The Seventy-ninth Regiment (Highlanders) New York State Militia

In fall 1859, Winslow Homer moved to New York City, and Harper’s Weekly used his illustrations in its coverage of tensions between the states of the North and those of the South, even before the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Only three weeks before the war started, Homer sketched the practice drills of the New York Highlanders, who, organized as a Scottish social club in 1858, became one of the first regiments deployed in this war. The Highlanders fought in numerous Civil War engagements, including both Bull Run battles, near Manassas, Virginia, at Antietam, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and at Fort Sanders in Knoxville, Tennessee.