HE WAS ONLY A SMALL-TOWN HOTEL PROPRIETOR AND AN OFFICER IN THE LOCAL MILITIA, BUT EVEN before the Civil War's first shots were fired, Dwight Woodbury was ready to serve his country. “[We] tender to the Governor of the state and to the government of the United States, our services in case of any contingency which may require such service,” he wrote in January 1861. From the south-central Michigan town of Adrian, Woodbury sent those words in a letter to his state's new governor, Austin Blair, writing not only for himself but also on behalf of the officers who served under him in the state's 3rd Militia Regiment.1
Across the South the secession movement roiled, its proponents convinced that the election of Abraham Lincoln meant the abolition of slavery in the United States. The nation was lurching toward war with itself as those states broke away. While many dreaded the breakup of the country and some welcomed it, Woodbury would stand by the U.S. government. He was 36 years old, a businessman, husband, and father, well liked in his community. He stood at about average in height and build, with dark hair and beard, and had the habit of biting his lower lip, which a friend said indicated Woodbury's “earnestness of purpose.” Politically he was a Jacksonian Democrat, a stripe that would soon be called “War Democrat.” These Northern Democrats agreed with Lincoln and Republicans that military force should be used to stop the Southern states from seceding, though they didn't believe the abolition of slavery should be a primary goal of the federal government.
Woodbury had been born in upstate New York and come of age in Michigan and Ohio. Like many young men, he followed the Gold Rush to California to try to win his fortune. When he returned, he worked as a conductor on the Michigan Southern Railroad and married a businessman's daughter; he ran the Brackett House, a hotel in Adrian. More significantly, he had long been involved with the state militia and was colonel of volunteers from Michigan's Lenawee, Washtenaw, and Jackson counties. While many militia officers proved to be less than professional soldiers, Woodbury would prove to the commanders of the Union army that he was an effective military man—one who understood orders and could be counted on to do his duty.2
Only six months before his letter to the governor, in July 1860, Woodbury and his militiamen played host to a dashing young fellow named Elmer Ellsworth, a New Yorker who was a friend of then–presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. Ellsworth had been touring with his Zouaves, an exotically uniformed, precision march-and-drill outfit that thrilled audiences with their performances, and it was said that Woodbury and Ellsworth became friends. Soon both men led regiments from their states into the Civil War. Colonel Ellsworth would become a national martyr after May 24, 1861, shot by an angry secessionist innkeeper after cutting down a Confederate flag flying from the man's roof in Alexandria, Virginia.3
That was still some months off as Woodbury wrote to Governor Blair early in 1861. While historians have tended to believe that the Michigan militia was not a competent military force, Woodbury was confident that his was the only organized militia regiment in Michigan ready in the event the federal government called for soldiers. The U.S. government, still under President James Buchanan, was making no such move that January. But when news of the Rebel attack on Fort Sumter reached Michigan in mid-April, Woodbury quickly reminded Blair that he and his men had volunteered months earlier. “Now that the honor of our flag has been assailed, the law set at defiance and civil war inaugurated, the third regiment renews its offer,” he wrote.4
Like many other would-be military commanders, Woodbury hoped he would be asked to lead the first group of Michigan volunteers to fight for the United States, since Lincoln's administration now asked the governors of the Northern states to raise troops. Though Woodbury wouldn't get the command of the new 1st Michigan Infantry Regiment, he was on the governor's short list for a state command. He was quickly authorized to open a recruiting office in Adrian.5 Within a month's time, Woodbury was commissioned to lead state soldiers in a volunteer regiment enrolled as the 4th Michigan Infantry. He was their first colonel, but he would not be their last; in the course of the next three years, he was among nearly 200 men of his regiment killed or mortally wounded in the Civil War.
In the wake of the surrender of Fort Sumter community meetings were convened around Michigan to raise troops and money to pay for them. Companies of volunteers that included farmers, store clerks, schoolteachers, carpenters, mechanics, and laborers formed under the auspices of local leaders, often men who served in militia units. In the town of Monroe in the state's southeastern corner, a company called the Smith Guards was named for a resident veteran of the Mexican War, Col. Joseph R. Smith. Soon the volunteers began to drill under Smith's direction. They elected as captain a local land agent named Constant Luce. “We have about 70 old Flint Lock Guns,” Luce wrote to the state's new adjutant general, John Robertson, “which we would be pleased to exchange for Rifles as soon as you get them.” This would take longer than Luce might have expected. Only in early in 1862 would the men comprising the 4th Michigan get rifles. The more immediate development was that the Smith Guards became Company A in the 4th Michigan. One of the company's men was an 18-year-old originally from Albany, N.Y., then working as a drug store clerk in Detroit. His name was George W. M. Yates and he'd recently returned to Michigan, where his mother had lived for several years. Yates tried his hand at trading horses in Texas, but wasn't successful. But he would prove a good soldier and become friends with a daring and ambitious young officer named George Armstrong Custer. That friendship would shape Yates's Civil War career and ultimately determine his fate.6
In Adrian, the town where Woodbury lived, two companies had quickly formed after the news of Fort Sumter. Now a third organized, its men calling themselves the Adrian Volunteers, or more dramatically, the Lenawee Tigers. Their captain was James H. Cole, an acquaintance of Woodbury who also active in the militia. But after so many men from the Adrian area had already enlisted, Cole came up short of what he needed for a full company. Years later he recalled that Woodbury was concerned this shortage of men might cause the state to delay the organization of his regiment. “If we do not get another company in a few days, the boys in the northern part of the state will sidetrack us,” Woodbury said, according to Cole's memory of the conversation. “Can't you scare up some more recruits and then we will be ready to be sworn in on time?” In response, Cole took a train 50 miles west to the town of Coldwater, rented a horse and buggy, and drove another 20 miles south across the state line to Angola, Indiana. There he talked to some men who wanted to join regiments from the Hoosier state, but hadn't been chosen for Indiana's initial federal quota of 6,000 recruits.
