1. Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury, Vol. I of the Centennial History of the Civil War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 183, 186; Samuel W. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860–61 (New York: Webster & Co., 1887), 189, 375–76, 438, 457, 471; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., From Its Establishment March 16, 1802 to the Army Re-Organization of 1866–67, vol. 2 (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868), 488; Harpers’ Encyclopaedia of United States History From 485 A.D. to 1906, vol. 8 (New York: Harper & Bros, 1906), 473; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army From Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1903), 490; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (OR) (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), 23, 70, 71, 112, 137, 138, 150, 154, 161, 170, 179, 180, 201–02, 203, 211, 230; David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis 1848–1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 570–83.
2. The territory was established on January 11, 1805, with its capital in Detroit.
3. The Great Seal of Michigan features a coat of arms with a shield held by an elk and moose. Since Michigan touches an international boundary, a figure of a man standing on a shoreline shows his right hand that is raised in peace. His left hand holds a weapon, just in case. The phrase “Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice” is below these figures and is interpreted, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” This may be a reference only to the Lower Peninsula, given an 1835 mindset, for the actual graphics were adopted at the original constitutional convention. Michigan political leader Lewis Cass created the design.
4. It also recognized the right to recover fugitive slaves: “Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.” On February 13, 1855, the legislature prohibited the use of county jails for detention of runaway slaves and directed county prosecutors to defend recovered slaves in Michigan courts.
5. Charles R. King, ed., The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Volume I, 1755–1794 (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1894), 289–90. Draw your attention to the letter of Nathan Dane to Rufus King, July 16, 1787, on page 290.
6. Today’s—mooted by the Thirteenth Amendment, but still a powerful statement of public purpose—says: “Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this state.”
7. On March 5, 1836, thirteen former slaves petitioned the legislature for authority to establish their own church in Detroit. It became known as Second Baptist Church, the first African American congregation in Michigan. The structure and congregation still remain.
8. Mull, The Underground Railroad, 49, 58, 70.
9. Michigan was a central player in this fight for American freedom, its proximity to the Canadian border playing a key role in making it so. The Michigan Freedom Trail Commission, constituted by Act No. 409 of 1998, continues to seek greater appreciation for the state’s major role.
10. Mull, The Underground Railroad, 118.
11. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, vol. 1 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1885), 193.
12. In the 1950s, the structure was moved to the Michigan State Fairgrounds to save it from downtown urban renewal.
13. The year 1848 was also significant because of another visitor. Abraham Lincoln had been elected to Congress, commencing in December 1847. Upon returning to Illinois from his first congressional session via the Buffalo-Chicago water route aboard the Detroit-built SS Globe, Lincoln’s vessel became stuck on a sandbar near Fighting Island in the Detroit River. The episode inspired the young congressman to work on a model boat with inflatable bellows that would provide buoyancy in shallow water. After returning to Washington, Lincoln sought out an attorney and filed an application for a patent on his invention. U.S. Patent No. 6,469 for “Buoying Vessels over Shoals” was issued on May 22, 1849, influenced by a trip up the Detroit River. Lincoln is the only U.S. president to hold a patent.
14. Today what is left of the “Republican Oaks,” then at the town outskirts, can be found near the northwest corner of Franklin and Second Streets in the city of Jackson. A state historical marker and other signage denote the location; an inscription reads “Here, under the oaks, July 6th, 1854, was born the Republican Party, destined in the throes of civil strife to abolish slavery, vindicate democracy, and perpetuate the Union.”
15. Allan Carpenter, Enchantment of America: Michigan (Chicago: Children’s Press, 1964), 36–38.
16. His one term as governor saw construction of the first Soo Locks, the failure of the legislature to approve his proposal to admit women to the University of Michigan and embezzlement of public funds by the state treasurer.
17. A Michigan historical marker commemorates the meeting place.
18. As recorded by the eighth decennial census. No enslaved persons were recorded, since slavery had been prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Michigan Constitution of 1835. New York had four times the population and Pennsylvania nearly that, Ohio three times, Illinois more than twice and Indiana nearly twice. Northern states admitted after Michigan before 1860 were Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), California (1850), Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859).
