4th California Infantry

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4th California Volunteer Infantry
California flag
Active	September 1861 to April 18, 1866
Country	United States
Allegiance	Union
Branch	Infantry

The 4th California Infantry was a volunteer infantry regiment recruited from northern California during the American Civil War. It was organized at Sacramento, Placerville, and Auburn in September and October 1861. Most of the recruits, caught up in war fever, expected to be sent to the eastern battlefields. They were disappointed to be instead ordered to garrison duty and related tasks on the West Coast, where they spent the remainder of their enlistments. None of these duties required regimental strength, so the companies of the regiment were detached and scattered. The regiment was mustered out on April 18, 1866.

Companies A, B, C, and E were sent to the Washington Territory in late 1862 and were recalled at varying times throughout 1862. One of the best documented of these detachments is that of Company D, which was sent to Fort Hoskins and Fort Yamhill in Oregon. A number of Company D's soldiers did not return to California, choosing to settle in Oregon and start new lives there. In 1863, Captain Charles Atchisson's Company I was sent to Arizona to garrison Fort Mojave on the Colorado River [see: Masich, Andrew E. "Civil War in Arizona" Univ. of OK Press, 2006].

[edit] Reenactors

A group located in western and central Oregon and northern California reenacts Company D.

[edit] Books

Bensell, Royal A.; Barth, Gunther (ed.) (1959) All Quiet on the Yamhill: The Civil War in Oregon: The Journal of Corporal Royal A. Bensell, Company D, Fourth California Infantry.