These men from Angola and Steuben County were part of a company formed under a Mexican War veteran named Baldwin J. Crosswait. Given the chance to join a Michigan regiment that was almost certainly going into federal service, 40 of them signed on with Cole. Shortly before these men left on the trip to Adrian late in May, however, they were in a confrontation with the sheriff in Angola. One of their number, store clerk Frederick W. Meech, was arrested for selling illegal whiskey and beer. The volunteers decided they weren't leaving without him. Before they departed for Michigan, they surrounded the sheriff's house and “rescued” Meech, 24, into their ranks. Together the Indiana enlistees and the Adrian men under Cole became Company B of the 4th Michigan.7
Thirty miles or so beyond Coldwater and Angola to the west, in the southern Michigan town of Sturgis, a company formed called the Peninsula Guard. These men would become the 4th Michigan's Company C. One of the recruits was 21-year-old Eli Starr from nearby Centreville. Starr may have been influenced by his friend Daniel Knipple, who joined the 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment. Knipple was sure the war would be short. “Bring a blanket, a good undershirt, 2 if you wish, a good pair of drawers,” he wrote Starr from a new camp set up in Detroit. “Leave your best clothes at home—I don't think the war will last six months.” Starr's parents asked him not to go to Detroit to enlist yet, so Eli promised to wait and join men from their area. It didn't take long. Starr signed up with the local company that soon went into the 4th Michigan. Of course, his friend Dan, like so many others who believed the conventional wisdom about the war, was wrong about how short it would be.8
In the town of Ann Arbor, the ex-mayor, lawyer Robert J. Barry, recruited a company that bore his name, though he soon resigned as its captain, “not being able to leave his business for so long a term.” In his place, members of the company elected John M. Randolph to be their new captain. These enlistees began training at the local fairgrounds. They became the 4th Michigan's Company D.9 One of the volunteer-officers was a young man from Adams Center, New York, who reportedly was passing through the Ann Arbor area when he decided to join up. His name was Jairus W. Hall, and he would ultimately take the role of a commander of the “reorganized” or reconstituted 4th Michigan late in the war. Another young man who soon signed on with the company was Charles W. Phelps, from Washtenaw County. In May, Phelps, 21, was traveling around southeastern Michigan, trying to join a company that was going to be accepted into a new regiment, or if he failed at that, to find employment. But on the 22nd Phelps found out the company he'd joined in Oakland County, called the Pontiac Light Guards, was disbanding since someone in authority decided they weren't needed.
“I guess I shall go to Detroit and join the second Regiment,” he wrote to his brother. “If I don't go off in the army I will come out that way…. I'll be d———d if I will stay here anyway.” Phelps looked for work in Pontiac's three tin shops, but they had all the employees they needed. He soon learned that the 2nd Michigan Infantry had left Detroit. He began to wonder if he was going to get in the war at all. “[The] second regiment is gone to Washington so there is not much danger,” he wrote. “Who cares anyway?” But Phelps did want to serve, and a month later he signed on with the Barry Guards Company, which by then was part of the 4th Michigan.10 In just over two years time, young Phelps and scores of his comrades would find themselves in battle at the edge of a field of grain belonging to a man named John Rose, who lived outside of a small Pennsylvania college town called Gettysburg.
Men from the small southern-central Michigan towns of Hillsdale and Jonesville in Hillsdale County, just west of Adrian, soon became the regiment's Companies E and H, recruited by their respective captains, George W. Lumbard, a Hillsdale attorney, and Moses A. Funk, a businessman and carpenter. Funk's volunteers, from the Jonesville area and the northern part of the county, called themselves the Grosvenor Guard after a state political figure. Lumbard's men were known as the Hillsdale Volunteers. “I think I can say that if called [to service], we will not disgrace the state,” Lumbard wrote to Adjutant General Robertson. “Don't forget us.” Lumbard would play an important and sometimes controversial role in the regiment's leadership. Within less than a month after writing that letter, Lumbard's company was accepted into the 4th Michigan Infantry.11
About a dozen of Lumbard's volunteers were students at Hillsdale College, and one of them, sophomore Moses A. Luce, had just turned 19. “Together with twelve fellow students, I enlisted in Company E, 4th Michigan Infantry,” Luce wrote years later. He was six feet tall but slim enough that people thought of him slight in build, the son of an abolitionist pastor. In time, he would receive the Medal of Honor from Congress for running through enemy fire near Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, to rescue one of his comrades.12
Volunteers from around Hudson, about 15 miles west of Adrian, formed a company known as the Lenawee Guards or alternately, the Hudson Volunteers. These men would become Company F in the 4th Michigan. They selected as their captain Samuel DeGolyer, a local politician and partner in a company that manufactured wagons and parts. DeGolyer wanted to make sure state military officials didn't forget them. “We wish to urge our claims in every honorable way with a view to our acceptance at an early day,” he wrote to the state adjutant general. “We drill every Night…. Please advise me as to our future prospects.”13
In the Lenawee County town of Tecumseh, a few miles northeast of Adrian, the Tecumseh Volunteers organized under their captain, Deputy Sheriff David D. Marshall. They became Company G in the 4th Michigan. Marshall resigned his post from the sheriff's office shortly before the company left to rendezvous with other volunteer companies in Adrian. One of the first recruits for the company was a 24-year-old named Harrison Daniels. “Being the second man to enlist in the Township of Franklin, I walked to Tecumseh, nine miles from home, and was soon drilling,” he remembered. Daniels said Tecumseh residents “took good care of us and furnished us a very neat uniform which consisted of a red cap, blue jacket and red pants, so that with clean faces and blackened shoes, we made a very good appearance.”14 Soon that colorful uniform would be given up for one of gray—the color all the men of the 4th Michigan would wear until later that summer.
