Persimmon regiment

Persimmon regiment was a term used during the American Civil War to describe a regiment that, in its history, stopped marching for a brief while to consume persimmons, a type of fruit popular in the Southern United States.

Colonel Bernard Laiboldt, after seeing this practice occur far too often for his taste, said that with the 73rd Illinois taste for persimmons and the 2nd Missouri's love of rails that he could capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia solely with those two regiments, if a pile of persimmon trees and rails were to be found on Richmond's public square.

[2] The 35th Ohio Infantry gained the nickname due to fifteen of their number being captured by the Confederate States Army in December 1861 in a skirmish where, instead of fighting the Confederacy, the Ohioans instead chose to find persimmons.

[1] The 100th Indiana Regiment gained the nickname while participating in General Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign.

On the first day of marching from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi, the regiment disregarded their role as rear guards and, upon finding an orchard of ripe persimmons, took a long time harvesting the fruit, and were arrested as stragglers.