19. The platform contained this statement:
That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, “That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and shall be preserved.
It also contained this plank, reminiscent of how Michigan, part of the Northwest Territory, had been home to a ban on slavery from the foundation of the republic:
That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom; That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our national territory, ordained that “no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States.
Illinois, of course, was also covered by that Northwest Ordinance. The platform also rested on this pillar: “That we brand the recent re-opening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic.”
20. Others who sought to get out the Michigan antislavery vote at campaign stops were Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and William H. Garrison of New York.
21. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 268. In the book, Goodwin notes that a crowd of fifty thousand heard Seward speak in Detroit and that enthusiasm rose as Seward traveled west. She writes that “thousands waited past midnight for the arrival of his train in Kalamazoo, and when he disembarked, crowds followed him along the streets to the place where he would sleep that night.”
22. More than California’s, Iowa’s, Minnesota’s, New Hampshire’s, New Jersey’s, Oregon’s, Rhode Island’s, Vermont’s and Wisconsin’s counts (and the same number as Connecticut’s), not to mention certain states located in the South or along the border.
23. Twenty-four years to the day Michigan was ushered into the Union, Louisiana declared its withdrawal, becoming the sixth state to do so because of the 1860 election.
24. Kidd, Riding with Custer, 26. Here’s how this Michigander wrote about him:
It was with something of veneration that I looked at this man…He did not seem to belong to the present so much as the past. Fifty years before I was born, he had been a living witness of the inauguration of George Washington as first President of the United States. He had watched the growth of the American Union from the time of adoption of the Constitution. He had been a contemporary of Jefferson, Madison, the Adamses, Burr and Hamilton…His work was done, and it seemed as if a portrait by one of the great masters had stepped down from the canvas to mingle with living persons.
Cass remains one of Michigan’s two representatives in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, having proven himself of greater presidential timber than the officeholder he last served.
25. Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 40, 86.
26. Of all the thirty-seven states admitted later, Michigan remains the preeminent example of Congress requiring preconditions not found in the U.S. Constitution. Having had to negotiate their way into the Union beyond the customary admission procedure, it requires little imagination to envision how Michiganders became outraged when fellow Americans wanted to tear asunder the compact they had fought so hard to enter. Less than a quarter-century after its admission into the world’s most elite governmental club, Michigan faced the prospect of eleven members deciding they would not continue their membership, would not continue supporting the continental defense, would “occupy” federal installations that citizens of every state, including Michigan, had helped fund and garrison and would set up a rival polity based on the proposition that all men were not created equal. Michigan had been grounded on the opposite principle since 1787.
27. He would go on to raise the Twenty-second Michigan Infantry Regiment and serve as its colonel. Stricken with typhoid fever before ever seeing combat, he died at age forty-seven in Lexington, Kentucky.
28. Robertson, The Flags of Michigan, 27–28.
29. Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan (Detroit, MI: Silas Farmer & Co., 1884), 305.
30. Robertson, Michigan in the War, preface.
31. The First Call of the Civil War: A Paper Read by Gen. W.H. Withington Before Edward Pomeroy Post, G.A.R., at Jackson, Michigan, in 1897, self-published, 5.
32. The First Call, 10–11. Seeing storm clouds on the Southern horizon, a number of militia officers lobbied for adoption of military measures, but their effort proved unsuccessful.
33. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 10.
34. The First Call, 10–11.
35. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 17.
36. Farmer, The History of Detroit, 966-67.
37. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 13.
38. Hoffman, My Brave Mechanics, 4, 6.
39. The First Call, 17.
40. Ibid., 19.
41. Ibid., 20.
42. Ibid.
43. This may be the occasion where Lincoln uttered “Thank God for Michigan!” though one history of Michigan’s role in the war describes it as folklore. See Frank Woodford, Father Abraham’s Children: Michigan Episodes in the Civil War (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1961). It is the occasion when Lincoln remarked on the band leader’s girth with “Professor, you must be the biggest blower in the service.” The First Call, 21.
