CHAPTER 7

The Sight Was Horrible and One I Hope I Never See Again

THE 4TH MICHIGAN REMAINED ON MINOR'S HILL FOR THREE DAYS, AT TIMES ON GUARD FOR A Confederate attack. But this threat turned out to be a reconnaissance by Rebel cavalry. On September 6 the men marched to nearby Upton Hill near Fall's Church, where they and other elements of their corps alternately went on picket and stood ready for battle. That week Capt. Charles Doolittle from Hillsdale resigned his commission to become colonel of the 18th Michigan Infantry. But the important development for the troops was that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was on the march. In the wake of Pope's defeat at Bull Run, Lee decided it was an opportune moment to invade the North. By September 4, McClellan and the War Department were aware the Rebels were coming. Over the next several days and by different routes, the Union army moved out to meet Lee.

The men of the regiment, who remained on picket outside of Washington, heard rumors about this and read developments in the papers. “The report is the rebels are in Maryland,” George Millens of Company B wrote on September 8. The men had been without their knapsacks since they left Harrison's Landing in August, but the next day these important carry-all packs finally caught up with them. At last on the morning of September 12 they began to march. The regiment initially headed back into Washington and got on the road to Rockville, Maryland, on another terribly hot day. Sgt. John Bancroft of Company I thought it was beautiful country, but Irvin Miner of Company F observed that the heat during the 20-mile march was dangerous. “Very warm,” he noted in his diary. “Several men fell dead with sunstroke on the march.”1

The next morning the men moved out on the road to Frederick and got to within a day's march of the town. On the way they could hear the sound of gunfire ahead to the northwest. Residents of the towns of Rockville and Leesburg lined the streets as the soldiers tramped through, offering them milk, bread, coffee, and cold ham, Henry Seage noted. They reached Frederick on the 14th, but serious fighting was already taking place as Union forces attacked Confederate positions ahead on South Mountain, a broad ridge running north and south, where Rebels held key passes. The Southerners managed to hold on through the day but suffered high casualties, and they pulled back that night to the west. Lee formed his forces, about 40,000 men, on the high ground near Antietam Creek, near the small town of Sharpsburg.

As the Rebels took their positions the Union army moved forward. The 4th Michigan, with its brigade and division, drew rations and marched from Frederick on September 15 to join the rest of the Union army converging on Sharpsburg. They reached the village of Middletown, covering about 15 miles and approaching South Mountain, where they saw dead and captured Confederates from the prior battle and Union wagon trains rolling up into the hills. Much of the army, ahead of the Fifth Corps, was just a day's march or less away from Sharpsburg. By the 16th, the first Union troops began to arrive there.

At the bivouac of the 4th Michigan near Middletown, Henry Seage noted that it was his 18th birthday. As the regiment passed through Turner's Gap on South Mountain, they again heard cannon fire to the west when Confederates opened up on Union infantry at Antietam Creek. The 4th Michigan's brigade reached the town of Keedysville and marched through that evening, joining elements of two other corps. Now they were on the doorstep of the coming battle, a mile or so from the ground where it would be fought. “Fair prospects for a fight tomorrow as they are surrounded,” wrote Miner in his diary that night.²

Antietam

The next day, September 17, began the bloodiest single day's battle in American history. Miner's assessment was very nearly correct—Lee's Confederates were in a dangerous position, though not completely surrounded. Henry Seage noted it started at daylight with the opening of the big guns, but for the 4th Michigan, posted with the rest of their corps as a reserve near the centerleft of the Union lines, there was no fighting. As the shooting intensified the 4th Michigan was moved toward Antietam Creek with its division, but then these troops were ordered to halt and wait. The men sat down, some of them watching from a hill on the east side of the creek. Sgt. John Bancroft wrote that he was sent forward, probably with his company, to support Union batteries of Parrott guns; so was Silas Sadler's Company G. “Get some glimpses of the smoke and the changes of the lines from the hill,” Bancroft wrote. Irvin Miner may have had a better vantage point. “I had a fair view of the fight all day as we were posted on a high hill,” he wrote. “Result not decided.” Pvt. Charles Phelps of Company D also told his brother that he witnessed the action: “We were where we had a good view of the field…it was a hard battle.”

Dr. Chamberlain said that for a regiment that had been in so much fighting, “it was something of a novelty to be near a battle & not be in the front rank.” He, too, said the topography was such that “we had a fair view of part of the battlefield, could see the masses of troops rushing to the encounter, with the falling ones making the fields speckled with their prostrate forms. The Rebs had a fine position, & we had to assail them to a great disadvantage to ourselves.” To his hometown newspaper, he wrote that “all day long the battle raged; the incessant roar of artillery and musketry was deafening.” The men saw their comrades drive deep into the center of Rebel positions, but ultimately McClellan declined to send in his reserves to smash what remained of the thinned Confederate lines. Many of the exhausted Southern soldiers were out of ammunition. Had McClellan ordered a last attack with his Fifth Corps, Lee had no reserves to meet them.3

Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, commander of the Second Brigade, later reported that an order came at 4:00 P.M. from Fifth Corps commander Gen. Fitz John Porter, moving the Second and Third brigades of their division a half-mile to the right, or north, to support another corps's attack, but the soldiers weren't sent in. By evening, they were sent back to where they bivouacked the previous night, a mile or so away. There had been bitter, terrible fighting and some regiments involved that day were truly shattered. Though the Union army had won in terms of stopping the Confederate invasion and killing and wounding a slightly higher number of Rebels than they themselves suffered, McClellan missed the chance to destroy Lee's army. The conclusion Irvin Miner had written in his journal was correct—thousands of men had been killed or crippled, but the essential issue had not been decided.

