A more competent official system of scientifically caring for our forests, restricting the present wasteful cutting of timber, and preventing and fighting forest fires, would be of incalculable benefit to the State of Wisconsin. The annual loss by burning is alone a terrible drain upon the resources of the people, to say nothing of the death and untold misery which stalk in the wake of a forest fire. BADGERS IN WAR TIME The men of Wisconsin who had fought and conquered the hard conditions of frontier life, developing a raw wilderness into a wealthy and progressive commonwealth, were of the sort to make the best of soldiers when called upon to take up arms in behalf of the nation. From the earliest days of the War of Secession until its close, Wisconsin troops were ever upon the firing line, and participated in some of the noblest victories of the long and painful struggle. General Sherman, in his "Memoirs," paid them this rare tribute: "We estimated a Wisconsin regiment equal to an ordinary brigade." It is impracticable in one brief chapter to do more than mention a few of the most brilliant achievements of the Badger troops. In April, 1862, the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Eighteenth Wisconsin infantry regiments, although new in the service, won imperishable laurels upon the bloody field of Shiloh. The men of the Fourteenth were especially prominent in the fray. Arriving on the ground at midnight of the first day, they passed the rest of the night in a pelting rain, standing ankle-deep in mud; and throughout all the next day fought as though they were hardened veterans. A Kentucky regiment was ordered to charge a Confederate battery, but fell back in confusion; whereupon General Grant asked if the Fourteenth Wisconsin could do the work. Its colonel cried, "We will try!" and then followed one of the most gallant charges of the entire war. Thrice driven back, the Wisconsin men finally captured the battery; confusion ensued in the Confederate ranks, and very soon the battle of Shiloh was a Union victory. In the Peninsular campaign of the same year, the Fifth Regiment made a bayonet charge which routed and scattered the Confederates, and turned the scales in favor of the North. In an address to the regiment two days later, General McClellan declared: "Through you we won the day, and Williamsburg shall be inscribed on your banner. Your country owes you its grateful thanks." His report to the War Department describes this charge as "brilliant in the extreme." Some of the highest honors of the war were awarded to the gallant Iron Brigade, composed of the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin, the Nineteenth Indiana, and the Twenty-fourth Michigan. At Gainesville, in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, also in 1862, this brigade practically won the fight, the brunt of the Confederate assault being met by the Second Wisconsin, which that day lost sixty per cent of its rank and file; the brigade itself suffered a loss of nine hundred men.