CHAPTER 6
At It We Went Tooth and Nail
ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 28 MEN OF THE 4TH MICHIGAN AND OTHER REGIments who fought and escaped the battle of Gaines' Mill with their lives were roused from their sleep on the south side of the Chickahominy. Henry Seage, who had been wounded slightly and separated from his company, found his outfit. Discipline and order were still expected, no matter the losses and the retreat, so soldiers cleaned their rifles and stood inspection. There was a good chance Porter's Fifth Corps would have to soon fight again as the Army of the Potomac withdrew toward the James River. This was some 13 miles as the crow flew, but for soldiers and wagons the route led across swamps, through woods and over confusing country roads.
Dr. Chamberlain spent the morning working on the “walking wounded” like Seage, soldiers who had been hit, but not so badly that they couldn't march. Around noon their regiment was on the move with the division for a place less than a few miles away called Savage's Station, where some 2,500 sick and wounded Union soldiers were gathered. Chamberlain called it “nothing but a farm house with a place [for passing trains] to [obtain] wood and water, but now had the appearance of quite a town.” Because McClellan was abandoning the supply line that stretched back to the east, this railroad would soon be cut off by pursuing Confederates. Those sick and wounded who couldn't accompany the army as it retreated south, or who couldn't be placed on wagons pulling east, were left to become prisoners, at least temporarily. Some doctors and hospital aides stayed with them. Chamberlain wrote that there “was no time to look up friends” at the station, but Capt. Marshall Chapin of Company F saw Lt. Joseph L. Smith of Hudson, wounded the night before. Smith, about 32, “had just had his leg amputated but was doing well,” Chapin said. He survived.1
The regiment marched on with the First Division, moving about eight miles as other troops fought a rearguard action to the north. The men of the 4th Michigan rested in the rain that night on the banks of the White Oak Swamp. Some mules broke loose that night, causing an alarm that caused soldiers to think for a moment that Rebel cavalry was attacking. Dr. Chamberlain said the men laughed at each other's reactions when they realized what happened, and went back to sleep. The next day, June 29, the men worked on a corduroy road or causeway through the swamp, wrote Sgt. John Bancroft of Company I. There were long periods of waiting in the suffocating heat, and they moved only a mile and a half. Some said officers moved the column slowly to make sure they didn't walk into any ambushes. While other regiments bivouacked in the woods that night, the 4th Michigan and the 14th New York kept going, finding the way along the roads, sometimes hearing shots off to their left, sometimes hearing hoofbeats in the distance. “The night was spent in our tramp through roads with the underbrush coming down close to it nearly all the way,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote.
He said the soldiers knew the Confederates were pressing close, but in reality Lee was disappointed his generals weren't making a more aggressive pursuit. The doctor claimed there was never any confusion during this march, but George Millens wrote that they took some wrong turns through the forests, ravines, and hills and did some backtracking. It was exhausting. “May you never experience how tired we were,” Bancroft complained. As light came into the sky on June 30, the men of the 4th Michigan rested. About noon, the rest of their division joined them. The march south resumed.2
After moving another few miles on a route called the Quaker Road, their division passed a large hill or ridge and came within sight of the James River at a place known as Turkey Island Bridge. Here Union gunboats could bring their protective firepower to bear. The soldiers of the 4th Michigan cooked their coffee and ate hardtack for breakfast in a grove of pines on the river. By afternoon they could hear firing as Confederate troops attacked the Union army rear guard to the north. Sergeant Bancroft had been getting sick again, bad enough that the doctor excused him from duty. But when word came that they were moving out, going back to the heights they had passed earlier, he got to his feet. “Orders came to sling knapsacks and retrace our steps which we did for about a mile,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote, “which brought us back to Malvern Hill.” John Bancroft went, too, though ill and exhausted: “I cannot bear to leave the regt., so I go along up the hill.”
Here the Union army gathered, on another excellent defensive position. Less than a half-mile north of the sharp turn in the James River called Turkey Bend, Malvern Hill rose from ravines, low fields, and riverbeds to a height of 150 feet. Uneven in shape and bounded by creeks, this hill was more of a wide ridge or rising plateau that was made up of farms and meadows, patches of woods, and rolling ground. This battlefield would be more than a mile long and nearly a mile across at its widest point, toward the southern end. North of Malvern Hill, in the meantime, fighting raged. But here Union artillery went into position on the high ground, dominating the routes that Lee's men would use to attack. With its brigade, the 4th Michigan reached an open area that afternoon on a crest called Crew's Hill, about two-thirds of the way along the length of the ridge. The regiment “took a position the large field and lay down on their arms to await events,” Chamberlain wrote. Pvt. Millens called this “a nice battle ground.”3
Suddenly cannon balls and shell began to fall, strike, and bounce into their ranks as Confederate guns fired on them from the left, or west. Sgt. Ambrose J. Easton of Company K was killed. For about three minutes, shot and shell came at them “like a hail storm.” Capt. John Randolph of Company D said the regiment “soon changed our position under shelter of a piece woods” nearby. Union artillery and gunboats on the James began firing back. After being pounded by the superior Yankee guns, Millens wrote, the Rebels “bug out.” When the guns fell silent, a party of pioneers was sent to check the woods where Rebels fired. They found an abandoned Confederate field artillery battery surrounded by dead gun crew members, horses, and infantrymen. Other members of the 4th Michigan said that large numbers of Rebel prisoners were brought in.
