When I first started The Volunteers Company in January 2018, I knew I wanted our clothing brand to help preserve Civil War battlefields. As a kid, my father showed me around Civil War battlefields across different states. He walked me through the sites and would point out details as to what happened at each spot of the battleground. It gave me context as to what happened on those hallowed grounds. I was stricken by the amount of courage, dignity, and honor that was displayed during those early years of the 1860’s. Though the war happened over 150 years ago, we still remember what they sacrificed for us. What transpired during the war still affects us to this day.

Shelby Foote said it best, “Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”

Our goal at The Volunteers Company is to make sure those crossroads we crossed always stays alive in our memory.