Amazing mileage totals, considering most of those boys likely never left their home counties before.
In my g-grandfather's case, family tradition says his parents escaped the "old country" to dodge the draft of their young men into yet another of Europe's endless wars.
We think they arrived circa mid-1850s and settled on a farm south of Springfield, Illinois.
My g-grandfather enlisted on August 14, 1862, for 36 months, mustered out with the regiment on August 16, 1865.