Union officers spent the rest of the day posting divisions and brigades and batteries, while soldiers who'd been fighting to the north retreated, joining them at Malvern Hill. The 4th Michigan buried Easton—“a true soldier & a brave man,” Capt. Harrison Jeffords of Company C wrote. “We had the opportunity to do for him what we could not do for many others. We buried him in a beautiful spot in the shade of a tree that can be identified at any further time.” The regiment stayed in the woods that night and slept on their arms on that western part of the hill with their brigade. Morell's division held the curving left portion of the new front line, again facing north. The 4th Michigan would be in the thick of the fight here.4
While combat went on in places near Malvern Hill that last day of June, about 12 miles away at the impromptu hospital near Gaines' Mill, the peevish surgeon of the 4th Michigan, Dr. William E. Clark, again wrote to Governor Blair, complaining of ill treatment not by the Confederates, but by his commanding officer, Col. Dwight Woodbury. Clark was a prisoner of the Rebels, though he had certain freedom of movement, and he knew he was soon to be released. Again he asked that the governor place him in another Michigan regiment. Clark wrote that shortly before these Seven Days battles began, he'd been treated better by Woodbury. The colonel had apologized for his previous treatment, Clark wrote; Woodbury told the doctor he never really wanted Clark to resign from the regiment, but that Dr. Chamberlain and some officers did. Of course, Clark was outraged at this and spoke with some of them, ultimately deciding that Woodbury lied to him. Clark's brother, adding his two cents to the doctor's complaint to Governor Blair, said it appeared Woodbury had read Dr. Clark's mail. These complaints were enough for the governor, who in weeks ahead would assign Clark to the 19th Michigan Infantry. But before the unhappy surgeon got his wish, the 4th Michigan was in the most costly battle of its service.5
Malvern Hill
Early on the morning of July 1, the soldiers of the 4th Michigan rose and moved out of the woods on Crew's Hill, marching a short distance into the fields west of the Quaker Road near the home of Dr. J. H. Mellert. Malvern Hill rose behind them; here one of many Union batteries was posted, looking north down the slope to where the ground leveled off and then rose slightly into thick woods. Confederates attacking from these trees would have to cross a wide field to reach Union positions. The regiment's assignment was to support this battery on the left, relieving the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry that had spent the night here. Sgt. John Bancroft noted that their position shifted several times, but Private Millens of Company B wrote that they were ultimately posted “in a ravine.” Capt. John Randolph called it a knoll. Both were referring to a valley or depression between the rising, rolling pieces of ground making up Malvern Hill. Other Union regiments extended the line to the right, or east. The guns fired periodically and skirmishers were sent out as the sun rose, watching and waiting for the Confederates. Robert E. Lee had been trying for days to destroy McClellan's army and again ordered his generals to attack.
“On Tuesday, July 1st, we were ordered to march out to support a battery,” Captain Chapin wrote. “The battery kept up an occasional fire all day.” To their right another Union division was attacked at around ten in the morning, but the Confederates were repelled by artillery fire. By early afternoon, as the summer sun beat down, Rebel troops twice appeared on the ground in front of Griffin's men, probing but not pressing attacks when the Union batteries opened fire. Two guns on the hill above the 4th Michigan blasted at Rebel infantrymen who came out of the woods in the first probe around noon, and they quickly retreated. Capt. George W. Lumbard of Company E said that around two o'clock, “we could see great clouds of dust rising, which warned us that the rebels were advancing in great force.” This Rebel probing action came farther to the right, but it met the same artillery response “and back they went, limping and howling to the woods,” Lumbard wrote. But these were preliminaries. The Confederates were working their way down from the north in preparation for a large-scale attack, positioning their guns and troops.6
The field fell quiet in the afternoon heat—it was so hot that Sgt. John Bancroft covered himself with hay to try to keep the sun off, and so quiet that some of his comrades were able to kill and butcher a pig and cook dinner. But the quiet ended at 5:30 P.M. when the Confederate guns opened fire again. “Such cannonading I never heard but our position just under the brow of a hill protected us perfectly although some of the Battery men suffered severely,” Chapin wrote. Millens agreed that the regiment's position in the ravine sheltered them, with shells from both sides passing overhead. The Confederate barrage lasted about 30 minutes and the Union batteries answered. Rebel troops were spotted stealthily approaching through the valley of the creek to the left of Griffin's division, trying to flank them. Griffin ordered regiments over to the left of the 4th Michigan to stop them, but no sooner had he done so than more Confederates troops came out of the trees before them and all across the Union front. Charles W. Phelps of Company D wrote that “we heard them coming out of the woods a-hollering like the devil.”
Out in a wheat field that lay just north of where the regiment was posted—between the Michigan soldiers and the oncoming Confederates—U.S. Sharpshooters had been skirmishing. They fell back and joined the 4th Michigan. As the gray-and-butternut-clad troops came within range, the Union guns again opened fire. “[T]he whizzing, whirring and whistling of every species of projectile was perfectly bewildering,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote. “Still that mass of human beings came rushing on in the face of such terrible fire for a full half mile.” Col. Dwight Woodbury prepared his regiment to meet them. “On they came with a shout that made the woods ring, and confident of an easy victory, they still rushed on in spite of the grape and canister from our batteries, which mowed them down by the hundreds,” Captain Lumbard wrote. Since Lt. Col. Jonathan Childs had been sick, wounded, and transported away, Capt. John Randolph was in command of the left wing of the regiment.7
The 4th Michigan moved up to the edge of their hill, waiting for the moment to fire as the Rebels drew closer. The regiment waited in the standard line of battle, its companies side by side, each company in two ranks or parallel rows of men, one behind the other. The front line seems to have been in a kneeling position or prone on the ground, while the second rank stood or knelt behind them. “We took our position in plain sight of the Rebells,” Captain Chapin said. “It was a grand sight to see the Rebells come up & know that they came on to sure death. Colonel Woodbury did not give the order to fire untill they were at easy range.” When the Confederates were about 110 yards away, the colonel gave his instructions.
“Fire by rank! Battalion ready!” he shouted. His orders were probably echoed down the line, repeated by company officers. “Rear rank, aim, fire!” At the shattering crack of their rifles billows of smoke rolled away over the hillside and hung in the thick air. Woodbury's orders continued: “Load!” Then Woodbury ordered the front rank to fire and another volley blasted. As his soldiers prepared to fire again, he shouted encouragement. “Now boys, give them three cheers, and hold your ground!” The men did cheer, for their firing into the Confederate troops, already devastated by artillery, sent them back to the cover of the woods. But only for a time. “[S]uch volley as were pored into them nothing could stand,” Captain Chapin wrote. “Those who escaped broke & fell back but they were soon reinforced & the fire became steady on both sides.”8
Private Phelps said that 4th Michigan fired less than a dozen volleys when the first Confederate regiment broke, but he agreed that they were soon replaced by another. “We held them[,] mowing them down like wheat,” he wrote, while the battery posted near the 4th Michigan also blasted canister into the Rebel lines. Captain Chapin said the 4th Michigan's men were ordered to keep down, and he believed this saved the lives of many of the soldiers. George Millens said his regiment “gave it to them by file & kept them in check untill our cartridges were gone.” Orvey S. Barrett, describing the battle years later, wrote that “the thunder of the cannon was awful; clash of arms, shouts of combatants, was deafening.” Albert Boies claimed that the first to die in Company F was 20-year-old William Murphy of Wyandotte. Murphy had had a feeling that he wouldn't survive if he went into battle that day, as he told his officers. But there was no excuse from the battle line. Murphy was struck in the head and killed instantly.
