The 36th Iowa Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Service
Early days of the regiment
The Thirty-sixth Iowa Infantry Regiment, US Volunteers, was one of several Midwestern volunteer regiments raised in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin in the late winter, spring and summer of 1862. Companies A and K consisted of men from Monroe County, while Companies B, C, D, E, F G, H and I were made up of men from Appanoose and Wapello Counties. A handful of additional men were mustered for the regiment from Wayne, Marion, Lucas, Davis, Lee and Van Buren Counties. The first recruits were mustered into state service as early as February 1862. The ranks were filled out with additional recruits following Lincoln's July 1862 call for 300,000 state volunteers and, by early September, the regiment was officially designated the Thirty-sixth Iowa Infantry Regiment. Colonel Charles W. Kittredge of Ottumwa Iowa was placed in command. Colonel Kittredge had previously served as a captain with the 7th Iowa Infantry Regiment in Missouri during the first year of the war and was an experienced combat veteran.
All companies rendezvoused at Camp Lincoln, Keokuk, Iowa where, on 4 October 1862, they were sworn into United States service for a term of three years. The men were first issued old Austrian and Belgian smoothbore muskets with "sword" bayonets, but these antiques were eventually replaced with more effective .58 caliber Springfield rifled muskets. Following four weeks of basic training at Camp Lincoln, the regiment departed Keokuk on 1 November 1862 aboard two steamboats for St. Louis to await corps and division assignment and to continue training.
St. Louis, Memphis and Helena
At St. Louis, the regiment went into garrison at Benton Barracks. The Thirty-sixth was attached to the XIII Corps, Army of the Tennessee, and commenced drill by brigade and division. On 20 December 1862 they embarked by steamer for the federal garrison at Helena, Arkansas. The vessel halted at Memphis, Tennessee when the local citizens hailed it from shore with an alarming report that Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his cavalry were in the neighborhood and were preparing an attack on the city. That night the men of the 36th slept with their arms stacked nearby in Jackson Square. The regiment eventually moved to some old vacated mule-sheds and remained in Memphis performing guard duty at Fort Pickering until 1 January 1863, when it resumed its movement to Helena.
At Helena, the regiment became part of the 1st Brigade, 13th Division, XIII Corps under General Benjamin Prentiss. The regiment was initially quartered in tents but later moved into winter quarters at Fort Curtis in semi-permanent "half-cabins" consisting of log walls with canvas ceilings and dirt floors. These billets had formerly been occupied by the 47th Indiana Infantry Regiment. According to Captain Seth Swiggett of Company B, the ex-Postmaster at Blakesburg, Iowa, the Iowans devised an efficient central heating system in these cabins by burying a length of stovepipe beneath the dirt floor and running it the length of the cabin from a small tin stove on one end to an exhaust pipe on the opposite end. With 5 to 8 men occupying each cabin, the regiment passed the month of January 1863 in as comfortable a manner as could be expected under the circumstances.