44. William Davis, Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War (Doubleday, 1977), 36.
45. Ibid.
46. The First Call, 22.
47. Ibid.
48. John A. Logan, then a congressman, fought at Bull Run as an unattached volunteer to a Michigan regiment, returned to Washington, resigned his congressional seat and entered the Union army as colonel of an Illinois regiment that he recruited. Logan rose to major general and became the first head of the Union veteran’s organization, the Grand Army of the Republic.
49. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 20.
50. Sources for this chapter are multiple, chief among them Robertson’s Michigan in the War and the OR.
51. The Michigan monument at Shiloh, erected in 1918, contains three Latin phrases: “E Pluribus Unum,” “Tuebor” and “Siquaris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice.” (The beginning of the phrase is today worded “Si quaeris.”) It also bears this inscription: “More enduring than this granite will be the gratitude of Michigan to her soldiers of Shiloh.”
52. Besides the Second and Custer, the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Infantries and a unit of the Sixteenth were engaged during the long campaign.
53. While these major battles attracted much attention, other stories of the war were being made. On August 5, Thomas Williams, son of the antebellum mayor of Detroit, was killed defending against an attack by Confederates at Baton Rouge. He was a graduate of the 1833 class of the U.S. Military Academy and had seen action in the Mexican War, where he received two brevets for gallantry.
54. Brodhead was, at various times, editor and part owner of the Detroit Free Press, state senator and postmaster at Detroit. His small stone office and library building constructed around 1855 remains on Grosse Ile.
55. The Seventeenth was mustered at the Detroit Barracks in August 1862 under the command of Withington and consisted of raw recruits from field, workshop and schoolroom. One company was composed almost entirely of students from Ypsilanti Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University. With less than a month of military training, the Seventeenth left on August 27 for Washington. The regiment was one of several Michigan regiments that first saw action in the eastern theater, was transferred to the western and then returned to the eastern for its final campaigning. Ultimately, its total casualty rate was 26 percent.
56. Michigan regiments present at the battle included the First, Fourth, Seventh, Eighth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, First Sharpshooters and First Cavalry.
57. Other units included the First Engineers, Battery D of the First Light Artillery, the Thirteenth and Twenty-first Infantry and the Second Cavalry.
58. He survived the war and toured the nation, putting on drumming performances and telling of his experiences.
59. Other Michigan regiments present were the Second, Seventeenth and Twentieth in the brigade commanded by Colonel Orlando Poe; the Third, Fifth, Eighth, Sixteenth and Twenty-fourth Infantries; and the First Sharpshooters.
60. She is the first black woman to be honored with a bust at the U.S. Capitol. The sculpture is on permanent display in Emancipation Hall, the underground visitor center’s main space. Professor Margaret Washington of Cornell University, in her book Sojourner Truth’s America (Champaign: University of Illinois, 2009), describes the great Truth as having moved to Michigan to be closer to the prewar action and counted Battle Creek as her beloved home.
61. Farmer, The History of Detroit, 310.
62. Letter from Nan Ewing of Hillsdale to Husband Mack Ewing, November 12, 1864, Archives of Michigan, http://seekingmichigan.org/.
63. Michigan Women in the Civil War, Lansing: Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission, 1963.
64. Mary Elizabeth Massey, Women in the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 80. The book cites an article in the Detroit Advertiser & Tribune on February 25, 1863.
65. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 47.
66. The text reads:
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
April 1, 1884
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Pensions.
AN ACT
Granting a pension to Mrs. Sarah E. E. Seelye, alias Franklin Thompson.
1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
3 That the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized and
4 directed to place on the pension-roll the name of Sarah E. E.
5 Seelye, alias Frank Thompson, who was late a private in
6 Company F, Second Regiment of Michigan Infantry Volun-
7 teers, at the rate of twelve dollars per month.
Passed the House of Representatives March 28, 1884.
