3. Broadside, To Arms!

This broadside was a recruiting poster printed for Captain George B. Curry by the Mountaineer Job Printing Office in October 1861. Captain Curry raised Company E of the First Oregon Cavalry volunteers in Wasco County.

Following the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, Union army officials recalled regular army troops for service in the East. This left regional officials to find a solution for dealing with local military responsibilities, including guarding Indians on reservations in western Oregon, policing the Oregon Trail, and preventing violence between miners and Natives in eastern Oregon and the territory of Idaho. Given the level of pro-Confederate sympathies in southern Oregon, government officials were also concerned about violence between pro-Union and pro-Confederate supporters. The U.S. Army’s Department of the Pacific initially relied on volunteers from California, but in 1862, began the recruitment of local volunteer companies under the standard of the First Oregon Cavalry. These companies, identified by the letters A through M, served in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho from 1862 until 1866