By Lumbard's estimate, this rifle fight raged for 30 minutes when, to their right, the 9th Massachusetts Infantry charged the Rebel line. Some said this charge failed and the Massachusetts men turned and ran toward the 4th Michigan; others thought the charge initially succeeded, but turned chaotic when about half the 9th Massachusetts didn't hear the order to halt, causing a confused retreat. Some of the Irish soldiers were shot down by mistake on the smoke-blanketed hillside, according to James F. Gilmore of the 4th Michigan. Officers yelled for their men to hold their fire. Some of the survivors of the 9th Massachusetts dropped to their hands and knees and crawled through the regiment's line, but Companies A and F were disrupted by the fleeing troops. “We were obliged to cease firing in order not to kill them,” wrote Chapin, who was on the right of the regiment's line, commanding Company F. “Now came the grandest [scene] of all [—] the Rebells charged back on the 9th, following them in to our lines.”9
Colonel Woodbury knew his battle line could be broken as the Massachusetts men ran through the 4th Michigan's ranks with Confederates close behind. He tried to halt and reorganize the fleeing soldiers—and shouting, he hurried out in front of his line. But in doing so, the colonel became an obvious target. “It was in trying to rally the 9th [Massachusetts] men as they came through A & F that Col. Woodbury was killed,” Chapin said. Cap in one hand, sword in the other, the Adrian militia commander who had organized and led the regiment since its inception was struck in the head by a bullet. Though some newspaper accounts said he gave patriotic and dramatic last words of encouragement and a good-bye to his men, Dr. Chamberlain wrote that Woodbury fell back, killed instantly. He was 38 and left a wife and young daughter. Just a moment later, Capt. A. Morell Rose of Company A was also killed.
Other men from Company A were struck down—Charles Austin was the first, and his friend Frank Gale asked Sgt. Richard R. Lassey of Monroe if he should take Austin off the field. “I told him to wait a minute or two,” Lassey wrote. But no sooner had he spoken when Gale suddenly clapped his hand to his chest and fell, killed by musket fire. The angry Michigan men waited until the Massachusetts soldiers were clear and then fired. The Confederates could hardly have been closer. “[A]s soon as the 9th were out of the way we poured in such a volley that there was very few left of them on our end of the line to run, but what there was made tracks in double quick,” Captain Chapin continued. “We were so close that I gave them a couple of shots from my revolver & it did its duty.”
Chapin stated that the Michigan men held their ground, and it appears that they and their brigade helped blunt this phase of the Confederate attack along with blazing Union artillery. According to a letter written after the battle by J. Q. Adams—a man identified as Woodbury's brother-in-law—a group of men from Company A recovered the colonel's body and carried it back to some woods about 500 feet away during this lull. These woods were probably near the Mellert House, just south, or to the rear of the regiment's position. But the fighting again raged as more brigades of Rebel troops marched out of the trees to the north and up the hill, attacking relentlessly. Chapin wrote that with the Massachusetts men gone, the Confederate infantry “came up shouting & in great force…. our Regt. did not flinch not even a man…at it we went tooth & nail. My boys fired away their sixty rounds & then I set my sergeants to cutting off the cartr[id]ge boxes from the dead & wounded & passed them around.”10
As the fighting intensified other officers of the 4th Michigan were hit. Capt. George W. Spalding, 25, who'd risen up through the ranks of Company A from sergeant, was struck in the neck, but not fatally. As he was taken off the battlefield, he asked that Sergeant-Major William H. Loveland take over command of his company, since he didn't think there were any commissioned officers left. Lt. John A. Gordon of Company I, was struck in the arm but wouldn't leave, while Adjutant Francis S. Earle of Grand Rapids was hit in the knee. He was fortunate, for the wound wasn't serious.
Noncommissioned officers pitched in, picking up rifles, closing gaps in the line, and shouting orders. Sgt. Richard Watson Seage of White Pigeon, not quite 25 and older brother of Henry Seage, shot a weapon until it was fouled by his repeated firing, Captain Lumbard wrote. “Then, amid the tempest of a leaden storm, [he] went to work and cleaned his gun, and then again went to firing.” The captain sent Sergeant Seage to find the regiment's color bearer and have him wave the flag so that the men could give it three cheers.11
Seage carried out his assignment and the color bearer waved the flag, Lumbard wrote; Seage went back to firing a rifle until he was hit in the head by a nearly spent musket ball. Seage dropped to the ground, but he was incredibly lucky—though his skull was dented and he'd been knocked unconscious, he survived. Richard Watson Seage was taken to the nearby field hospital, which would soon be captured by the Confederates when the Union army left the field. He, like hundreds of other Union soldiers, spent time as a prisoner that summer. Albert Boies from Hudson was knocked head-over-heels backward by a bullet that struck him high on the left side of his torso. But the teenager wasn't dead either, for the ball had ripped through the diary in his pocket, sending a shock through his body that left him senseless but alive.
James Harroun of Hillsdale, a private in Company E, was so swept up by the emotion of the fight that his shouts of encouragement to his comrades turned into a running speech. He jumped to his feet, hat in one hand, rifle in the other, and carried on for 10 minutes before Captain Lumbard told him he could do as much good firing as he could making speeches. Harroun resumed shooting at the Rebels. But there were growing gaps in the line, and one noncombatant, the company's cook, Frank Forncrook, decided to take a place there. Forncrook had brought a kettle of food up from the rear that afternoon, up the southern slope of Crew's Hill. As the battle raged, Forncrook ran to his company, picked up a rifle and cartridges from the dead and wounded, and began firing. But after only several minutes, he was shot and killed. Though officers often used phrases as “not a man flinched” to describe the courage of their men under fire, there were exceptions. William F. D. McCarty, a young noncommissioned officer in Company E, was later accused of leaving in the face of the enemy.12
Lumbard wrote that the 4th Michigan was alone on the left of the battle line as other Union regiments were relieved and the artillery batteries ran out of ammunition. This may have occurred near the end of the regiment's fighting that night, as other outfits moved up to replace those that had been fighting since the battle started. Although reports by Union commanders don't state that the regiment was on its own, Edward “Ned” Taylor proudly wrote that soon after the battle, “Gen. Fitz John Porter said, ‘the fourth saved the Army on the 1st of July.’” That was high praise from the commander of the Fifth Corps.