The next day, the regiment moved forward again, this time to the southern portion of the now-still battlefield where Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside's forces had fought. They helped bury some of the thousands of dead and remove the wounded. “Very quiet today,” Henry Seage wrote in his journal. “No firing, only pickets.” The men drew rations, had baked squash for their dinner, and got orders to march south about a mile and a half to where Antietam Creek flowed into the Potomac River. The men bedded down on the ground as rain fell that night. Though some men by now declared the battle was a Union victory because the Confederates had pulled away, they knew a terrible price had been paid. “Our loss is heavy,” George Millens wrote. “The rebels are thought to be in tite place.”4

The soldier's observation was correct. Lee had pulled his weakened army back around Sharpsburg and the Union army was there in strength, including tens of thousands of men who hadn't been involved in the battle of Antietam. But McClellan didn't order a renewal of the attack on the Confederates. Over the course of that night and into the early morning hours of September 19, Lee's men withdrew across the Potomac. At last the order was given for the Fifth Corps to press forward. The men of the 4th Michigan, now led by Col. Jonathan Childs, rose at 5:00 A.M. and prepared to move out. Soon they marched through Sharpsburg, which had been heavily damaged in the fighting. “Nearly every house struck with solid shot or shell,” Sgt. John Bancroft wrote. “Things look rough.” Sharpsburg's residents emerged from their cellars and shelters as the troops went by. The people of this town at the edge of Maryland's border with Virginia were as divided as the nation itself. Bancroft said a woman pointed out the house of Confederate sympathizers as the soldiers marched past, and children vowed to get their revenge on them. But the regiment's more important mission came after they moved beyond town.

Shepherdstown Ford

The boundary here between North and South was the Potomac River, and the Rebels had posted artillery and infantry on a high bluff to prevent pursuit. The aggressive Fifth Corps commander, Fitz John Porter, decided these obstacles must be cleared away—he ordered his men and guns forward to engage them. Soon artillery was firing from either side of the river. As the 4th Michigan neared the Potomac, the men formed in line of battle. “Two companies are ordered out as sharpshooters,” Bancroft wrote. These men joined other skirmishers trading fire with the Rebels on the south bank. According to Sgt. James W. Vesey of Company C, the two companies were I and A. Capt. John Gordon of Detroit, who had come up through the ranks of Company I, was wounded during this skirmishing. He had only been captain for about two weeks and he'd been previously wounded at Malvern Hill.

By late afternoon the rest of the regiment was ordered forward to support the skirmishers. “As we were marching by the flank down a ravine in the woods,” Vesey wrote, “a shot from a rebel battery on the opposite bank fell in our number.” It killed a man from Company C. Sergeant Bancroft was standing behind the unfortunate soldier, Luman Buck. “While going down to the river a fragment of a shell strikes the man in front of me taking off the top of his head and killing him instantly,” Bancroft wrote. But the men moved into position and opened fire. “We acted as good sharp shooters and were sent out on skirmishes and had significant firing at them across the river,” wrote Charles W. Phelps. Now their assignment changed. “We had only been out but a short time when Gen. Griffin rode down and ordered Col. Childs to cross the river with his regiment and take the artillery on the other side,” Vesey wrote. The brigade commander called the 4th Michigan to attention. “Men,” Griffin said, “we are ordered to ford the river, and dismount those pieces over there. Are you willing to go?” The soldiers cheered. Robert H. Campbell from Hillsdale, who had just been made first lieutenant and quartermaster about two weeks earlier, remembered that Childs asked his regiment to make the crossing on a strictly voluntary basis—that those who didn't want to make the crossing did not have to. Only two men stepped out of the ranks, he claimed. Campbell also wrote that Childs began to make a speech, but that “a shell at that moment bursted over them,” cutting it short.5

The attack commenced. At about 5:30 P.M. some 60 men from the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters Regiment led the way across, first through a drained canal that ran parallel to the river and then into the Potomac itself. “While we were crossing, the Fourth Regiment Michigan Volunteers rendered us efficient support by firing volleys over our heads,” wrote Capt. John B. Isler of the U.S. Sharpshooters. “My men as they crossed also fired several volleys. After we had crossed, the Fourth Michigan followed us, and when on the other side we jointly advanced up the bluff in front.” Vesey claimed it was dark and nearly quiet except for the occasional hum of a bullet whizzing through the night as the regiment started down the bank to the canal's towing path, but other accounts say it was evening and there was more than enough light to see across the river.

