Soon it came time for the recruits to leave home. As Charles Johnson remembers,
At the appointed time friends, neighbors and relatives came with farm wagon and, early one beautiful September morning, the vehicles were loaded with hearty specimens of young manhood, all ideal "cannon-food," and the journey over a dusty road to the nearest railway station, twenty miles away at Carlyle, was begun.
Three or four miles on the road was a hill where we, for some cause, halted for a time. From here I remember taking a look at the Court House, about which we had been drilling for several weeks, and whose friendly roof had sheltered us from rain and sun alike, and as its familiar outline loomed up in the morning's sun I wondered if I should ever again look upon it.
About noon they had traveled straight south of Greenville, and arrived at the town of Carlyle, Illinois. Soon a west-bound train arrived on the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, and they all went aboard. To many of the 200 recruits, riding on a train, much less inside a railroad coach, was a new experience!
After going west on the train for nearly 30 miles, they got off in O'Fallon, Illinois and marched about seven miles in a southwesterly direction, until they arrived at Belleville. It was a hot and dusty march.
After they arrived at Belleville, they were directed to the fair grounds where they found quarters in horse and cattle stalls. The soldiers spread their blankets and quilts on the bright clean straw that had been brought in. The grounds were enclosed with a high, tight fence, and included shade trees and green, thrifty grass.