The accounts by Lumbard and Chapin reflect the regiment's desperate situation. Lumbard said his men fired 80 rounds, a statement indicating his men were forced to scavenge more ammunition. They were out of cartridges and would have to retreat while other Union troops from their division, waiting in reserve, moved up to take their place, Brig Gen. Charles Griffin reported. Colonel Woodbury's brother-in-law, who seems to have been in close contact with officers of the 4th Michigan, also wrote of this. After the colonel's body was moved into the woods at the edge of the battlefield, “the 4th were forced to retreat in a different direction.” Another regiment from their brigade, the 14th New York, had moved to a point to the 4th Michigan's left during the fighting, and they, too, retreated. Their route took them through the woods where the Michigan men had placed the body of their colonel. Major Davis from that New York regiment took the rings off Woodbury's fingers as well as his revolver, shoulder straps, letters, and ambrotype portraits of his wife and daughter. At least his family would get these items back.13
By this point the men of the 4th Michigan were no longer in a position to retrieve Woodbury. The sun was going down and the 4th Michigan could carry on the fight no longer. Whoever was in command of the regiment at this point—perhaps Lumbard or Randolph—asked Lt. Col. W. Y. Ripley of the U.S. Sharpshooters to go back and bring up reinforcements. Ripley did so, and soon two New York regiments were on their way to the front. “My men were now nearly all out of cartr[id]ges when a movement was made all along the line to fall back[,] that is[,] in our regiment up to [Companies] A & F,” Captain Chapin wrote. “But as I had received no orders I did not understand what it ment & supposed that the Rebell were forcing the left.” He proudly claimed he kept those two companies standing in place, some of the men with empty guns. Chapin indicated that the Confederates weren't in his immediate front as the 4th Michigan's companies to his left pulled out, but other accounts say there was still fighting going on.
“Before the enemy got up to us the order came to me to retire that we were being relieved & we fell back at a walk past through the new Regts' line & formed on the colors and marched off in good shape,” Chapin wrote. Capt. John Randolph of Company D, said to be the regiment's most senior captain, wrote that he brought the regiment off the field. Randolph reported that the New York regiment marched up under a murderous fire to relieve the 4th Michigan, though official reports indicate their division's Third Brigade relieved the Second Brigade. “[T]aking the position held by us, they gave the rebels such a check that in confusion they fell back,” Randolph wrote of the New York men.14
Though the shooting would go on until nightfall, the battle was over for the 4th Michigan. The fighting had been worse than Gaines' Mill. At Malvern Hill, the regiment suffered 41 men and officers killed in action, with some 100 men wounded and 32 missing. One of the dead was Sgt. Eli Starr of Company C, the young man from Centreville who had joined the Peninsula Guard company in Sturgis, and who'd been given the rank of sergeant as an enticement to stay. Starr was probably 22 years old. As some of the 4th Michigan's wounded men died over the next weeks, the regiment's death toll from Malvern Hill would rise to 54 killed or mortally wounded, proving to be the regiment's single most costly battle. Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin credited the regiment for its performance. “The handsome manner in which the Fourth Michigan stood its ground and the good order in which it retired from the field was the subject of comment among all who witnessed it,” he wrote. Griffin had seen for himself how fierce the battle was that evening, with his horse shot dead under him.15
It was dark when the regiment reached a large house or plantation at the southern end of Malvern Hill, not far from the James River, which was being used as a hospital, signal station, and headquarters. Sgt. John Bancroft was tired and sore, and he could still hear the sound of musketry and artillery behind them about a mile or so away—“we did not mind it much,” he wrote. Men lay down in the dust. The hospital was overwhelmed with critically wounded men, so those whose wounds weren't immediately life-threatening had to wait. One was Bancroft's lieutenant from Company I, John Gordon, who had stayed with the regiment during the fight although he was hit. Bancroft tied Gordon's handkerchief around his arm. As the exhausted, smoke-grimed soldiers rested, the firing died away after 9:00 P.M.
Almost everyone in the regiment had lost friends by this time in prior battles and skirmishes, but not on this scale. Their colonel was gone, too. With the exception of the querulous Dr. Clark, Dwight Woodbury had been respected and trusted by his men and officers, some of whom had known him as a neighbor, all who knew him as their leader. “He was as good and brave an officer as ever drew a sword in defense of the Union,” wrote Sgt. James W. Vesey of Company C. “We all loved him and would have lost our right arm for him.” Capt. Charles Doolittle, from Hillsdale, took out his diary. “Our Colonel was killed and our regt badly cut up,” he noted; “the loss in my Co. [H] being from 18 to 20. God has been good to me.” Enoch Davis of Company B also briefly summed up the terrible day before joining his comrades in brief rest. “Another hard fight fot [fought] today,” he wrote, “& we whiped the Enemy bad[.] This battle was fot near Malverns Hill.”16
Davis was only partially correct. The Union army had handed Lee a loss of thousands of men killed and wounded, but it was the Union army retreating from the battlefield that night. The 4th Michigan marched away with the rest of McClellan's force on an exhausting, all-night trek several miles through the rain to a plantation on the James River, called Harrison's Landing. Captain Doolittle said they arrived “wet tired and disgusted,” though his own faith in McClellan “was strong as ever,” he noted. “It was long after daylight when we reached the open field and then in the midst of a shower, with rebel artillery behind us, we waded through the mud and sought to erect some shelter,” John Bancroft wrote. He and Michael J. Vreeland of Brownstown Township in Wayne County, a sergeant from Company I who was being promoted to lieutenant, made themselves a “house” of fence rails and wheat stalks and spent the balance of July 2 resting.