67. Laura Leedy Gansler, The Mysterious Private Thompson: The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 209.
68. For example, Blanton and Cook’s book reports she was in the assault on Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg. DeAnne Blanton and Lauren Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 14.
69. Thomas Lowry, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994), 122.
70. C.E. McKay, Stories of Hospital and Camp, by Mrs. C.E. McKay (Philadelphia, PA: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1876), 124–25.
71. Along with a number of officers and enlisted men who served in the Union army she celebrated, the lyricist is interred in Detroit’s Elmwood Cemetery.
72. Reynolds, The Civil War Memories, ix-x.
73. Shirley Leckie, “The Civil War Partnership of Elizabeth and George A. Custer,” in Intimate Strategies of the Civil War: Military Commanders and Their Wives, eds., Carol Bleser and Lesley J. Gordon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 198.
74. Farmer, The History of Detroit, 311.
75. Bradley Rodger, Guardian of the Great Lakes: The U.S. Paddle Frigate Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 4. Much of this discussion is based on this book.
76. After a long and stalwart record, its fate was ignoble. Sold to a foundation for preservation in July 1948, not enough funds were raised for its restoration, and it was sold for scrap the following year. After having survived for more than a century, all that remains are artifacts at a museum in Erie, Pennsylvania, and at the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing.
77. Claire Hoy, Canadians in the Civil War (Toronto, ON: McArthur & Co., 2004), vi.
78. For both sides, this replicated the brother-against-brother phenomenon of its neighbor.
79. John M. Browne, The Duel between the “Alabama” and the “Kearsarge,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 4 (New York: Century Co., 1888), 622–23.
80. Charles Moore, History of Michigan, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1915), 47–48.
81. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 990.
82. Gilbert, Hillsdale Honor, x-xi.
83. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 988-93.
84. See Raymond Herek, These Men Have Seen Hard Service: The First Michigan Sharpshooters in the Civil War (Detroit, MI: Great Lakes Books, 1998).
85. See Hoffman, “My Brave Mechanics.”
86. J.H. Kidd, Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War (Ionia, MI: Sentinel Printing Co., 1908), 53.
87. Driving into Monroe from the east, one is met by an imposing sculpture of great beauty and power, reminiscent of the Stonewall Jackson monument on Henry Hill at Bull Run. This staggering work is every bit the equal to the one at Manassas and perhaps superior for being more realistic. It also bears the distinctive necktie worn by its subject.
88. An excellent work showing the complexity of U.S. cavalry operations and military riding is James A. Ottevaer’s book, American Military Horsemanship: The Military Seat of the United States Cavalry, 1792 through 1944 (Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2005).
89. Duane Schultz, Custer: Lessons in Leadership (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 33, 182.
90. After the war, Churchill’s talent as a horseman and performer during Fourth of July events in Michigan eclipsed memory of this episode—until recently. A monument was erected on the field at Hunterstown in 2008.
91. See Eric Wittenberg and David Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg (El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2006), 173; Jeffry D. Wert, Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 89.
92. Richard Hamilton, “Oh! Hast Thou Forgotten”—Michigan Cavalry in the Civil War: A Civil War Memoir of Sgt. George Thomas Patten, 1862–1863 (Selfpublished, 2008), 107–13. See Edward Longacre, Custer and His Wolverines: The Michigan Cavalry Brigade 1861–1865 (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1997).
93. Kidd, Riding with Custer, 148.
94. Union cavalry commander Alfred Pleasonton is partly responsible for Custer’s outfit during the war: “I used to let my staff dress as they pleased.” William Styple, ed., Generals in Bronze: Interviewing the Commanders of the Civil War (Kearny, NJ: Belle Grove Pub. Co., 2005), 125.
95. Eric Wittenberg, Protecting the Flank: The Battles for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and East Cavalry Field (Celina, OH: Ironclad Publishing, 2002), 71–72.
96. Bleser and Gordon, Intimate Strategies, 188.
97. Authored by Captain Marshall Thatcher of Company B of the regiment, “aid [sic] to Gen. P.H. Sheridan,” the memoir was originally published in Detroit in 1884.