Captain Isler said the Confederate musket fire was “sharp” as his men crossed; he lost four of his sharpshooters. As Michigan troops reached the south side of the canal, they fixed bayonets and officers drew their swords. Vesey said Colonel Childs called out: “Battalion, forward double quick—march!” Yelling and cheering, the troops plunged into the river. This place was called Shepherdstown Ford; at some points, the water was said to be little more than knee deep, but at others it was up to a man's chin. The Potomac was cold and variously estimated to be between 500 and 900 feet wide. A few more men were wounded in the crossing. Those in deep water could only try to keep their rifles from getting wet, so there was no way for them to return fire. “Yet on the boys went struggling thro' the water over the uneven bottom and charging up the opposite steep [and] drove the enemy and captured a fine battery of brass twelve pounders,” wrote a proud Edward H. C. Taylor of Company A. The river “was deep, ran swift and the ‘Rebs’ were thick on the other…. I never expected to come out alive.” Dr. Chamberlain wrote that the soldiers, once across, “started up the bank with one of the yells peculiar to the 4th Michigan at a bayonet charge.”⁶

The Confederates on the bluff didn't wait around for a close-quarters fight. “Imagine our agreeable surprise,” wrote Henry Magee of Company F, “[when] the rebels after a faint, very faint resistance fled, leaving their battery along the river in our possession.” Vesey agreed. “On our arrival across, no rebels could be seen, save a few wounded and sick ones,” he wrote. The Rebel commander at the bluff, Gen. William Pendleton, decided to pull back, abandoning his artillery, much to the disgust of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Michigan soldiers found some cannon hidden, and the Rebel gunners seem to have dumped at least two pieces over the bluff before retreating. Vesey said the soldiers “dismounted five pieces of artillery, two ten-pound rifled parrot guns and three brass twelve-pounders.” One or two of the guns turned out to be Union pieces captured at the first battle of Bull Run, part of a federal battery that had been under Griffin's command back when he'd been an artillery captain. They also took several prisoners. “Whenever there is a river to cross they always seem to call on our regiment,” Pvt. Silas Sadler of Company G wrote. “When we left Michigan we had Eleven hundred and forty men now we have only got 300 [—] that is using them up pretty fast.”7 Although the Confederates fled, General Fitz John Porter, commander of the Fifth Corps, considered this river crossing a dangerous assignment, and he was impressed that Colonel Childs had volunteered his regiment for the job; he felt that Childs should be nominated for “a medal of honor.”⁸

The regiment returned to the Maryland side of the river to camp, drying themselves by their fires and cooking coffee. On the morning of the 20th, they again went back to the Confederate side, this time unopposed. The men captured a few more Rebels and foraged in the countryside, helping themselves to Virginia geese, turkeys, and flour. Relieved by their division's First Brigade that day, the 4th Michigan waded back to their bivouac. “We were hardly settled in Camp before we were roused by a heavy firing in the direction of the River,” Edward Taylor wrote. The men fell in and marched toward the Potomac to pitch in to this new fighting. It turned out that after the 4th Michigan was relieved, the Confederates suddenly struck hard at the troops on their side of the river. Hurrying to the Potomac, the Michigan men came across their comrades who'd been hammered in this skirmish—bedraggled, rookie soldiers of the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment.

Untried in combat, these Pennsylvanians had gone across with their First Brigade and marched into the countryside, where they'd run into the troops of Gen. A. P. Hill, rushing to protect the Confederate rear. The experienced Rebel combat division opened a heavy fire on the green Union soldiers, who'd been given defective and obsolete weapons. Many broke and ran, pursued by Confederates all the way to the river. While other regiments of their brigade got back safely to the Maryland side, many men from the 118th Pennsylvania were captured and wounded. The Second Brigade, of which the 4th Michigan was part, once again was sent to get control of the situation. “We are brought up in battle and remain all day wet and weary,” Sergeant Bancroft wrote. Edward Taylor agreed: “They were again obliged to call up this (Griffin's) Brigade to stem the tide and now we repossess the opposite bank and the river.” Others concurred with Silas Sadler—that it was becoming the general's habit to send them for such work: “I dont know how it is but when they have got any river to charge across they take the [4th Michigan],” Charles Phelps wrote.⁹

A period of relative quiet followed for the 4th Michigan and much of the Army of the Potomac as McClellan declined to pursue Lee's army. Not all the men had tents, but more supplies arrived and the regiment set up a new camp. When Dr. Chamberlain tended wounded and captured Rebel troops, he found some with whom he had dealt at Malvern Hill. “Our men treat them with the utmost kindness,” he said of the Confederates. “The poor fellows say they have had more kindness shown to them by their captors than by their comrades. All express themselves as sick and tired of the war and anxious to have it closed.”