As the Union army left Malvern Hill on the long march to Harrison's Landing in the early morning hours of July 2, young Albert Boies regained consciousness at the Malvern House field hospital. Boies gave different accounts about his experience in the years that followed, but the version he shared with other veterans was that his comrades dragged him off the battlefield after he'd been wounded. Feeling like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer, Boies walked with thousands of other troops along the James River, trudging on even after the thick mud pulled his shoes off his feet. He was taken by ship to a Washington, D.C., hospital, where, he later said in another version of his story, he shook hands with President Lincoln and was comforted by the First Lady.
Like Boies, others who were sick, lightly wounded, or lucky enough to be moved or transported to Harrison's Landing and City Point, Virginia, were taken by ship to hospitals and camps with medical departments. One was David Webster from Company D. “The last battle we was in was a hard one,” he told his mother, “for the bullets flew around us like hales [hail] and for my part I do not want to go into any more places like that.” Orderly Sgt. Richard Lassey, 29, of Company A, had been slightly wounded in the arm; he sent a letter back to his wife, listing the company's casualties throughout the Seven Days. “We fell back about twenty miles and fought them all the way and any of the time we could have whipped them,” he wrote. “What it means I can't say.” Lassey was not long at City Point; he soon returned to the camp of the 4th Michigan at Harrison's Landing.
Dr. Chamberlain, the assistant surgeon of the regiment, hadn't left Malvern Hill. The battlefield was virtually covered with thousands of wounded men, and Union and Confederate parties worked through the night of July 1–2, carrying them to field hospitals. Chamberlain worked on the wounded there on the field until dawn. The wounded, like Sgt. Richard Watson Seage, had to stay behind. Chamberlain was among the doctors who volunteered to tend them. He also located Woodbury's body, burying it in a place where it could be recovered. With the aid of stragglers, he gathered up and worked on the suffering, though the Confederates took charge of the hospital the day after the battle.
Officially, Chamberlain was a prisoner, but the reality was that he was allowed to move around, spending nearly two weeks at Malvern Hill, trying to care for wounded men who died by the score in the days after the battle. Many other injured men were shipped to Richmond. On July 14, sick after the nearly endless work, and hampered by the loss of medical supplies and instruments stolen by Confederate soldiers, Chamberlain and two other army surgeons were released on parole along with nearly 60 wounded men and prisoners, including Richard W. Seage. They were picked up by the steamboat Vanderbilt.
“No one knows how to appreciate kindred, friends and country until he has been deprived of them,” the doctor wrote. As Chamberlain returned to the 4th Michigan's camp that night, he met young Henry Seage and told the young soldier that his older brother was back at the landing. Henry hurried down the next morning to bring his brother into camp, and Richard Seage cooked what must have been a celebratory dinner for Henry and his friends in Company E.17
In the meantime the Union army remained in camp by the James in the rain. The Rebels quietly positioned some guns across the river from the camps and fired on them one night in early July. Union gunboats and artillery quickly returned the fire, forcing them to leave. “The shells flew around here pretty thick for about three quarters of an hour,” wrote Pvt. Charles W. Phelps; “one shot struck within about a rod of where I was standing and throwed dirt all over me and into the tents.” The shell grazed a man's back, and he was the regiment's only casualty.
The next day, the 4th Michigan was one of the regiments sent across the river to try to prevent reoccurrences of such an attack by cutting down trees and burning down buildings of the plantations to punish the locals and deprive the Confederates of cover. The men, of course, ransacked the places, helping themselves to “any amount of geese, turkeys, chickens, pigs,” Phelps wrote; “such things suffer when we find them. You can bet on that.” Moses Luce believed, as did other soldiers, that one of the plantations destroyed belonged to an ardent secessionist said to have fired the first Rebel gun at Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861. Luce identified this man as “Runyon,” though he meant Edmund Ruffin. Other historical accounts, though, say that Ruffin's estate wasn't among the ones destroyed.
Far worse than that Rebel shelling incident for soldiers was the fierce and muggy heat and debilitating illness. “We are so completely worn out that most all the boys are nearly sick,” wrote George Millens of Company B. Sgt. John Bancroft spent a few days in the hospital at Harrison's Landing being treated with opium. Scores of other sick and wounded Union soldiers and officers continued to move away by barges and steamships to hospitals in Washington and elsewhere in the North, and some didn't survive. Dr. William E. Clark, suffering from chronic diarrhea, was taken to New York. Within a month's time or less, he would be back recuperating in Michigan and finally get his wish to join a new outfit, the 19th Michigan Infantry. On July 8, President Lincoln arrived at Harrison's Landing, and though it was oppressively hot, Millens felt that “things are beginning to look more cheerful.”18
One day before the president's visit, Capt. Harrison Jeffords wrote to a friend back home, telling of the death of Ambrose Easton and his own luck. “I have escaped so far with [a] slight wound on the hand[,] two holes in my boot & sword scabbard cut in [two] & have lost 22 of my co.,” he wrote. “Our colors was shot almost to ribbons.” But for the 500-some men and officers of regiment who remained unwounded and healthy enough to attend their duties, there was the question of would be their new commander. With Woodbury dead, command would have ordinarily devolved to the regiment's lieutenant colonel, Jonathan W. Childs. But Childs, sick and wounded, was back at Fortress Monroe. Nor did the 4th Michigan have a major at that time—the man who'd held that position, James Cole, had been forced out because of his health. This meant that Capt. John Randolph of Ann Arbor, the regiment's senior captain, was in charge of the regiment through mid-July.
But it was Capt. George Lumbard who ended up promoted past Randolph by order of Fifth Corps commander Gen. Fitz John Porter and the recommendation of Gen. Charles Griffin, commander of the corps's First Division. Subject to Governor Blair's approval, this made Lumbard lieutenant colonel, his commission dated from July 1. This was just what Jonathan Childs wanted—he would be promoted to colonel, with Lumbard commissioned as his second-in-command. These moves put Lumbard in charge of the 4th Michigan until Childs returned to the regiment on August 1. George Millens, however, didn't approve when Lumbard conducted battalion drill on July 23, a hot day: “Lumbard puts on style,” he grumbled disapprovingly. “I wish Col. Childs would come back.”