In the village of Trenton, a few miles south of Detroit on the Detroit River, some men formed a company organized under David A. Granger, though he would not go off to war with them. Since Granger's group didn't have enough for a regulation company (roughly 100 men), they traveled to Detroit on May 7 to join enlistees from the Continental Fire Company No. 8. This combined group was quartered in the Continentals' engine house. A Detroit newspaper called this company the Continental Rifles, but they were also known as the Trenton Volunteers. They became Company I in the 4th Michigan. William Vreeland from Wayne County was allowed to sign up with the company, though he was only 17. “You look young,” Granger said to him, according to an account Vreeland later gave. But Vreeland's cousin, the company's first lieutenant, Marshall W. Chapin, intervened on his behalf. “He is all right, Captain,” Chapin assured Granger. “I know him.”15
A young schoolteacher from upstate New York, Edward H. C. Taylor, had been working on Grosse Ile in the Detroit River, but his relationship with his boss wasn't going smoothly. He joined the company as a lieutenant. “The pay is good—$100 a month and rations,” he wrote about his new post. A Democrat from a Democratic family, Taylor was put off when his sister was saddened to hear he joined the army. “I am sorry that my volunteering has caused any sorrow, but this is a time when anyone with the least spark of patriotism ought to come forward,” he wrote. He added that “several gentlemen of education and wealth” joined as privates right along “hard working men,” and that he would have done the same. “The people of this city—Detroit—are very kind in fitting out the men,” he wrote.16
Like many if not most regiments in the Civil War, there was no Company J in the 4th Michigan. The regiment's Company K was comprised mostly of men from in and around Dexter, a small Washtenaw County town a few miles northwest of Ann Arbor. Their captain was a 44-year-old attorney, Alexander D. Crane, who held the rank of major general in the state militia. Like most organizers of volunteer companies, Crane asked the state for “arms of any kind” so his men could drill. These Dexter Union Guards were soon joined by about 30 men from Howell, a town in nearby Livingston County, who figured that they ought to sign on with a company going into a regiment certain to be mustered into federal service. Dexter residents, like others sending off their sons, brothers, and husbands, presented the company with a flag, waterproof capes, sewing kits, and other necessities.17
One of the company's lieutenants was Harrison H. Jeffords, about 24 and living in the Washtenaw County township of Lima, some 12 miles or so west of Ann Arbor. A recent graduate of the University of Michigan's law school and owner of a brick-making business, Jeffords would become one of Michigan's Civil War heroes. Whether he had a premonition or was just being prudent, on May 22 he made out his will, instructing that 70 acres of land be divided up between his mother and father in the event of his death, and bequeathing to his sisters an undetermined number of bricks and his two-horse buggy.18
Almost nothing was certain, in those days of late April and early May, about whether these men and thousands like them would get into a regiment. Michigan had more volunteers and companies than places for them. The state's first infantry regiment to form was a “90-day” unit, meaning the volunteers' hitch was over in three months. In May, the federal government directed that the term of enlistment for the men of subsequently forming regiments must be three years. Yet even with the long-term enlistments, there were questions about how many regiments were needed, and whether new ones would be accepted into the service of the federal government. Thousands of men who wanted to become soldiers were told to “hold themselves in readiness” and wait for their companies to be called. Some wondered whether they had a better chance to get into the service by joining a different company or even enlisting in another state. “If you have no encouragement of [our] being accepted by our own state soon, we shall go in with the Ohio volunteers at Toledo,” an anxious Samuel DeGolyer wrote to Michigan's adjutant general less than a week after his company organized.19
A newspaper reflected the jealousy and competition between companies in Lenawee County when the Adrian Volunteers got accepted into the 4th Michigan while the men from Tecumseh initially were left hanging. The men of the Tecumseh company, the local editor complained, “enlisted not for effect, but for service. They feel a little sore and just so we think, that they should have been entirely overlooked and left out of the organization of the Fourth Regiment, while a third company from Adrian, under Capt. Cole, not fairly commenced and without, at the time, a dozen bona fide volunteers, should have been given precedence over them.”20
As men waited for their companies to be called, there was also the matter of who was going to pay for their supplies and housing until the governor and his advisors decided if they were needed. Many towns raised money to support the men and boys from their company until they were accepted, but some did not. Enlisting at this point posed a problem for a man who'd left his farm or his job intending to fight for his country, only to wait around the county seat, the fairgrounds, or some other encampment. Eli Starr, who signed up for the Peninsula Guards, wrote a sardonic letter expressing his disgust with this. Starr apparently quit his job expecting he'd ship out right away, but then found out he was going nowhere just yet. In mid-May, a company officer told the recruits from Centreville that they had orders from the state adjutant general to meet at Sturgis in preparation for the rendezvous, or gathering, for the formation of their regiment. Starr made the dusty 10-mile march with the other men from their hometown. But when they got to Sturgis, the men found there were no such orders to assemble. “They didn't want us as they had expected,” Starr groused about his officers, “and after very generously permitting us to pay our own bills [for food and other expenses, they] informed us that they could give no definite information as to when they would want us to return.”21
Starr told the officers he'd had enough of this—he was quitting the company. Immediately his captain offered him noncommissioned rank as an enticement. “I have already explained to you the sudden termination of my military career,” Eli wrote a friend. “Well, they found out that my disgust was complete and not wishing to lose me, they [rode] over offering me the office of Sergeant, this I now have under consideration.”22 Starr stayed with the company. A few days later they got the order to board an eastbound train and join the 4th Michigan at Adrian.
