At Fredericksburg, not far away, the Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine led a desperate charge up Marye's Hill, where, in a sunken roadway, lay a large force of the enemy; this force, a few months before, had killed six thousand Union men who were vainly attempting to rout them. This second and final charge overcame all difficulties, and succeeded. As the Confederate commander handed to the colonel of the Wisconsin regiment his sword and silver spurs, he told the victor that he had supposed there were not enough troops in the Army of the Potomac to carry the position; it was, he declared, the most daring assault he had ever seen. Such, too, was the judgment of Greeley, who declared that "Braver men never smiled on death than those who climbed Marye's Hill on that fatal day." The correspondent of the _London Times_ also wrote, "Never at Fontenoy, Albuera, nor at Waterloo was more undaunted courage displayed." In the campaign which resulted in the fall of Vicksburg, in 1863, numerous Wisconsin regiments participated, many of them with conspicuous gallantry. It was an officer of the Twenty-third who received, at the base of the works, the offer of the Confederates to surrender. The part taken by Wisconsin troops at Gettysburg, was conspicuous. The Iron Brigade and a Wisconsin company of sharpshooters were, day by day, in the thickest of the fight, and gained a splendid record. At Chickamauga, several of our regiments fought under General Thomas, and lost heavily. They afterward participated in the struggle at Mission Ridge, which resulted in the Confederate army under Bragg being turned back into Central Georgia. The Iron Brigade was in Grant's campaign against Richmond, serving gallantly in the battles of the Wilderness, in the "bloody angle" at Spottsylvania, at Fair Oaks, and in the numerous attacks before Petersburg. Wisconsin contributed heavily to the army of Sherman, in his "march to the sea," and in the preliminary contests won distinction on many a bitterly contested field. Several of our regiments were in the assault on Mobile, the day when Lee was surrendering to Grant, in far-off Virginia. Others of the Badger troops, infantry and cavalry, served in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, fighting the Confederate guerillas, while our artillerymen were distributed throughout the several Union armies, and served gallantly until the last days of the war. Wisconsin soldiers languished in most of the great Southern military prisons. A thrilling escape of Union men from Libby Prison, at Richmond, was made in February, 1864, by means of a secret tunnel. This was ingeniously excavated under the superintendence of a party of which Colonel H. C. Hobart of the Twenty-first Wisconsin was a leader.