemishes to mar their record. They rallied at Shiloh, stood firm at Corinth, laid siege to Vicksburg, rescued Chattanooga, and saved Allatoona. In short, they represented the backbone of the Federal volunteer army from 1861 to 1865. When the original Tigers returned to Viroqua at the close of the war, they numbered only fourteen men out of the more than 100 recruits who had been mustered into service.

This intimate unit history of the Badax Tigers chronicles the experiences of Company C of the 18th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry during the entire Civil War as seen through the eyes of Private Thomas Jefferson Davis. Davis’s letters provide an extraordinarily complete picture of a typical Federal volunteer company in the Civil War. Supplemented by newspaper articles and the letters of some soldiers that were written and intended for publication in local newspapers, The Badax Tigers is a detailed and comprehensive portrait of the Civil War from the perspective of the average soldier.