Because of these initial uncertainties, the identities of the companies making up the 4th Michigan changed as plans for the regiment formed in the weeks after Fort Sumter. Preliminary state military orders published early in May indicated that companies from the towns of Paw Paw, St. Joseph, and Dowagiac in western Michigan would be part of the regiment, but this placement did not happen. The companies from Hillsdale, Jonesville, and Tecumseh, closer to Adrian, soon took their places. By the first week in May, it was clear from newspaper reports (likely reflecting Woodbury's discussions with state officials) that a fourth regiment of infantry was going to be formed with the companies from Adrian, Hudson, Monroe, Sturgis, Trenton, Ann Arbor, and Dexter. Within another week or so, the final lineup of companies was settled.
The rendezvous was planned for Colonel Woodbury's hometown, his appointment as the 4th Michigan's commander becoming official on May 16. “Col. Woodbury returned from Detroit last night,” a local newspaper reported. “The Fourth Regiment has been formally accepted by the Governor and ordered to rendezvous at Adrian.” The new regiment's quarters and camp was the north wing of Adrian College, on a hill at the edge of town. Woodbury called this temporary home Camp Williams in honor of Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams, one of Michigan's most experienced military men.23
Woodbury's lieutenant colonel was William W. Duffield, member of a prominent Detroit family and agent for a bank across the Detroit River in Windsor, Canada. Duffield, who reportedly served as an officer with volunteers from Tennessee in the Mexican War, remained with the 4th Michigan for a few months, eventually resigning to take command of the 9th Michigan Infantry. The regiment's major was Jonathan W. Childs, 28. He had attended high school and taught college in Ypsilanti before studying civil engineering, then teaching and working on government surveys in Minnesota. The chaplain for the regiment was the Reverend Dr. Henry Strong, Woodbury's Episcopal Church pastor and friend.
Dr. David P. Chamberlain, a 37-year-old medical doctor and native of New York state who lived with his wife and child on Hudson's Main Street, later said that he believed he was going to be made the surgeon of the 4th Michigan, but had to settle for the post of assistant surgeon since Governor Blair's own physician, Dr. Joseph Tunnicliff Jr., 42, of Jackson, was given the job. Tunnicliff, however, would not remain long with the regiment, while Chamberlain became one of its most respected figures.24
Now the state's military board began to take bids for contracts to feed, clothe, and equip its new soldiers, while sheds were built behind the Adrian College student dormitory for the regiment's kitchen and mess. In the meantime the men spent their days in their communities with drill and exercise, listening to speeches and lectures from local politicians and preachers, and sometimes attending fund-raising events and entertainments put on for them. At last the captains of the companies got word from Woodbury that Camp Williams was ready. Other than volunteers from Adrian, the first to arrive at the campus on May 24 were the Indiana men who had joined the local Lenawee Tigers, soon to be Company B. These men took a four-hour ride in carriages and wagons to Coldwater and boarded an eastbound train to Adrian, joining the local men.25
Two days later, on the 26th, a Sunday evening, the members of the Detroit's First Presbyterian Church presented the Trenton Volunteers, including the contingent of Continental firemen, with Bibles. That week a dark-haired, dark-eyed 23-year-old packed his possessions and left them with a friend, with instructions for his things to be sent east in the event something happened to him. This was John M. Bancroft, a draftsman educated at Dartmouth College, who had been living and working in Detroit. “Placed my trunk and bookcase labeled for home, ‘Reading, Mass.,’ in the second story of Mr. Hinchman's store,” Bancroft wrote in his diary. A short time later, the men of his company got on the train for the trip that took them to the regiment's rendezvous. “Leave Detroit for Adrian at 7:30 o'clock,” he noted. “Stopped in Trenton for a reception of the company.” They reached Adrian later that night.26
That same day the Smith Guards also boarded the train leaving Monroe, but not before local firemen bought them ale and cigars, a final parting gift. Over the course of the previous week these Monroe men received donations of gray uniforms, a company flag, and other items from the townspeople. Monroe's firemen made the trip with the company to Adrian, joining in the parade escorting the volunteers from the depot to Camp Williams. Residents were thrilled to see the men streaming into Adrian, making the mile-and-a-half walk to the campus. “As the companies marched through the streets yesterday and today on their way to the camp, they were cheered by our citizens all along the route,” the local paper reported.27
The moving of the companies continued. On the morning of May 27, the Hillsdale Volunteers assembled as a crowd of area residents watched. The men drilled and were presented with flannel overshirts and other items. They took a break for lunch and the company reassembled at the fire hall for patriotic speeches and the march to the train. The volunteers picked up three would-be enlistees who decided to join on the spot when they saw all the excitement. One young man handed the reins of his wagon's team to a boy standing nearby, with instructions to tell his father that he'd gone with the volunteers. Two other lads had come to town for groceries, but when told that the company was leaving, they went, too, giving their purchases to another fellow to carry home. The company boarded the cars and as the train left for Adrian, “men waved their caps and handkerchiefs, making the air ring with their cheers.”28