Ironically, it would turn out that Childs soon came to regret he recommended that Lumbard be his lieutenant colonel. In less than three months' time, Childs would be forced to resign from the regiment or face charges that appear to have been brought about by Lumbard. In addition to the promotions of Childs and Lumbard that summer, Captain Randolph was commissioned as major. By the end of the July, Randolph returned to Michigan with Sgt. Jonas Richardson to recruit for the regiment.
Another change was the resignation of the regiment's chaplain, the Reverend Henry N. Strong, who'd been a friend of Colonel Woodbury. Harrison C. Daniels, a veteran of the 4th Michigan who wrote a memoir of his experiences nearly 50 years later, claimed that Strong had been dismissed by Woodbury after it came to his attention that the chaplain had been caught coming back to camp from Washington drunk sometime during the winter of 1861–62, and that Strong had been playing poker (and winning) against the officers. Yet this claim can't have been strictly accurate, for Strong's resignation wasn't processed by the Fifth Corps's assistant adjutant general until nearly three weeks after Woodbury was killed. While the regiment's letter writers and diarists reflect nothing as harsh as Daniel's allegations, they do suggest some were dissatisfied with Strong and his infrequent sermons and services. His replacement, the Reverend John Seage of White Pigeon, the English-born father of Richard Watson Seage and Henry Seage, would prove a popular and heroic chaplain for the 4th Michigan.19
Despite the rain and heat, inspection, drill, reviews, and dress parades were soon resumed. Soldiers were re-equipped as shipments of supplies arrived and replaced the tents and packs that were lost at Gaines' Mill and the clothes and equipment that had been worn out and damaged during the campaign. The camp of the regiment shifted from a muddy field to a wooded area and then back into a field near Harrison's Landing. The men washed their clothes and bathed in the James.
The regiment's assistant surgeon, Dr. Chamberlain, who rejoined the regiment from Malvern Hill in mid-July, was allowed to go home, exhausted and sick. In his place, a Dr. M. I. Mead of Albany, N.Y. took temporary charge of the regimental hospital, wrote George Owens from Company A. He and Private Millens also said parties from the regiment returned to the battlefield under flags of truce on July 17, 18, and 20 in attempts to recover Colonel Woodbury's body, but these were unsuccessful since Dr. Chamberlain had already buried his remains. Back in Michigan less than a week later, Chamberlain told his hometown newspaper that he had “found Col. Woodbury's body and had it decently interred, and the spot is marked so the remains can be recovered in the future.”
Aside from the large numbers of men who were suffering from illnesses like malaria, dysentery, and heatstroke, this was a time of routine camp life. There was an exception when the Confederates managed to again fire on the Union camps from the south side of the James on the night of July 31–August 1, and men from the 4th Michigan crossed on August 2, carrying out patrols and capturing one prisoner.20
Stories circulated about where their division would be sent next. “Various rumors are afloat about our camp in regard as to what will be done with Morell's division,” wrote Sgt. James W. Vesey of Sturgis. Would they be sent back to Fortress Monroe on the Virginia coast? Back to Washington for military police duty? Or Baltimore? Vesey wondered if the regiment would go back in a new campaign against Richmond. As those first muggy and sometime rainy days of August slowly passed, Sgt. John Bancroft recorded in his diary a typical daily schedule:
• Reveille
• Policing of streets
• Breakfast
• One hour's drill by Company
• Guard mounting
• Working and Policing parties fatigue
• Cook, eat and sleep ’til 3 o'clock
• Drill, Dress Parade, Rations
• Supper, bathing, washing of clothes
• Cleaning of muskets, writing rolls, letters,
• Reading papers, etc.21
A member of the 4th Michigan who got into trouble at Harrison's Landing was a regimental musician, and this appears to have been the drum major, Isaac Duffenbaugh, an Ohio man about 26 years old. According to a story later told by a New York soldier, the 4th Michigan's drum major called on some officers of the 5th New York Infantry, hoping to find a fellow he had heard was a professional drummer.
The New York officer in question and his comrades invited the drum major of the 4th Michigan (unnamed in the account) into their tent to share a meal. No, the officer said, he was not a drummer. “But,” he said, “I can appreciate good drumming when I hear it, and if you have no objections I should be very much pleased to hear what you can do with the drum-sticks!”
“All right,” the Michigan drummer said. “What shall I play?”
“Let us have the long roll,” the New York officer suggested innocently.
Of course, in 19th-century military practice, “the long roll of the drum” was an alarm—when a drummer “beat” or sounded the long roll, it was to warn of emergency, a call for soldiers to immediately assemble with their guns. Without thinking, the 4th Michigan's drum major pounded out that warning call-to-arms. The New York officers, having successfully set up the drum major to commit a serious breach of order, dashed out of their tent and disappeared, probably stifling guffaws of laughter as the men of the 5th New York rushed out with their rifles.
The officer of the day, whose job it was to see things ran smoothly in a regiment, hurried over and found out it was a false alarm. He had the Michigan drum major arrested on the spot. “He tried to explain, but it was of no use. He was sent to the guard house,” Alfred Davenport would write, telling the story years later. The drum major spent some time in jail before the 5th New York's colonel looked into the matter and released him.22
But it could not have been long. In any event the days of Union regimental bands came to an end in August. The Hecker Band from Cleveland, like all such bands, was mustered out of the service by order of the War Department. Musicians who had formally enlisted as soldiers were ordered back to their companies, while those who had signed on strictly as band members were allowed to transfer to brigade bands, if that met with the approval of their commanders. Of course, those who wished to stay on as soldiers were welcome to do so. Duffenbaugh, for one, went back home to Ohio.23
Now the men who had been captured during the Seven Days battles began returning to the Union army after being paroled by the Confederates, and one was Irvin S. Miner of Company F. Taken prisoner at Gaines' Mill, he had spent 40 days in Rebel hands. During this time, he'd first been housed in an old tobacco warehouse in Richmond, then moved to a camp of tents on Belle Isle in the James River, and then again to another island camp near the locomotive works. He saw hundreds of Union prisoners of the Rebels brought in, one prisoner shot and two bayoneted to death by the guards; he'd been hungry to the point of being faint.