98. Francis Miller, The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume Four, the Cavalry (New York: Review of Reviews, 1911), 310.
99. In Annals of the War, the 1879 collection of Philadelphia Weekly Times articles, is the account written by H.V. Redfield of the “Death of General John H. Morgan.”
100. Michigan in the War, 719–20.
101. Kidd, Riding With Custer, 306.
102. Wiley Sword, Sharpshooter: Hiram Berdan, His Famous Sharpshooters and Their Sharps Rifles. Lincoln, RI: Andrew Mowbray, Inc., 1988), 9, 11, 23.
103. H.C. Parsons, “Farnsworth’s Charge,” Voices of Battle: Gettysburg National Military Park Virtual Tour, http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/getttour/sidebar/farnsworth.htm (accessed on October 13, 2010).
104. Styple, Generals in Bronze, 256–69.
105. Gary Gallagher, ed., The Fredericksburg Campaign (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 120. The text is quoted from the Dunbar Rowland collection of Davis papers.
106. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 441–42.
107. Mercifully, it was positioned at the right of the Union line for the next two days of the battle and endured relatively little action.
108. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 179.
109. Ibid., 242.
110. Pulford had also been wounded and captured at Malvern Hill; after his release from Libby Prison and exchange, he was wounded at Chancellorsville. After Gettysburg, he suffered wounds at the Wilderness and Boyndon Plank Road.
111. Michigan in the War, 365.
112. OR, series 1, vol. 27, part 1, 435–41.
113. Amos’s brother Henry became a captain in the Twenty-sixth Michigan Infantry. He was killed in action at Hanover Junction near the North Anna on May 24, 1864.
114. OR, series 1, vol. 27, part 1, 435–41.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid., 998.
117. Farnsworth’s sacrifice was, for a time, not forgotten. The remains of a coastal defense battery—carrying his name—constructed in the time leading up to the Spanish-American War still exist at the site of Revolutionary War–era Fort Constitution at New Castle, New Hampshire. Its neglected condition symbolizes the state of his fame.
118. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956), 295.
119. Ibid., 299.
120. The colonel would be wounded in action near Marietta, Georgia, on the Fourth of July, 1864, losing a leg.
121. Catton, This Hallowed Ground, 298.
122. Ibid.
123. OR, series 1, vol. 31, part 1, 479-81.
124. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 163. Sources for this chapter are multiple, chief among them this volume and the OR.
125. The literature on the event is uneven. For example, one recent work (Bak, A Distant Thunder) suggests it was related to the draft. An insightful analysis (Kundinger, “Racial Rhetoric”) tying the violence to party politics, the preliminary emancipation proclamation and fear relates how the media contributed to the event. Richard A. Bak, A Distant Thunder: Michigan in the Civil War (Ann Arbor, MI: Huron River Press, 2004). Matthew Kundinger, “Racial Rhetoric: The Detroit Free Press and Its Part in the Detroit Race Riot of 1863,” University of Michigan, http://www.umich.edu/~historyj/pages_folder/articles/Racial_Rhetoric.pdf (accessed on October 2, 2010).
126. See Kundinger, “Racial Rhetoric,” 2.
127. Smith, “The First Michigan Colored Infantry,” 6. Much of the remaining chapter derives from this work.
128. Ibid., 7.
129. Ibid., 38.
130. Ibid., 41.
131. Senate Journal, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., July 15, 1862, 843–45.
132. A state historical marker memorializes the location on Macomb, east of Chene, on the grounds of Duffield School near Elmwood Cemetery.
133. Born in Union City, Michigan. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his role.
134. OR, series 1, vol. 44, 421, 422, 435.
135. Smith, “The First Michigan Colored Infantry,” 130.
136. The preceding account is based on OR, series 1, vol. 47, 1,030–31.
137. Carleton Mabee and Susan Newhouse, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York: NYU Press, 1995), 227.
138. For purposes of this chapter, distinctions between an appointment in the regular army and the volunteer army, and brevets, are not emphasized.