The companies from Jonesville, Hudson, and Tecumseh left home the next day. It was a rainy, but that didn't stop a large crowd from gathering in Tecumseh that afternoon. “They made a beautiful and imposing spectacle in their Blue and Red,” bragged the local paper. The men were accompanied by a local cornet band on the march to the train.29 At Jonesville friends and relatives of the Grosvenor Union Guard also flooded into the town to watch their company leave. “It was not the women and the children alone whose eyes were full of tears, or who were loudly sobbing at the thought of the parting,” their paper reported, “for scores of manly faces were moist, and handkerchiefs were generally displayed.” The volunteers “wore very serious faces, and many of them could not restrain their regret at the separation from home…. Generally, however, they mastered their feelings, and the last handshakes were strong and firm.” Just a few days earlier, their captain, Moses Funk, who was not a man of means, sought a loan so that he could buy his uniform. In response the village council voted to buy him a sword. When local gadflies complained about the expenditure, the local paper dismissed them as “grumblers” and “lazy loungers.”30
In Hudson the Lenawee Guards began the day drilling from 8:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. while a crowd gathered. By early afternoon, a procession that included a band, the local fire company, and a company of “cadets” (militia boys too young to enlist) formed on Main Street and marched with the volunteers to a lot near the fairgrounds. There were speeches and parting gifts, and the friends of Captain DeGolyer presented with him with a new revolver. Then the parade reformed and marched to the station to board the eastbound train, where they found the men from Jonesville already on board.31
Again some of the young cadets and musicians were too excited to stay behind, so they went, too. One was Albert H. Boies, then 16. “How well I remember our position as we marched through the streets of Adrian and up to the college building, headquarters of the Fourth regiment,” he wrote years later. Boies played his fife, as did a teen named Will Carleton, who would go on to be a famous Michigan poet. Accompanied by a bass drummer and a snare drummer, the boys could only play one march, a tune called “Dandy Jim,” someone remembered. In the months ahead Boies would join the 4th Michigan, but for now he was proud just to tramp along to see the new camp.32
The Dexter company received their parting gifts on May 29, cheering the local women and boarding the train for Adrian, and so did the Barry Guards in Ann Arbor. The Guards marched from their camp at the local fairgrounds that morning to the courthouse square, accompanied by young men in cadet companies from the University of Michigan. Each man was presented a Bible and “housewife,” or sewing kit, donated by the women of the city. After remarks by a local clergyman and one of company's lieutenants, the men marched to the railroad depot, accompanied by a crowd. “There were many tearful eyes and swelling hearts,” a correspondent reported, “and we felt sad, too, when the husband kissed the wife, saying, ‘Good bye Francis, God bless you.’”33
Quarters at Adrian College were spartan but adequate. “Immediately on our arrival in camp, each man was furnished with a blanket,” wrote Lt. Richard DePuy, a lawyer from Ann Arbor. “The boys…fell hastily to work filling the ticks [mattress bags] assigned the company with straw for beds.” Some men simply bedded down on hard floors, and some complained that there wasn't enough water for washing. John Bancroft, who'd been living in a Detroit fire hall, recorded his first night at Camp Williams: “Slept last night on a bed of loose straw in two small rooms with 15 others in the College at Adrian…. Awoke to a frosty morning and to find very little chance of soap and water.” Jonas D. Richardson, 21, from Washtenaw County, thought the arrangements were fine. “We are quartered in the College Buildings and everything is fixed up as nice as one could wish,” he wrote. A soldier's letter to his local paper suggested that the enlistees from Monroe may have stayed in tents, perhaps because they'd come to camp well equipped; he wrote that the Monroe company men “are quartered in between the buildings.”34
With the regiment's companies assembled, Sgt. Eli Starr wrote, the men started a “systematic drill.” A typical day began with reveille at 5:00 A.M., breakfast at 6:30. There was drill from 9:00 to 11:30 A.M. with the midday meal at 12:30 P.M. Drill resumed at 2:00 P.M. and ended with a dress parade at 5:00 P.M. The men headed for supper at 6:30 P.M. and it was lights out at 9:30. “Our provisions are abundant,” Starr wrote, “fresh beef every day, beans, hams, pork, bread, butter, sugar, milk, potatoes & various other things not drawn in the regular Army rations.” As for drinking with comrades when they were off duty, Starr found out that “if I drank with one I must drink with all so I stopped entirely.” Abstinence was also urged by the regiment's chaplain and like-minded temperance officials. Starr managed to room with friends, but there were more than a few arguments and fights between the new soldiers. “We have some pretty hard cases here as must be expected,” Starr explained. “There have been 8 fights since I commenced writing this[. T]he belligerents are at once marched to the guard house.”35
As did many proud volunteers, Jonas Richardson bragged that his company, D, was the best in camp and so were his officers. John Bancroft, however, came to a different conclusion about the officers of Company I when there was trouble a few days later involving Lt. Edward Taylor and Captain Granger. “Granger is a rascal and Taylor is not competent,” the young soldier declared. A soldier who enlisted at Trenton, James G. Tuttle, confirmed this. “[B]efore the regiment was mustered into the United States service, a number of us had some difficulty with our officers, and we left the company,” he wrote. “I joined the Hudson company.”36
Whatever happened, Edward Taylor felt he had been abused by Granger. “I have resigned in Co. I as lieut[enant] on account of disagreement with my Captain who treated me in a scrubby manner and in consequence, he, when the matter was properly laid before the Governor, lost his position as Captain,” he wrote that month. Taylor, nicknamed “Ned,” was temporarily attached to Company A, but he came to regret resigning his commission. Granger later joined a Massachusetts regiment as a private, worked his way through the ranks to captain, and ultimately died of wounds in the fall of 1864.37
There were other troubles in Camp Williams, filled as it was with raw recruits. A few men were drummed out of the regiment for serious offenses, one for striking an officer. Another fellow got abused on his way out of camp after it was recognized he had been joining different companies and then deserting once he got food and clothing. Yet another was discovered trying to form a “secret society” within the Hillsdale company and he, too, was ejected.
