CHAPTER I.THE WAR MEETING.
The Town Hall in Rossville stands on a moderate elevation overlooking the principal street.

It is generally open only when a meeting has been called by the Selectmen to transact town business, or occasionally in the evening when a lecture on temperance or a political address is to be delivered.

Rossville is not large enough to sustain a course of lyceum lectures, and the townspeople are obliged to depend for intellectual nutriment upon such chance occasions as these.

The majority of the inhabitants being engaged in agricultural pursuits, the population is somewhat scattered, and the houses, with the exception of a few grouped around the stores, stand at respectable distances, each encamped on a farm of its own.
One Wednesday afternoon, toward the close of September, 1862, a group of men and boys might have been seen standing on the steps and in the entry of the Town House.

Why they had met will best appear from a large placard, which had been posted up on barns and fences and inside the village store and postoffice.
It ran as follows: WAR MEETING! The citizens of Rossville are invited to meet at the Town Hall, on Wednesday, September 24, at 3 P.M.to decide what measures shall be taken toward raising the town's quota of twenty-five men, under the recent call of the President of the United States.