At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, hundreds of little people from Aquidneck, a small isolated island in the Atlantic Ocean, enlisted in the Union Army. Some joined ordinary—that is, non-little people—regiments, but others formed an all-dwarf voluntary infantry: the 13th Rhode Island Infantry Regiment, organized at Providence, RI. This regiment would form the core of what would come to be called the Dwarf Brigade.