Date & Context
The call came in February 1865, during the final months of the Civil War Era (1861–1865) and amid the Union's ongoing efforts to maintain troop strength. By this point, Dundee township had already participated in multiple rounds of military enrollment and conscription.
The February 1865 call was one of several federal recruit calls made upon Illinois townships throughout the war. Each township's quota was calculated against prior credited enlistments and current enrollment figures. Dundee's assigned quota of ten men was comparatively small, a figure that likely reflected the township's accumulated credit from previous calls.
For context, the enrollment history of Dundee township leading up to this call is as follows:
- October 1862: An enrollment conducted by J. H. Mayborne, enrolling officer for Kane County, found 356 men between the ages of 18 and 45 residing in Dundee township, of whom 90 were already in active service. (Source: History of Kane County, Ill., Vol. 1 (Joslyn, 1908))
- 1864 Draft: Dundee township's quota stood at 178 men. The township was credited with 200, exceeding its requirement by 22 men. (Source: History of Kane County, Ill., Vol. 1 (Joslyn, 1908))
Participants
No individual recruits responding to the February 1865 call are named in the available source. The call was directed at Dundee township as an administrative unit within Kane County.
At the county level, Kane County as a whole had furnished 347 more men than its required quota by 1864, suggesting a regional pattern of meeting or surpassing federal demands throughout the war. (Source: History of Kane County, Ill., Vol. 1 (Joslyn, 1908))
Significance
The February 1865 quota of ten men assigned to Dundee township stands as a small but telling detail of how the Civil War's manpower demands continued to reach local communities through nearly the final weeks of the conflict. That the quota was low relative to earlier calls is consistent with the township's demonstrated record of over-enrollment in prior years.
The data recorded in the 1908 county history provides one of the few surviving numerical snapshots of Dundee township's wartime military participation at the township level, preserving figures that might otherwise be difficult to reconstruct from individual service records alone.
Sources
- History of Kane County, Ill. (Joslyn), Vol. 1, 1908. Available at: https://archive.org/details/historyofkanecou01josl#offset-425687