139. Edwin Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), 525; OR, series 1, vol. 27, part 1, 993, 1,011–12, 1,018–19.
140. James Jenkins, “Elon J. Farnsworth: The Story of His Life,” speech at the installation of officers of Farnsworth Post No. 170, GAR, January 15, 1904.
141. Much of this paragraph derives from Edward Longacre, The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003).
142. Henry Hunt was far below Henry Halleck.
143. Longacre, The Man Behind the Guns, 168.
144. Bruce Catton, Glory Road: The Bloody Route from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1952), 319.
145. Styple, Generals in Bronze, 146–57.
146. Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1951), 191. In the book, there is a reference to how Hunt “insisted to the end of his days” that Pickett’s Charge would have been truncated well before the High Water Mark had he “been allowed to do what he proposed—keep the Federal guns out of action” until the commencement of the charge itself. Then Catton’s assessment: “He was probably entirely correct.” Of course, such revised history could have undermined much of the lore surrounding the Third Day at Gettysburg. Imagine the monuments today on Cemetery Ridge as a collection of cannon and Hunt’s statue standing alone.
147. He deserves better from historians. As one example, Gordon Rhea’s in-depth Overland Campaign series attributes to him (and Warren) the by-the-left flanking strategy that Grant ended up using to entrap Lee in the Richmond-Petersburg lines.
148. Today it is a battlefield hospital museum, connected to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
149. Lieutenant Thomas L. Livermore, quoted in Sam Abell and Brian Pohanka, The Civil War: An Aerial Portrait (Charlottesville, VA: Thomasson-Grant, 1990), 57.
150. Milo Quaife, ed., From the Cannon’s Mouth: The Civil War Letters of General Alpheus S. Williams. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 393.
151. Bradley Gottfried, Brigades of Gettysburg: The Union and Confederate Brigades at the Battle of Gettysburg (Cambridge MA: Da Capo Press, 2002), 351.
152. Scott, Forgotten Valor, 3–4.
153. Ibid., 6.
154. Ibid., 653.
155. The names that follow are not a complete list.
156. Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit and other cemeteries around the state are burial sites of several Union generals, among them: Thomas Williams, killed in action at Baton Rouge in August 1862; Steven G. Champlin, died of wounds, January 1864; David Stuart, wounded at Shiloh; Philip St. George Cook, father-in-law of Jeb Stuart; and Thornton Brodhead (whose office on Grosse Ile remains a state historic site).
157. Schultz, Custer: Lessons in Leadership, 181, 182. This recent military leadership study also judges him as “glorious—fierce, determined, daring, leading from the front, making snap decisions, guided by some kind of ‘lucky star.’” Foreword by General Wesley Clark, ix.
158. “1892 Portrait & Biographical Album of Genesee, Lapeer & Tuscola Counties,” http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mi/county/tuscola/book/book141-146.htm (accessed on October 7, 2010).
159. Lanman, The Red Book, 147.
160. Charles Martinez, “Governor Moses Wisner,” Chronicle 31, no. 2 (2008), 24. Wisner’s father and grandfather fought on the U.S. side in the War of 1812 and Revolutionary War, and his son also joined a Union regiment (the Fifth) at Fort Wayne in Detroit.
161. The Civil War–era capitol was a wood frame building located several blocks away from the current structure that was dedicated in 1879. Fire would end the existence of this second government building, as it had the first. The comparatively small and simple capitol was where war decision making occurred in far less grandeur than the current home of the Michigan legislature.
162. Edward Clark Potter was a sculptor who worked from around 1883 into the first two decades of the twentieth century. As with so much history, his story appears to have faded with the passing of the years. He studied under Daniel Chester French, the genius who designed the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. He also gained the admiration of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, made famous by Civil War commemorative commissions including the Shaw memorial on Boston Commons. New Yorkers know his work from the two lions guarding the steps to the Main Branch of the New York Library. He also assisted French with several pieces for the Columbian Exposition. In the main reading room of the Library of Congress are sixteen statues said to be by the greatest sculptors of their day; Robert Fulton is by Potter. Potter is also sculptor for Blair at the Capitol and Custer in Monroe.