Though the days in late September and early October were warm, nights were becoming colder. Sgt. John M. Bancroft received his lieutenant's commission on September 28—he was being shifted to Company K—and Henry Seage noted on September 25 that it had been one year since he'd left home. Two days later he learned from his captain that his father, the Reverend John Seage, who had come from England decades earlier, was going to be the regiment's new chaplain. John Seage was an Episcopal minister who had raised his family as they traveled from Canada, New York, and Vermont before coming to Michigan, and he settled in White Pigeon, in St. Joseph County. Harrison Daniels of Company G would remember Reverend Seage as a homely preacher, but one who cared deeply about the men and their spiritual welfare. He felt Chaplain Seage was a dramatic improvement over the regiment's first chaplain.10

President Lincoln came to review Gen. Fitz John Porter's Fifth Corps on October 3, and George Millens thought the president looked “care worn.” Moses Luce of Company E remembered (as Harrison Jeffords had written in the fall of 1861) Lincoln trying to keep his hat on his head as he rode along the lines. “Holding his lines in his left hand he would throw out his right arm about his stovepipe hat and then the soldiers would yell in approval,” Luce wrote. “They loved this homely man because he was so human, and yet was firm in the principles he believed necessary to the salvation of the Union.” Several new recruits from Michigan joined the regiment that same day. And when the Reverend John Seage preached his first sermon for the regiment on Sunday, October 12, the men who'd been missing services since the departure of the regiment's first chaplain were happy. “Our new chaplain preached today,” Millens wrote in his diary. “We were much pleased with him.” Captain Jeffords agreed; he called the next week's service “a good sermon,” saying that it “seems more like Sunday than it has for a long time.” Reverend Seage would soon mark his 53rd birthday.

Edward H. C. Taylor was pleased to be detailed to his Second Brigade's headquarters as a clerk. “My duties here are tolerably easy at times tho' sometimes I shall have my hands full.” Taylor had been hoping for promotion since resigning his lieutenant's commission in the spring of 1861. He sometimes told his relatives about his friends and acquaintances serving in the army, and he mentioned a 23-year-old from Detroit who'd also been in Company A. “George Yates is Quarter Master Sergeant of the Regiment,” Taylor wrote. “He is well—There is something strange about the boy—He has been wandering over the South for some years…holding no communication with his friends—He is tolerably steady but a little ‘fast.’” Actually Yates had been promoted to lieutenant and adjutant of the regiment, and he would soon advance to higher staff assignments.¹¹

While Union soldiers enjoyed the quiet of camp life during these October days, the Lincoln administration was chafing over the lack of a pursuit of Lee by McClellan, despite the fact the president had ordered him to do so. Republicans in Congress wanted McClellan dismissed, while Democrats defending the general were angry about Lincoln's coming Emancipation Proclamation that would make the abolition of slavery a war aim. Then in mid-October, Confederate cavalry under Gen. J. E. B. Stuart made a raid into Pennsylvania that further embarrassed McClellan. As a result of this raid, the brigade of which the 4th Michigan was part was awakened early on October 16 and sent across the Potomac on a reconnaissance a few miles into Virginia, pushing back a small Confederate force. Rain set in and Union troops spent a miserable night in bivouac, continuing their advance for a few more miles to the town of Martinsburg the next day. “Had quite a skirmish[,] took some prisoners,” Silas Sadler wrote about these clashes. But that afternoon orders came for them to return to their old camp near Sharpsburg, and they got back late that night.

Harrison Jeffords wrote that the people of the area “seem to be all secesh” and that the soldiers saw women decorating a burial ground for Confederate soldiers just outside of town. “As we were returning quite a number of Ladies had assembled at the graveyard with beautiful bouquets & as we passed would lay them on the graves of the dead Rebs and then take them up and lay them down again as others passed, all to be seen & make us feel bad, I suppose,” he wrote.12

According to a letter by Charles W. Phelps of Company D, 13 men from Company K left the regiment and transferred into “Griffin's battery,” part of the artillery assigned to their division. Others from his company joined a federal cavalry regiment. Phelps himself was thinking about transferring to the navy, but ended up staying with the 4th Michigan. As the men of 4th Michigan went through the rituals of camp life, Col. Jonathan Childs wrote to Gov. Austin Blair, forwarding to him a list of names of officers and men whom he wished to promote and who would therefore need commissions from the governor. “The men whom I have recommended are competent and very worthy,” the colonel wrote. “They have nobly done their duty throughout the campaigns and bravely earned their promotions upon the field of battle.” He said that many in the 4th Michigan had proved themselves brave, and he added a cautionary note: “[I]n many instances it has been difficult to determine whom to recommend.”¹³

Some winter clothes and equipment began to reach the soldiers, and late in October the Army of the Potomac started moving out in a too-late pursuit of Lee. The Michigan soldiers waited, getting the order to march late on October 30 and moving towards Harper's Ferry with their corps, bivouacking in the cold. The marches were sometimes long and the days hot over the course of the next week as they moved south into the Shenandoah Mountains after the Confederate army, but the diaries of the 4th Michigan show there were days when the regiment didn't move at all. The men at times heard firing in the distance and the soldiers foraged sheep and apples and other produce from the local farmers. “Plenty meat to eat,” Irvin Miner of Company F noted on November 2, “but it was stolen from the citizens by our boys.” By November 7, it was snowing hard as the men marched to a town called White Plains. But the pursuit of the Rebels was effectively over. Within two more days the Union army was gathering in camps around the town of Warrenton.¹⁴