A brawl involving many of the volunteers erupted after a detail of men who'd been the relief guard came off duty on the evening of June 11. They went to get their supper, only to find the mess sheds closed. A sympathetic officer got the mess attendants to fix them a cold meal, but others, for reasons that aren't clear, objected. They showed up at the mess hall and disrupted the meal, knocking over food and tables and starting a large fight. The officer of the day, whose job it was to keep order, rounded up enough guards to arrest the combatants, but then the friends of those put in the guardhouse also got involved. “[They] laid siege to the lock up and compelled an evacuation [of those arrested],” the local paper said. “The affair created considerable excitement for a time.” How Colonel Woodbury restored order and discipline is unknown, but the matter quickly faded from the newspaper.
A few men were dismissed by federal officers during inspections because they failed to measure up or were considered too young, but 21-year-old Charles Barlow of Company K told a friend the examination was perfunctory. “[T]he surgeon felt our hands[,] hit us a few light taps on the breast[,] asked us our age & passed on to the next,” he wrote. William Vreeland, the teenager who joined up at a word from his cousin, said he didn't get that much of an exam. “I was not stripped, I was not looked over at all,” he remembered years later. “We were taken by companies and marched single file past some 3 or 4 men who only looked at [us] as we marched past…. That was all the examination I recollect.”
A few men who backed out of service faced humiliation, run out on rails. “When we were mustered in, there was one that refused to take the oath and when we were through the Captain told us that we might break ranks for a few minutes,” Stiles H. Wirts, an 18-year-old in Company F, wrote about one such incident. “We took the hint and caught him and elevated him on a rail and let him ride around until the guards took him away from us and put him in the guard house.”38
The fact that so many of men in the regiment had friends and family members a short train ride away meant there was still socializing. “I can come home any time that I wish, and as often,” bragged Jonas Richardson, “but don't want to come before I get my uniform.” Friends visited John Bancroft once drill was over on his first Saturday in camp, and his diary and Adrian newspapers reflect that soldiers often went to town. Of course, that sometimes led to trouble. At least two men from camp were arrested and jailed for getting drunk and using foul language, businessman Charles Cleveland complained. The thrill of having soldiers in town soon wore off, since many of them were “mischievously-disposed fellows, calling for articles such as tobacco, cigars and drinkables at stores and after coolly order it to be charged to Uncle Sam,” Cleveland wrote.39
One 4th Michigan officer, a religious man who had worked in a banking office and taught Sunday school, tried to influence men to be civil. “I was officer of the Guard Tuesday & one of the sentries got his back up & rather insulted me for reproving him for swearing,” wrote Lt. George Monteith, 21, from Adrian. “I immediately put him in the guard tent & kept him till he seemed penitent & released him to return to guard duty with friend advice about profanity. Since then how pleasant & kind he has been to me.”40
Most men adapted to army life as June days passed. “The daily routine of camp discipline has been strictly enforced, and the effect is plainly visible to any one who saw them when they were raw recruits,” reported the Detroit Free Press. This suited some soldiers. “I am getting as tough as a pine knot,” Corporal Richardson wrote. “I like military life first rate. All the boys are well and in fact the whole Regiment, our field officers, can't be beat.” He also learned that rank had its privileges. “All lights are put out at nine o'clock and every man has to Retire. I can go out and in whenever I chose,” he bragged. “All Officers Both Commissioned and noncommissioned have the password as soon as [it is] issued.”41
Uniforms arrived from a Detroit contractor, “West Point gray” in color. This was not unusual, for many U.S. troops had gray uniforms at this time. A shipment of more than 300 Springfield muskets also arrived, bringing cheers from the men. “The whole redgiment have got their United States dress, it is of gray & over coats of the same with capes on them,” Colonel Woodbury wrote. Many thought the uniforms were sturdy and good-looking, but others soon concluded the quality was poor. “Some of the men are now of the opinion that as long as the contractors get their pay for making them properly they should make them so that they will not rip and tear before they have been worn 24 hours,” complained a soldier to a Detroit newspaper. “Many of the uniforms have been made of the poorest kind of satinment [satinet, a cotton-wool cloth]. We did not volunteer for purpose of complaining but we do think it a shame to put on uniforms that do not wear a month, [whereas] they should wear a year. These will wear out soon and then we will have to replace them ourselves [or] go without.” This soldier, who initialed his letter “S.P.S.,” was probably Stephen P. Savery, 20, from Washtenaw County, a musician in Company K.42
In the meantime, because most of the companies hadn't managed to enlist a full complement of 100 men, recruiters from the 4th Michigan went out into nearby communities to drum up more volunteers. In addition, a respected, 15-piece musical ensemble from Cleveland, Ohio, called Hecker's Band or the Hecker Band and led by John Van Olker, signed on with the 4th Michigan. These musicians were German, or men of German descent. “Our band…is hard to beat,” S.P.S. wrote in their praise. “The way they play ‘Dixie’ and the ‘Girl I left behind’ put us in a quiver.”43
