At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April of 1898, President William McKinley called on the states to gather their military forces, and Wisconsin officials ordered the Wisconsin National Guard to report for duty at Camp Harvey, named for Civil War Governor Louis P. Harvey and located on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair Park. Established in 1879 to improve the existing militia system, the Wisconsin National Guard took part in a war with Spain that demonstrated for the first time the value of the National Guard as a reserve component of the Army, able in a crisis to rapidly augment the small active-duty forces. Wisconsin contributed 5,469 men divided into four infantry regiments for service in the war. The First and Fourth Wisconsin Infantry regiments never left the United States, while the Second and Third Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part in military operations in Puerto Rico, where they lost two men killed in action. A total of 132 Wisconsinites died from disease, principally typhoid fever.