Now the soldiers began to hear what much of the officer corps had just been told: McClellan had been relieved of command. Lincoln believed he'd given McClellan every chance and all necessary support to take the war to the Confederates, but the general refused and Lee's army had withdrawn across the Rappahannock without being seriously challenged. Miner learned of the general's removal when he was on guard duty near his colonel's tent. “The report is that McClellan is removed from his command,” he wrote in his diary. “Great indignation is shown on account.” Word of the dismissal spread through the camps. The next day there was large review as McClellan said good-bye to his men, some who alternately shed tears and then cheered him. Many officers and men of the Fifth Corps were particularly angry about McClellan's replacement with Gen. George Burnside. George Millens called that move “ridiculous.” Sergeant Bancroft noted the officers were deeply affected when they said good-bye to their beloved commander on November 11: “Officers of Porter's Corps meet to shake hands with Gen. McClellan. Never were they so disheartened with the aspect of affairs.” Edward Taylor, a Democrat, agreed, writing “the blow struck consternation among us all.”

“Many a poor soldier of the old Army cried at the announcement and when he rode along the lines looking even more splendid than ever, tho' sad, very sad,” Taylor continued. He was furious with the Radical Republicans who called McClellan “slow and inactive” and demanded a winter campaign against the Confederacy. Such an offensive would mean misery and death from exposure, and Taylor, like other Democratic soldiers, questioned why the Fifth Corps—Fitz John Porter's corps—hadn't been given the all winter clothing, tents and supplies they all needed. “One could wish the Army turned loose upon the North,” he wrote bitterly, “for there are our worst enemies.”

If the men of the Fifth Corps were angry about the dismissal of McClellan, they were no happier when their corps commander, Fitz John Porter, left them the next day. Porter had also been removed and was going back to Washington to face charges by the failed Gen. John Pope in connection with the Second Battle of Bull Run. Because Porter was so closely connected with McClellan, his army career would soon be destroyed. Gen. Joseph Hooker, a critic of McClellan, now took over the Fifth Corps, though this would turn out to be a temporary command when Burnside's new organization of the army went into effect. “Our corps is pretty down about their taking Porter away,” Millens wrote. “No Porter, no McClellan [—] we fear the results.” Irvin Miner wrote that the atmosphere in the army had been gloomy at McClellan's removal, but that “the gloom thickens” with the dismissal of Porter.15

Lt. William F. Robinson's thoughts on the removal of McClellan and Porter reflected the sentiment of many soldiers—while they were concerned the Radical Republicans were “politicizing” the war, most soldiers were generally willing to give their new commanders a chance. “I may be mistaken but I am sadly afraid that Father Abraham has lost his wits but time will tell,” the officer wrote. “[I]t may be for the best but we cannot see it. We are willing to give him [Burnside] a trial and abide by what he says as long as he makes no blunders. I had the honor of personally shaking hands with Geo. B. McClellan and bidding him ‘good bye,[’] it seemed more like attending a funeral of some dearly beloved friend than anything else that I can compare it to.”¹⁶

It turned out these Union soldiers were right to be concerned, for Burnside was perhaps the worst general to lead them in the Civil War. Even then, he was planning to move his army southeast to the town Fredericksburg. There, the general proposed, he would cross the Rappahannock River and force Lee's army to fight.

Within the 4th Michigan, a problem between the top officers now reached a surprising juncture. Early in November, Col. Jonathan Childs quietly turned in his resignation to his superior officers, citing “unexpected and urgent circumstances of a private nature having transpired within a few days.” What these circumstances were he didn't say, but Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, forwarding Childs's resignation, urged his commanders to accept it on the grounds it was “absolutely necessary for the interest and harmony of the regiment.” Hardly had the regiment arrived in Warrenton a few days later when Childs notified Gov. Austin Blair of his resignation. Childs said he was resigning because of what he described as “strong suspicions [and] dissatisfaction manifested on the part of several officers as to my course in recommending for your approval several persons for promotions.”

Childs left much unsaid in what was likely a surprising letter to the governor. The Union army, he explained, would soon be engaging in a major battle, and it was essential that there be harmony within the 4th Michigan. “And to establish that in this Regiment,” the colonel wrote, “it is evident one of two officers should resign. And it is from the purest motive that I am willing to make the sacrifice.”

Why did the commander of his regiment believe he had to resign in this disagreement with one of his officers? Probably because it was this particular unnamed officer, and not Childs, who held the upper hand. Officers and men who commented on this matter over the course of the next two or three weeks would say Childs was facing a court-martial, so he had no choice but to resign. Though the nature of this controversy remains obscure, it appears as though Lt. Col. George Lumbard instigated a court-martial against Childs, the man who had requested that Lumbard be his second in command.