Yet some drill, the arrival of uniforms, and a band did not make the 4th Michigan quite ready to go off to war. Not all the men had weapons, and after preparing three other regiments for war, the State of Michigan was scratching around for more. “I fear I cannot furnish you with respectable arms for your regiment,” wrote Jabez Fountain, quartermaster general of the state's military department, to Woodbury. “I am having the state ransacked for arms, but I find but very few that are fit for service.” By mid-June, only about half of the companies had been issued weapons, described as a combination of “minnie [Minié] muskets” and “marine muskets.”44 While the companies used these weapons in drill, ultimately they were left behind when the regiment headed east. What the soldiers would soon find out was that the firearms they would receive at Washington, D.C., weren't much better.
Perhaps the 4th Michigan's most poignant moments in Adrian came after two Indiana men in Company B asked Woodbury for permission to marry their sweethearts, and the colonel consented. One of the grooms was Frederick W. Meech, the clerk from Angola who might have still been in jail had his friends not broken him out. His bride was Helen Darrow. Also tying the wedding knot were George E. Young and his bride Elizabeth Freygang. On the evening of June 19, the regiment, on dress parade, formed in a hollow square. Into the center marched the couples and friends and family members from Angola, accompanied by the chaplain, the Reverend Strong. “The Damsels were as blooming as Western roses, and their head dresses were composed of red, white and blue ribbons, intended to convey the idea that they were not only in favor of union—to a man—but also in favor of that other union, quite as glorious,” a Detroit paper reported. The hometown paper of the young couples didn't spare sentimentality or hyperbole, declaring the ceremony “one of the most romantic scenes that will ever be recorded in history.”
The men of the regiment kneeled so that a large crowd of visitors could view the service. The band played and the regiment gave the couples three cheers as they left for a honeymoon of a few days. Young's parents sent a wedding cake, which he shared with his comrades in Company B. “We hope that he will as faithfully discharge his duty as a soldier, as he did as a lover, which will be highly appreciated by both his parents and youthful bride,” the editor of the Angola Republican wrote, undoubtedly with a sly grin. If anyone questioned the wisdom of the young lovers marrying on the eve of the departure of the regiment for war, it did not appear in the papers. “I should think it would [not?] be pleasant for them to leave their new wives behind,” wrote Lieutenant Monteith.45
The next day, June 20, a telegram arrived in Michigan for Gov. Austin Blair from Simon Cameron, President Lincoln's secretary of war. “Send on your fourth (4th) regiment by Elmira and Harrisburg,” the message read. “They can be furnished with arms etc. here or if necessary at Harrisburg.” That same day, the 4th Michigan formally mustered into the service of the United States. The new regiment's time in Michigan was drawing to an end.46 Now the women of Adrian who had sponsored the making of a regimental flag for the 4th Michigan finalized arrangements for its presentation the next day. On the morning of June 21, people from around the area poured into the town in overloaded coaches from the east and west and by horse and wagon and on foot from all points. The Michigan South Shore Railroad cut fare in half for passengers headed for Adrian. “The town swarmed with people,” said one local journal. “The excursion trains poured a tide of humanity through our streets, while the surrounding county towns emptied themselves of their population…. Our streets too were thronged with a busy crowd; our shopmen were voluble and busy.” From Detroit came Michigan VIPs, Senator Zachariah Chandler, Gen. Alpheus Williams, and state adjutant general John Robertson, accompanied by their wives. As the sun rose higher, so did the temperature—a typical hot Michigan summer's day.47
The ceremonies were scheduled for the mid-afternoon and as the time drew near people streamed toward the college and the field used as the regiment's parade ground. At 2:30 P.M. the men of the regiment, about half of them carrying muskets, marched out and formed a hollow square around a platform. The crowd was estimated to be in the thousands, so a few men from each company acted as crowd control to keep people back. Inside the regiment's square were the officers, state officials and their wives, and newspaper correspondents. About 3:00 P.M., a carriage containing the regiment's color sergeant and four women pulled through the crowd, and the ranks of the square opened to admit them. The ladies took their places on the platform and 4th Michigan's new flag was unfurled. A Detroit Free Press correspondent, writing about the banner in advance of the presentation, claimed the flag was made of heavy silk, emblazoned with the state coat of arms on one side, the U.S. “stars and stripes” on the other, but this was incorrect. Reports from correspondents from Hudson and Adrian papers who attended the ceremony described it as a U.S. flag with the words “The Ladies of Adrian to the / Fourth Regiment Michigan Infantry / Defend It,” stitched in gilt letters on three stripes. Holding the flag in her hands, Mrs. Josephine S. Wilcox stepped forward.48
“In behalf of the ladies of Adrian, allow me to present to you this, our National flag, and we trust a few words from us in expression of our feelings on this occasion may be kindly received,” she said. “When you follow this standard in your line of march, or onto the field of battle, and see it waving in lines of beauty and gleams of brightness, remember the trust we have placed in your hands, and we will follow you in our hearts, with all our hopes and our prayers.” It was a proud and patriotic occasion, and Dwight Woodbury answered with a short speech. “In accepting this beautiful banner at your hands, from those you represent,” he said, “I have but few words to offer save those expressions of my own gratitude, and that of the body of men committed to my command…. We will strive to do our duty as American soldiers. It [the flag] has defended us; it will defend. To no inferior force shall it ever be surrendered, and sooner than be trailed to treason it shall become pall of the regiment.” He concluded his speech assuring the women that as the regiment followed the flag into battle, the soldiers would remember them.
