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Robert McArthur and comrades, ca. 1864
McArthur Public Library
Soon after the surrender of Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln called nationally for volunteers, requiring Maine to raise one regiment of infantry for three months of Federal service. The first company of Biddeford volunteers left in May of 1861.
By October of 1862, more than half of all able-bodied men were in the armed services.
By the end of the war, 924 men had served the Union.