Guidon of 1st Ohio Light Artillery Regiment, Battery H, U.S. Volunteers

Silk guidon of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery Regiment, Battery H, U.S. Volunteers. It is a swallowtail flag with crossed cannons and gold letters spelling "Ohio" and an "H." against a red field. Battery H mustered in at Camp Bushnell in Columbus by Captain Frank Stewart. President McKinley, a fellow Ohioan, issued the first call for volunteers on April 23, 1898. They easily filled Ohio's initial quota of six infantry regiments and four batteries of light artillery. The term of enlistment for volunteer troops in 1898 was for two years or until discharged. President McKinley and many other political and military leaders were Civil War veterans. They did not want to repeat the confusion that resulted in 1861 when volunteers responding to the first call for troops from President Lincoln enlisted for only three months and had to reenlist when it became clear that the war would last much longer