Urad's Wayne Duerkes Northern Illinois University

Historians who have researched why men enlisted in the U. S. Army during the Civil War have bypassed the northern Illinois region in favor of the eastern sta...

The title of my project is “I for one am ready to do my part,” it discusses motivations that inspired men from the Northern Illinois counties to fight in the civil war. What I did was examined the motivations behind why men in the fourteen Northern Illinois counties joined and fought during the Civil War in 1861 and 1862. The major significance of the finding is these individuals have never had a voice, never had their story told before. Most of the research has been done on the East Coast and now I’m presenting Illinois’ story.