Miner managed to hold onto some money after his capture, so he was able to sometimes buy bread and milk and keep up his strength. He spent many days and nights in the rain, carving rings out of the bones from the soup the prisoners were served, until finally on August 4, he and a group of his fellow prisoners were marched 20 miles from Richmond to a place called Aiken's Landing. They collapsed in a wheat field that night, exhausted and hungry. But the next day at 10:00 A.M., they too were loaded on a transport that took them back down to the camps of the Union army at Harrison's Landing, arriving about five in the afternoon.24
These men rejoined their outfits in time for a new action—a move by the Union army back to the east and away from the Confederate capital. On August 10 marching orders arrived, requiring the soldiers be prepared to leave quickly. The men of the 4th Michigan put their new knapsacks on wagons while the officers loaded whatever baggage they'd managed to replace on river transports. For the next few days they remained under marching orders until they finally began, on foot, on the night of August 14, going only a fraction of a mile and then lying down in the dust to rest.
The march resumed in earnest the next day with the men moving along the road through woods just north of the James River, all day and through the night, until nearly dawn on the morning of the August 16, passing the town of Charles City Court House along the way. They crossed the place where the Chickahominy entered the James on a long pontoon bridge that day and enjoyed “a glorious bath,” Sergeant Bancroft wrote. That night, their brigade reached Williamsburg. It had been an exhausting march, but along the way, the men purchased or otherwise relieved local farmers of chicken, eggs, peaches, pies, biscuits, and ears of corn.25
On the 17th the march continued. The 4th Michigan reached Yorktown in the afternoon and found that its entire division was there. The next day the soldiers made a considerably longer all-day march of some 25 miles to Hampton. On the 19th the soldiers rose, bathed in salt water, and trudged the last few miles to board ships that took them past Fortress Monroe. Now the Union army truly left the York-James peninsula, going back the way they had come in March. The 4th Michigan sailed on the Belvidere.
The next morning the soldiers awoke to find they were steaming up the Potomac River. The transports landed them at Aquia Creek on the Virginia side, and they encamped at the Potomac Bridge, a few miles away. Their division and corps had orders to join the Union Army of Virginia under Gen. John Pope in northern Virginia, and they would do some marching to get there. This army had been created by the War Department late in June to keep Washington safe. By early August, George McClellan, a commander with an uncertain future, was ordered to bring his Army of the Potomac to that vicinity. Lee, anticipating that the Union forces on the peninsula were being withdrawn, had quickly given orders for attacks on Pope. Now new battles began, though the 4th Michigan's division and corps weren't yet involved.
On August 21 the regiment and the Second Brigade of which it was part rose and moved several miles west in the heat to the town of Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock River. Henry Seage and Charles Phelps complained that the rest of the brigade got to move by train while the Michigan men marched. One who didn't make it to Fredericksburg was Moses Luce of Company F. Afflicted with sunstroke, he collapsed and was placed in an ambulance. Luce was sent to an army hospital in Alexandria. Even though he recovered quickly, he would spend the next six months there, often doing guard duty, until January of 1863. But for the others in the 4th Michigan, August 22 brought a march of 25 miles along the river to the northwest to Ellis Ford in hot, dusty weather that turned rainy. The men could hear cannon firing in the distance and they bivouacked without tents, some soldiers acting as pickets to keep an eye on the river ford in case of a crossing by Confederate forces. Men went out foraging for food and Irvin Miner shot a hog; he noted on the 25th that he “commenced cooking for the officers today.” The men expected to be marching again, but the order didn't come until August 27, when they moved 20 miles or so north to Warrenton Junction.26
This urgent march in the blazing sun was made in response to some very bad news. Robert E. Lee's top lieutenants had been bringing their forces together to fight John Pope, and one day earlier Stonewall Jackson's corps had made a daring and unexpected march around Pope's right, striking the Union supply line, the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, near Manassas Junction. Troops under Pope pursued Jackson and thousands of soldiers, North and South, closed in on the site of the first big battle of the Civil War—Bull Run.
On August 28 the 4th Michigan's men were awakened hours before daylight. They cooked some breakfast and moved a short distance only to have to stop and wait for a few hours. Finally the regiment was able to march with its corps and division, heading northeast toward Manassas Junction and going into bivouac after a march of 18 miles. The soldiers could hear the firing several miles to the north as the preliminaries got under way: Jackson's men, who had been concealed in thick woods, attacked Union troops near the town of Groveton, drawing Pope into what would turn out to be an effective and deadly trap.
The next day the men of the 4th Michigan marched with their First Division of the Fifth Corps the remaining few miles toward Bull Run. The men saw the wreckage of Union rail cars and supply depots destroyed by Jackson's men at Manassas Junction. Pope ordered the Fifth Corps early that morning to go to the town of Centreville, miles farther to the north, but then changed his mind and issued orders sending them west toward the town of Gainesville. These indecisive orders sent Fitz John Porter's men marching many miles uselessly back and forth through the countryside. But at last they were heading in the right direction, to where James E. Longstreet's Confederate corps, with Robert E. Lee, was joining Stonewall Jackson in the wooded countryside.
By early afternoon of August 29, Porter's men had marched three or four miles west of Manassas Junction along the Manassas Gap Railroad. The 4th Michigan and its brigade did picket duty in the hills at a point between the towns of Gainesville, which was now behind Confederate lines, and Manassas Junction. General Porter awaited instructions as his shorthanded Fifth Corps acted as the left wing of the Union army. The soldiers saw dust clouds rising as Rebel troops under Longstreet marched toward them, coming out of the west through a pass in the mountains called Thoroughfare Gap. Longstreet's artillery got into position and fired some rounds toward Porter's men before falling silent, waiting. In the meantime, just two or three miles north near Groveton, Pope began sending his men forward in piecemeal attacks that were easily repulsed by Jackson. “Firing toward the mountains,” Sgt. John Bancroft wrote in his diary. “Battle going on. Under the shell today.”