While Childs was leaving rather than face military trial, he may have got a measure of satisfaction when, in the weeks ahead, Capt. Harrison H. Jeffords of the Dexter area was commissioned the next colonel of the 4th Michigan—not Lumbard. It was a matter of several weeks before Jeffords took command of the regiment, and it may be that Childs recommended him for command. Jeffords's commission as colonel would date from Childs's resignation late in November, and he would be promoted “over” Lumbard. But what caused Childs to resign? Childs spoke of disputes and dissatisfaction over his choices for promotion within the regiment. But a War Department official would write years later that there was evidence that Childs had been drinking heavily during the fall of 1862, and affidavits by men who served with him said he'd been sick and in pain. The threat of a facing an embarrassing court-martial for this may have been enough for Childs to leave. An ex-soldier from the regiment, Jerome Allen of Elkhart, Indiana, later stated that Jonathan Childs “was asked to resign, [but he was] a good officer otherwise.”17

General Burnside quickly reorganized the Union army into a system of “grand divisions,” each made up to two army corps. The Fifth Corps was placed in what was called “the Center Grand Division” along with the Sixth Corps, and this huge unit was commanded by Gen. Joseph Hooker. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, senior division commander in the Fifth Corps, became the new corps commander. Because Gen. George W. Morell of the First Division of this corps was transferred in this reorganization, Gen. Charles Griffin, the tough artillerist and brigade commander, now became commander of the Fifth Corps' First Division.

The men of the regiment sometimes did guard duty in the town of Warrenton, and often passed off worthless, old, locally issued Michigan banknotes to sutlers, local merchants, and farmers who had livestock, food, and goods to sell, but who didn't want federal “greenback” dollars. The soldiers called these valueless notes “spooney,” wrote Dr. Chamberlain. They were happy to use these authentic-looking bills to purchase food, tobacco, and other items since it had been months since they'd been paid. Miner used spooney to buy his dinner. “Had turkey for dinner that I bought with Erie & Kalamazoo,” he wrote at Warrenton, probably with a smile. Lieutenant Robinson wrote that the soldiers were also passing off “facsimiles of Southern scrip, which they can get in Philadelphia for 25 cts a hat full.” While it might not look good for soldiers to do this, he admitted, Union generals “do not bother themselves much to find out whether good or bad money is passed, and I say it is not wrong when they [Virginia residents] refuse to take Uncle Sams paper, to let them have something that they will take.”

The soldiers stripped local barns and houses of wood and bricks, incorrectly figuring that the Army of the Potomac was soon going into winter camp and they would need these materials to build weatherproof quarters. But then the Union army was ordered to begin a march toward Fredericksburg, about 25 miles away as Burnside's plan was put into effect. Two days later, November 17, the 4th Michigan with its corps rose and broke camp at about 3:00 A.M. and started on the march. There was a heavy mist that soaked the men's blankets and packs, and in the afternoon it rained. Lt. John Bancroft was sick, but pressed on anyway. They covered slightly more than 10 miles and bivouacked in the woods. The march resumed the next morning in a drizzling rain that made the road slippery, Irvin Miner complained.18

The road ahead was so jammed with troops and equipment that the regiment had to wait in the rain all morning on November 19, and at least some of the men served as rear guard as the column trudged through the mud toward Fredericksburg. The 4th Michigan moved only a few miles and camped in the cold, wet countryside. “I don't see how we are a-going to advance after the rain commences,” complained George Millens. This slow march continued in the rain through woods, hills, and swamps until the entire army was gathered near Falmouth on November 23. Here they formed new encampments. Supplies ran low, so there were times when the men didn't even have enough hard crackers to keep hunger at bay on nights when the temperature dropped. “Awful cold last night,” Miner wrote that night. “I never suffered so much with the cold in my life.” He, too, fell ill.¹⁹

The men of the regiment, like other soldiers, did picket and guard duty and got their camp in order. The slow, sodden move down from Warrenton was proof, they felt, that the season for marching and fighting was over. Yet General Burnside intended to launch a new offensive across the Rappahannock, and diaries and letters suggest that many officers at the regimental level understood this. The change in the leadership of the 4th Michigan now took place with the resignation of Col. Jonathan W. Childs, who had started out as the regiment's major and become its commander after the death of Woodbury. He went around the camp and bid his men goodbye on November 28 and departed the next day. Childs led boldly in the short time he'd had charge of the regiment—his command and example had been confident and brave when the regiment had crossed the Potomac at the Shepherdstown Ford under fire. But the colonel had done something that left him vulnerable to charges of some sort. Lt. William F. Robinson knew that Childs was going to resign a good two weeks before the colonel actually left the regiment. Robinson mentioned this matter to his father.