163. William Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1948), 391.
164. “Abraham Lincoln and Michigan.” Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom, http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=49&CRLI=129 (accessed on October 8, 2010).
165. Coincidentally, the vote total approximates the number of Michigan troops in the war that followed.
166. Lanman, The Red Book, 148.
167. Fremont (Ohio) Journal, November 14, 1862.
168. The Michigan soldier vote went more dramatically in Lincoln’s favor. He won 9,402 to 2,959, a margin of 76 percent. McClellan won a few units (First Infantry, 121–109), but others were landslides against him (Ninth Infantry, 95–413). The bloodied Twenty-fourth, unit of the Iron Brigade, went 177–49 for Lincoln. Soldiers convalescing in the hospital voted for the Union ticket, 388–46.
169. James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield, vol. 2 (Norwich, CT: Henry Bill Pub. Co., 1886), 288.
170. Lanham, The Red Book, 146. The entry indicates that 110,000 was the eligible number in the 1860 census.
171. New York Times, August 7, 1894.
172. Lanman, The Red Book, 185.
173. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 69.
174. Crapo did not serve in the military like his predecessor Wisner, but a descendant did end up connected to a “general.” Daughter Rebecca married William Clark Durant; their only son, William Crapo Durant, born in 1861, became the famous founder of General Motors.
175. See Mark K. George, Zachariah Chandler: A Political Biography (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1969); Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler.
176. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 44.
177. Ibid., 47.
178. Ibid., 78.
179. Ibid., 81.
180. Allen Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 46.
181. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 62.
182. Congressional Globe, January 31, 1865, 519.
183. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 80–81.
184. Allan Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 39. “Honest Jake” was “reputably the man who chose the name ‘Republican.’”
185. Ibid., 64.
186. Congressional Globe, April 6, 1864, 1,448.
187. Ibid., April 9, 1864, 1,489.
188. Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), 116.
189. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1939), 540.
190. Scott, Forgotten Valor, 309.
191. Ibid.
192. Ibid., 319.
193. Ibid., 329. Willcox’s exemplary leadership during such trying times was lauded by his comrade Withington as critical to bolstering the morale of all around him.
194. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 883. He had lost the use of one arm due to wounds received. General George Thomas commented with regret on McCreery’s resignation from the army for disability from wounds. McCreery would write an account of his escape for a MOLLUS publication. William B. McCreery, My Experience as a Prisoner of War, and Escape from Libby Prison (Detroit, MI: Winn & Hammond, 1893).
195. Captain Daniel Fransberry, First Michigan Cavalry, and Lieutenant Charles Greble, Eighth Michigan Cavalry, also escaped.
196. James Wells, With Touch of Elbow, or Death before Dishonor (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1909), 141. This account is based on Wells’s autobiographical work and Joseph Wheelan’s Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison (New York: Public Affairs, 2010).
197. Frederic W. Swift, My Experiences as a Prisoner of War. MOLLUS (Detroit, MI: Wm. Ostler, 1888).
198. Report of the Michigan Andersonville Monument Commission on Erection of the Monument at Andersonville, Ga (Lansing, MI: Robert Smith Printing Co., 1905), 5.
199. Ibid., 15–18.
200. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 87–88.
201. Sears, For Country, 361. The chapter heading is “A Valley Forge Winter.”
202. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 200.
203. Some 2,800 unmarked Union graves are there.
204. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 381.
205. Longacre, The Man behind the Guns, 67. (“Hunt would feel that, in addition to plagiarizing, Upton had botched his theft.”)
206. Gordon Berg, “American Indian Sharpshooters at the Battle of the Crater,” Civil War Times (June 2007).
207. “Medal of Honor Recipients: Civil War (A–L).” U.S. Army Center of Military History, http://www.history.army.mil/html/moh/civwaral.html (accessed on October 1, 2010). Baldwin would win a second during the postwar era, one of four students at Hillsdale College who would receive the medal. Thomas W. Custer would also be awarded the commendation on two occasions.