Politicians followed, including Senator Chandler, with more speeches, and the men joined in the crowd's cheers. Then the soldiers fell into line for inspection by the military officials, and the band played marches and patriotic tunes. The regiment paraded for two hours in the muggy heat. Finally the men were dismissed and the crowd slowly drifted away from Camp Williams for home.49
The time for speeches was over. The next day the state's military department issued orders that the regiment move out in three days, leaving Adrian on June 25 for Toledo—the first step in a long journey to Washington, D.C. While plans for the route changed over the next 48 hours, the order nevertheless meant the men had a chance to visit home. “Most of the boys are gone home to see their friends. I go this afternoon to see the Raymonds at Raisin,” John Bancroft noted, referring to a family who probably lived on the River Raisin in the Monroe area or in Raisin Township in Lenawee County. Of course, that also meant there was an opportunity to get in trouble in Adrian. “A little row occurred at Wahl's Saloon on Main Street last night between a soldier and several Germans,” a newspaper reported. “Two or three knockdowns took place.” The sheriff and a deputy arrived and stopped the brawl.
Officers and men prepared for the regiment's departure. Woodbury announced that his regiment wasn't going to take minors into the service, at least not without written permission of their parents, and now came four petitions from families who said their sons weren't of legal age. At least one would-be soldier was dismissed when it was proved he wasn't 18, but other teens remained in the regiment because they had permission or were not pressed too closely about their real age. William Vreeland, who was 17, said later that although Woodbury noticed him, the colonel merely changed his job and allowed him to stay. “You are pretty young to carry a musket,” Woodbury said, according to Vreeland's account. “Would you like to take care of my horses?” The teenager said he would. But young Vreeland served only briefly with the regiment, for he was discharged later in the summer for an injury.50
Woodbury issued detailed orders for last company inspections and roll calls on the morning of June 25—the men were to be on the parade ground with their knapsacks packed and a day's rations in their haversacks, and then they would march to the depot. “Packing up to leave for Wash[ington],” wrote Bancroft on June 24. “No drill.” Since David Granger was no longer captain of Company I, Lt. Jeremiah D. Slocum of Adrian was commissioned by the governor to take his place. Bancroft went to town that evening for his last night out in Adrian.51
“We are all packing up our traps, getting ready for a start,” jotted Dr. Chamberlain, the regiment's assistant surgeon, as officers shouted orders and men hurried about the next morning. “The boys are busy at the pumps, filling their canteens with water for the day…. Some are saying goodbye to friends and all feel in good spirits.” Chamberlain agreed to send accounts to his local newspaper, and this dispatch was the first of many.52 As wagoners moved equipment and baggage from the college, crowds began to gather. Around 9:00 A.M. the regiment marched out of Camp Williams, leaving the campus. The day was turning warm, the soldiers' packs were heavy and the road dusty, but people cheered them. The 4th Michigan was accompanied by local firefighters as they tramped to the station. The sun was over the trees as the march was ending. Near downtown Adrian, the companies changed from columns of four into two single-file lines so they could board the cars. “There is a great crowd of people here, some saying ‘good bye’ some crying, some with ‘stiff upper lips,’ wrote Dr. Chamberlain. “We shall be off soon.” It took more than an hour for the 1,040 men and officers to get on the train.
Colonel Woodbury stood on the rear platform at the end of the train as well-wishers waved flags and cheered. While others tried to remain upbeat and positive for the sake of the departing soldiers, a man named William A. Whitney, who knew Woodbury, made a solemn vow to the colonel as they shook hands. “I promised him that in case he fell on the battlefield, I would come after his remains and bring them to Adrian,” Whitney wrote. How Woodbury responded to this promise Whitney did not say.53
It was time. At about 11:30 A.M., the regiment's train slowly pulled out of Adrian, taking along assorted correspondents and some friends and relatives of officers who were allowed to accompany them on the first leg of the trip. “The last hurried words of parting were uttered and amid the cheers of the assembled thousands,” a reporter wrote, “the train moved away.” The whistles of other locomotives in the nearby yard and roundhouse also sounded, joining the tumult in a noisy good-bye to the 4th Michigan.54
“There were many who did shed tears and more who could [have,] but for our sakes did not,” John Bancroft wrote as the train rattled to the southeast. “And for the cause for which we go, they bid us God speed and hope for the best…. Good bye, friends, you have been very kind to me.”55