“I shall not resign at present[,]” Robinson wrote, “the reason why is to be a secret between us, so here goes[:] Charges have been preferred against Col. Childs and rather than stand a Court Martial he is going to resign and when we get a head to our regt. Things will be regulated[.] Now do not mention this to a live person as I would do nothing to injure him and none need ever know that charges were preferred against him.” Other soldiers knew what happened, but said nothing of the details. Edward H. C. Taylor mentioned Childs in passing in a letter sent early in 1863 to his mother: “He has resigned and gone home,” Taylor wrote. “He was not liked as well as Woodbury.”20

For the record, Childs's widow years later got a statement about her husband's health from Dr. John Watts, an Adrian physician who joined the 4th Michigan late in the summer of 1862 as “second assistant surgeon.” Watts wrote that Childs had been bedridden with a severe case of pleurisy on October 1, yet a few days later the colonel had gone with the regiment “on a forward movement in a weak & debilitated condition.” Watts recalled that in December 1862, near Fredericksburg, “I was informed Col. J.W. Childs had resigned on acct. of physical disability.” But in fact Childs made no reference to his health in his explanation to Governor Blair. Men who served under him later gave statements that Childs had indeed been sick with a kidney ailment and pleurisy and troubled by back pain during the fall of 1862, but there were also statements given that, as one War Department official later put it, Childs “drank to a considerable degree at this period and went on occasional sprees.” In any event, Childs's resignation from the 4th Michigan didn't end his military service. He later became a captain in the 2nd U.S. Colored Troop Regiment and served until early in 1866. Whatever Childs had done, even enlisted men in the 4th Michigan were aware he had no choice but to leave. George Millens of Company B noted in his diary that there were charges pending against the colonel that would have been heard had he not resigned. This left Lt. Col. George Lumbard from Hillsdale County in charge of the regiment, for the time being.²¹

Union supply lines were not all worked out by the point the army had reached the Falmouth area. Provisions would now come by way of the Potomac River to the Aquia Creek landing and then overland, by train on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac line. There were days when the soldiers went hungry, with only a hardtack or two to eat. Even on Thanksgiving Day, men complained about not having enough, though it seems that those attached to the First Division headquarters staff got coffee, soup, and fresh beef. Dr. Chamberlain wrote that hungry soldiers shouted “hardtack!” when a quartermaster passed by the regiment. Writing home, he also addressed the issue of the soldiers' feeling about the removal of their top generals. “The question is frequently asked, ‘How do you like the removal of McClellan?’” the doctor said. “The answer has as often been given; We did not like it. But what of that? Suppose we do not like it? We are not fighting for Gen. McClellan or any other man. We are fighting for our county, and the maintenance of its laws, authority and institutions. Because we could not have the man we like best for a commander is no reason why we should lay down our arms.”²²

The nights were bitter and fair days fewer as November turned to December. Adequate food shipments and winter clothing and supplies began arriving, and the men of the 4th Michigan did picket duty at a place called Stoneman's Switch or Stoneman's Station on the railroad, where a Union supply depot was growing. The men suffered in the cold rain and snow; some soldiers on picket built shelters and got huge bonfires going to keep from freezing. The night of December 7 was so cold that a wagon's wheels froze solidly to the ground, Irvin Miner insisted, and the cold and illness took lives.

It was by now common knowledge among the men that Confederate forces were gathered on the west side of the Rappahannock at the old town of Fredericksburg. Charles W. Phelps wrote his brother, summing up the situation. “We are in camp at present pretty near Fredricksburg but the [Rebels] hold the place[.] I don't know whether we are a going to try to cross here[.] There is a large army.” Phelps, perhaps thinking of the miserable conditions he and his comrades faced, warned his brother not to join the service. But there was worse to come. By December 8 and 9, word began to spread among the soldiers that they would soon be on the march. Men were dismayed that they would be leaving the camp where they'd fixed up their tents with off-the-ground foundations and floors and fireplaces, but on December 10, the 4th Michigan got its marching orders along with the brigade and division.23

These orders specified the men have three days' rations in their haversacks and be ready to march. The soldiers were allowed to retire to their tents until 3:30 A.M. the next morning. The men of the 4th Michigan ate a hurried breakfast and were soon on the muddy road to the Rappahannock with thousands of others. In short order they heard cannon fire in the distance, and the sun slowly rose over the trees. After a few hours their part of the column arrived near Falmouth on the river. Across the water lay Fredericksburg.

Burnside's plan had been for the Union army to march down from Warrenton and quickly surprise Lee by crossing the river on pontoon bridges. But the bridges hadn't arrived in anything like a timely fashion. As a result, the Confederates knew for days that the Army of the Potomac was on the east side of the river. On the morning of December 11, many Union engineering personnel were killed and wounded as they attempted to build the bridges, shot by Rebel rifleman firing from the buildings of Fredericksburg. Union guns opened up on the town, smashing buildings and setting them on fire, but still the Confederate soldiers kept firing from hiding places in the wreckage. Soldiers from a New York regiment and the 7th Michigan Infantry climbed into boats and crossed the river to drive the Confederates out. They and other Union troops did so in fierce house-to-house fighting, allowing the engineers to complete their bridges over the Rappahannock. Soldiers quickly began crossing into Fredericksburg from the eastern bank, and they ransacked the town.²⁴

But only part of Union army got across before nightfall. “Our division went into camp on this [the eastern] side of the river, and the night passed off without anything worthy of note,” wrote Major Randolph of the 4th Michigan. The regiment bivouacked with its division in the fields near a place where the generals made their headquarters called the Phillips House.²⁵

On the Confederate side of the Rappahannock outside of Fredericksburg, Lee's entire army was digging in or already positioned on high ground, forming a strong defensive line with scores of cannon, waiting for Burnside's attack. A sunken road that lay at the base of the ridge called Marye's Heights, just west of town, provided Rebel infantry with a perfect trench. Above the road on the hills, Confederate gunners could see the approach from Fredericksburg. Their defenses stretched for miles in a rough semicircle, north to south, around the town.

