Company C was under the command of Captain Henry Brooks, from Plymouth, WI. It sounds Daniel became sick when the 4th Wisconsin and much of the garrison at Baton Rouge were sent up to Burrey's Point across from Vicksburg to help dig Major General Benjamin Butler's canal (AKA "Butler's Ditch" or "Folly Creek" as the men referred to it; the ditch was never completed, by the way, as the banks kept collapsing and when Baton Rouge was threatened by a Confederate force under General Breckinridge, the Badgers and the rest of the troops were recalled to Baton Rouge to meet this threat) across the point (this would have allowed gunboats and transports to pass by Vicksburg out of range of the Confederate artillery). Unfortunately, the extremely hot and humid weather, malaria-carrying mosquitos, poor food, dysentery, etc., decimated not only the 4th Wisconsin but all the other regiments that were sent up there. So many men became sick that the decision was made to send soldiers from the 4th and other regiments upriver with flatboats to "recruit" Negroes in the plantations to "help" with work on the canal. That worked fine for the Badgers, but according to one 4th Wisconsin soldier, "the Negroes [that were brought here] died off like an infected flock of sheep."