“Her Patriot Sons Will Peril All”
Volunteers for the Second Infantry were recruited for three months’ service, but before the regiment could be mustered in orders came from the War Department to extend the period of service to three years. Those who did not wish to serve longer than three months were allowed to withdraw. But when the regiment finally mustered on May 25th, 1861, it became the first of Michigan’s three-year regiments—and the only one to maintain its organization unbroken from the very beginning of the war to the very end.

Nearly every company was formed from a local militia unit. One example was the Berrien County Volunteers from Niles. When the Volunteers left Niles to join the Second, which was forming at Fort Wayne near Detroit, Niles gave their boys a grand sendoff.

On May 4th, 1861, nearly a thousand people crowded the village to see ladies of Niles present the Berrien County Volunteers with a magnificent national flag. Emblazoned on the flag was a gold eagle, and clutched in its beak was a scroll which read “At the Union’s Sacred Call, Her Patriot Sons Will Peril All.” The Niles Band played “Hail Columbia” and Miss Mary Penrose, exhorting the 88 members of the company to fight for the Union, presented the flag to their captain, Robert Bretschneider.

Captain Bretschneider accepted it and made this pledge: “Thank you ladies, for honoring us with this beautiful flag. May our names be forgotten if we ever desert it. If dying on the battle field, our last look shall be directed toward this beautiful emblem, and our last breath shall utter, if called upon to surrender it: never, never, never!

The Volunteers took these words to heart. Carrying their flag to Fort Wayne to join the regiment, it caught the eye of the command. The Volunteers became Company E—the color company—charged with the difficult and dangerous job of carrying and defending the regimental colors in battle. And the colors they would carry were their own—their flag had been adopted as the official flag of the regiment.

Niles boys carried this flag through Blackburn’s Ford, First Bull Run, the Yorktown siege, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Malvern Hill, Second Bull Run, Chantilly, and Fredericksburg. Then, pierced with 40 bullets and too tattered for further service, it was sent home to Niles. Eleven men had been killed or wounded carrying and defending it—they had truly “periled all.”