Pope was sure that he had Jackson on the ropes. He ordered Porter to launch a flank attack against the Confederate general, envisioning a devastating drive by the Fifth Corps up from the south. But Porter's officers, including his division commander, Gen. George W. Morell, urged him not do so. To follow Pope's order would be suicidal—the Fifth Corps would open itself to a destructive flank attack by Longstreet, whose men waited quietly for their opportunity to strike. Porter believed it best not to move his men in this risky manner, so they waited. They were hungry since they had not been resupplied, so the soldiers foraged when possible. Pvt. Henry Seage's comrades found an old woman living in a valley by a railroad bridge that day and helped themselves to her geese.27
Second Bull Run
But other than coming briefly under fire from Rebel guns in the hills south of Groveton, the 4th Michigan and the Second Brigade didn't get into any fighting on the 29th. The men lay on their arms, waiting into the night. Early the next morning, the 4th Michigan withdrew. Along with the rest of their division and corps, their brigade was ordered to join Pope's army near Groveton. But night marches were risky and confusing affairs, and the 4th Michigan was part of two brigades that became separated from the rest of Fifth Corps. They marched past Bull Run several miles east toward the town of Centreville. At dawn, out of provisions, the men gathered up farmers' corn and apples as they continued in the wrong direction through the rolling countryside.
Near Centreville the men halted and were able to draw some rations and have breakfast. Meanwhile, to the west, General Pope was furious that Porter hadn't attacked Rebel positions as he had ordered the day before. Gunfire sounded all that day, August 30, as Union troops marched west past the 4th Michigan on their way into battle. But by afternoon, the men of the regiment saw soldiers limping back from the front—the walking wounded. These men were comparatively lucky. One Union brigade after another was driven back that day as they attacked Stonewall Jackson's strongly entrenched positions, and many soldiers were killed.
Sergeant Bancroft wrote the word “countermarch” in his diary, meaning that the 4th Michigan was finally being sent back to where the battle was going on. But it was too late for them to have a role. While some of the Fifth Corps' troops were sent into the fight, the Second Brigade of the First Division wasn't there. “Porter's Corps engaged except our brigade,” Bancroft wrote.28
This was actually a stroke of luck for the 4th Michigan, which had lost so many men during the Seven Days. The fact that they weren't present at Groveton meant they weren't foolishly sacrificed in the Second Battle of Bull Run, as so many other troops were. “I am very glad we did not get in it,” Charles Phelps wrote about the battle, “for it seems to me it was a bad conducted thing.” Not only were the Union troops battered when Pope sent them to attack Stonewall Jackson's strong positions, those soldiers on the Union left were hit by a powerful flank attack that afternoon by Longstreet's corps. These Union soldiers, under Gen. Irvin McDowell, broke and ran. Bancroft recorded the bad news in his diary: “Left wing [of the Union army] turned. Slight panic. After dark [our] army all come back onto Centreville Heights.”
Though responsibility for the disaster at the Second Battle of Bull Run lay with General Pope, he blamed it on Fitz John Porter, commander of the Fifth Corps. Radical Republicans were happy to accept Pope's accusations, since Porter was a Democrat and associated with George McClellan. Though the troops thought Porter was a good commander, he was soon cashiered as a result of Pope's charges. “Under him [Pope] any army of the size of ours would seem demoralized,” wrote Edward H. C. Taylor of the 4th Michigan, “for to keep up the tone of an army requires more genius and head than he possessed…. He was outwitted and befooled and was unable to mass or deploy the forces at his command.” An officer from the 4th Michigan who had been on detached service as an aide to Porter, Lt. George Monteith, would soon give testimony at Porter's court-martial. It would take Porter the rest of his life to get official vindication.29
As it turned out, one member of the 4th Michigan did go into action near Bull Run. This was James Henry of Company H, about 26, from Hillsdale County. Henry hadn't been able to keep up with his regiment on the marches of August 28 because of his badly blistered feet; he'd fallen out four or five times. He couldn't find his regiment once night fell and on morning of the 29th found himself with the 11th Massachusetts Infantry. When they were ordered into action hours later, Henry went with them and was wounded by musket fire. He was sent to a hospital in Washington, D.C. For him, the war was over. In less than six months, he would be discharged.
The night of August 30 was a long one for the 4th Michigan, whose brigade now acted as part of the reserve and rear guard as thousands of Union soldiers streamed back from Bull Run. The regiment bivouacked near Centreville and the next day expected to see battle when victorious Confederates pursued the retreating Union army. But this didn't happen. Rain fell and the men of the regiment stood in line of battle in front of a section of fortifications before open fields.
Dr. Chamberlain, now the regiment's surgeon, arrived back at the 4th Michigan that day along with the regiment's new assistant surgeon, Dr. Luther C. French, 42, of Hudson. Though Governor Blair previously refused to make Chamberlain the regiment's chief surgeon, he had a change of heart late that summer, possibly because the doctor had strong support in the regiment and from people back home. Arriving about the same time as Chamberlain was the rumor that Gen. George B. McClellan had been restored as the commander of the Union army. The rumor was true; accounts state that thousands of soldiers cheered the news.30
The weather turned cold. For the next two days, the men of regiment, weary and hungry, kept watch in the rain, finally moving out with the others of its brigade and division early in the morning of September 2. It was a long march of 30 miles and it finally brought them that night to Langley, Virginia, outside of Washington near the Chain Bridge. The soldiers built fires of fence rails, roasted corn, and bivouacked in a field. The next morning they marched on to Minor's Hill—the place where they had encamped over the winter; it was the place they had left back in March on the spring offensive that was supposed to take Richmond.
Though men were happy that McClellan was back in command of the army, it was still depressing for Dr. Chamberlain to return to this place and think of all the men who'd been lost. The 4th Michigan was much smaller now, with scores of men missing because of illness and wounds, men killed in battle or by disease, men captured. For the survivors who returned to this camp where the regiment had spent the winter months, Minor's Hill was now “a dismal, lonesome place,” the surgeon wrote.
What Chamberlain did not write in his letter, but what every man knew, was that virtually nothing had been accomplished in terms of vanquishing the Confederacy, in spite of the thousands of casualties, the misery and suffering, all the millions of dollars spent and the hundreds of miles marched. Certainly those thoughts occurred to Sergeant Bancroft, now back on Minor's Hill. “Many a brave fellow gone to his long home,” he wrote in his diary that night. “Many broken bones. Many weary, aching miles.”31
There would be many more graves and broken bones and aching miles yet to come.