208. On January 9, 1862, Battery F was mustered into Federal service at Coldwater. It left the state for Kentucky in March 1862. After months of service in Kentucky, the battery marched across the Cumberland Mountains to Knoxville in January 1864. In May 1864, it joined Sherman’s Atlanta campaign and fought at Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain.
209. Farmer, The History of Detroit, 308.
210. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 53.
211. War Papers, vol. 2, 217–28.
212. A. Wilson Greene, Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 252.
213. Lieutenant Elliott Malloy Norton of Wayland, who served in the First, Sixth and Seventh Michigan Cavalry, was awarded the Medal of Honor for meritorious service at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek. On April 6, 1865, Norton rushed ahead of his column and captured the flag of the Forty-fourth Tennessee Infantry.
214. Grant’s Army: Record of the Operations of Our Cavalry. Another Brilliant Affair by Gen. Custer Capture of Three Railway Trains, 25 Pieces Artillery, 200 Wagons, &c., by the Third Division. Details of the Surrender of Lee’s Army. After the Surrender Order from General Custer. N.p., April, 20, 1865.
215. Ibid.
216. Chris Calkin, The Battles of Appomattox Station and Appomattox Court House (Lynchburg, VA: H.E. Howard, 1987), 36–37.
217. OR, series 1, vol. 68, part 2, 653.
218. Calkin, The Battles, 167.
219. James Swanson, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer (New York: William Morrow, 2006), 253. In the epilogue to this work, the role of Lafayette C. Baker—who moved to Michigan as a boy and was described as “a Michigan man (his father being an early pioneer of Clinton county)” in Michigan in the War on page 155—is explored. Furthermore, Baker’s cousin went on the lecture circuit to exploit his role in the Booth chase as well as that of his horse Buckskin, who, after his death, continued to appear on stage thanks to the work of a taxidermy student at Michigan Agricultural College.
220. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 155–56.
221. William Christen, et al. Stonewall Regiment: A History of the 17th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Detroit, MI: Seventeenth Michigan Volunteer Infantry, 1986), 50.
222. A Michigan soldier by the name of James Vernor ended up with souvenirs of the Davis pursuit and capture. He spent fifteen dollars for a dressing gown—perhaps the one Davis was said to have used as a disguise on the fly. Upon his return home, Vernor went into the beverage business and perfected a soft drink using ginger in oak casks that became a Detroit institution.
223. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 684.
224. Catton, This Hallowed Ground, 397.
225. Jerry O. Potter, The Sultana Tragedy (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2000), 199–260.
226. Alan Nolan, The Iron Brigade (Berrien Springs, MI: Hardscrabble Press, 1983, 256.
227. Robertson, Michigan in the War, 7.
228. Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 189.
229. Robertson, The Flags of Michigan, 5–6. These pages quote a May 17, 1877 letter of Governor Charles M. Croswell.
230. According to the National Park Service, it is “the state’s foremost Civil War monument.” Many other locations in Michigan feature monuments, some humble (the GAR monument on the grounds of the state capitol in Lansing) and some involved. For example, at the center of Muskegon’s Hackley Park stands a seventy-six-foot-tall Soldiers and Sailors Monument, designed by an Italian-born architect. The monument bears this inscription: “Not conquest, but peace—To the soldiers and sailors who fought and to all patriotic men and women who helped to preserve our nation in the war of the rebellion.”
231. In 1877, Michigander Will Carleton authored and delivered a special poem to Civil War soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The lengthy composition won widespread acclaim, prompting one listener to boast, “I have no recollection of the day when I felt so proud of my country and especially of my native State, Michigan, as I do at this hour.” The poem is entitled “Converse with the Slain” and contains fifty-five verses.
232. All quotations from the event are from Robertson, The Flags of Michigan, 87–89.