The author of a new book called “The 115th New York in the Civil War” doubts the idea that the unit was known as “The Iron Hearted Regiment” during the war.

Mark Silo of Loudonville is a civil engineer with the State Department of Transportation whose avocation is Civil War history.

In 1865, a regiment member from Clifton Park wrote a history of the 115th entitled “The Iron Hearted Regiment.”

“That sounded great but in the course of my research, no one in the war used that phrase,” Silo said. He believes the author or editor simply created the title.

The regiment went to war from Fonda. The men from Montgomery Fulton and Saratoga counties had responded to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers in the summer of 1862. The local area met its quota in one month.

The men gathered in a field north of Fonda called Camp Mohawk. For years there was a Camp Mohawk Motel but now the field is mostly vacant.

Reaching Baltimore, Maryland, by train the men encountered hostility marching from one train to another in that city which had a large share of Southern sympathizers.

Within two weeks of leaving Fonda, the 115th took part in the battle of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, now West Virginia. They were among a group of 11,000 soldiers surrendered by a Union general as the battle began.

“The men were mortified to be surrendered without a fight,” Silo said. Ironically, the general who ordered the surrender died in the rebel bombardment before the Confederates saw the Union white flags.

“In those days they used an honor system for prisoners of war,” Silo said. “They pledged not to fight against the Confederacy until they were officially exchanged, which happened a few months later.”

The 115th was held in Union custody in Chicago. As they boarded their train for Washington, their barracks caught fire. A trial was held in their absence and the 115th was found guilty of arson, although Silo said records at the National Archives do not confirm their guilt. The Mohawk Valley soldiers were banished to perform manual labor for a year in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

When the 115th did get into combat, it was brutal. Half of the 600-man regiment was killed or wounded in the battle of Olustee, Florida. In all, 400 members of the 115th died during the war, many from disease.

Their first commander, Colonel Simeon Sammons, was wounded in the foot at Olustee. Sammons recovered but was wounded again when the regiment fought at the Crater in Petersburg, Virginia. Sammons returned to Fonda and later was elected to the State Legislature. Silo said the remains of Sammons’ home still can be seen on Route 30A in Fonda.

Silo said the Florida campaign of 1864 was political in origin. Supporters of the idea convinced President Lincoln that they could get Florida back into the Union. The Union managed to occupy the Jacksonville area for the rest of the war but Silo said the Florida campaign didn’t amount to much strategically in the grand scheme of things.

Silo’s book has attracted more than customary interest from Civil War historians because it deals with lesser-known battles.

“There are a lot of histories written of individual regiments and most of them cover the same ground over and over,” Silo said. “Bull Run, Gettysburg that kind of thing. These guys from the Mohawk Valley fought in Olustee, Florida and Fort Fisher, North Carolina.”

Silo found about the 115th because of his mother-in-law, who lives in St. Johnsville. He had bought her a late 19th century book that contained an engraving of her great-grandfather’s farm in Palatine Bridge. There was a story about the 115th New York in that book. For Silo, the rest was history.