As in the instance of “The Swamp Angel,” it is Melville’s note to “The Eagle of the Blue” that provides the clue to its source, which is again a poem in Volume VIII, P. 59: “The Eagle of the Eighth Wisconsin,” by an anonymous poet. Melville’s note reads:

Among the Northwestern regiments there would seem to have been more than one which carried a living eagle as an added ensign. The bird commemorated here was, according to the account, borne aloft on a perch beside the standard; went through successive battles and campaigns; was more than once under the surgeon’s hands; and at the close of the contest found honorable repose in the capital of Wisconsin, from which state he had gone to the wars.

The Rebellion Record seems to offer no evidence that more than one regiment maintained an eagle ensign, as Melville implies, but all of Melville’s information about the bird agrees with the account in the anonymous poem. The statement that the bird was “more than once under the surgeon’s hands” is apparently an inference from the note in the Iroqua (Wis.) Times that accompanies the poem: “Twice Old Abe has been hit by secession bullets; one shot carried away a third part of his tail-feathers.”