The next morning, December 12, the brigade and division of which the 4th Michigan was part shifted closer to the Rappahannock. Their Second Brigade was under the command of Col. Jacob B. Sweitzer, a Pennsylvanian. Thousands of soldiers began crossing the river on the bridges into Fredericksburg. “Our troops have been crossing all day,” George Millens wrote in his diary. “We have not crossed yet but are ready.” Company F's Irvin Miner agreed that the men were set to go over a pontoon bridge, but Rebel shelling caused officers to have them lie down near the cover of ruins of a nearby railroad trestle. The cannon sounded all day, the soldiers waiting as Burnside finalized his plans. That night the 4th Michigan fell back about a half-mile and bivouacked in a cold, muddy field. Henry Seage shared blankets with his father, Chaplain John Seage, trying to keep warm. Lt. John Bancroft noted that the moon shone down that night as the guns roared.26

Fredericksburg

The men of the regiment were awakened at 4:00 A.M. on December 13, a day that would turn out to be one of the worst in the history of the Army of the Potomac. A friend of Henry Seage's in Company E, Artemus C. Todd, 20, had died of disease two days before at hospital that had been set up a short distance away at Falmouth. Now in the chill of the morning, Seage's father sold off Todd's possessions. By the time the sun was rising over the hills around eight o'clock, the cannon resumed firing. “The Rebels have not left yet, but are back some ways from the river,” George Millens noted. The colonels of the Second Brigade of the First Division, Fifth Corps, were called to Colonel Sweitzer's tent about nine o'clock for their orders: Their regiments had to be ready to get across the bridge, move into Fredericksburg, and be in line of battle, all within 40 minutes of the command to move out.²⁷

The soldiers waited for that order as the Union artillery continued to pound Rebel positions. From high ground on the east side of the Rappahannock, many saw what was going on. At 11:30 A.M., troops of the Second Corps marched west out of Fredericksburg, driving off Confederate skirmishers and heading across the open ground that slowly inclined to the hills about a half-mile from town. Scores of these Union soldiers fell dead and wounded as Rebel gunners on Marye's Heights opened up. As the surviving men pressed on and reached the base of the hill, Confederate infantry behind the Stone Wall at the sunken road let loose with volley after volley, killing and wounding scores more. “Our brigade on this side of the river could distinctly see all the movements on the opposite side, and it was awfully grand, but terrible,” wrote Major Randolph.

Now it was time for the 4th Michigan's division and corps to cross into the town. “About 1 P.M. the order came for our division to fall in,” Randolph continued. “In a few minutes we were ready. Our regiment led—Lieut. Col. G[eorge] W. Lumbard commanding, and in less time than I can write it, we were on our way.” The soldiers filed down to the river, waited, and moved forward, marching across the pontoon bridge. All the while shot and shell from Union guns “screamed through the air like so many demons” over their heads. Some said the crossing by the elements of their Fifth Corps began after 1:00 P.M., with some soldiers not getting over to Fredericksburg until much later in the afternoon. Edward H. C. Taylor wrote a quick note to his mother. “A battle is going on and our Div. is just going in,” he wrote. “Our troops are in Fredericksburg…. We have lost heavily and have a hard position to gain. We hope for the best. I never felt less like a fight than now.” Yet Taylor was sure that his division would take the Rebel positions—if not this day, then the next.²⁸

Around the same time that the regiment was crossing with Sweitzer's Second Brigade into Fredericksburg and Union soldiers were fighting and dying in the fields, a second part of General Burnside's plan was under way less than three miles downriver. There a division of Union soldiers marched forward to engage the Confederates. Hundreds of them were hit by Rebel cannon and infantry fire, but they pushed forward and engaged them in a close-quarters rifle battle. These Union troops would soon be driven back in terrible fighting.

Back in Fredericksburg, the men of the 4th Michigan's First Division and others from their corps filled the streets, waiting for the order to advance. An account by Henry Seage suggested the men had time to poke through the buildings, most of which had been hit by artillery. “Not a house escapes the prying eyes of our soldiers,” he wrote. “Costly pianos were used to cook our coffee. Beautiful oil paintings were hung on the line of stacked arms.” Soldiers dragged furniture outside, took a seat, and looked at pilfered books. Dr. Chamberlain said Fredericksburg had been “an aristocratic and wealthy town,” its dwellings built with more taste and comfort than any town he'd seen in the South. But the impact of the shelling was amazing. “When I saw the destruction of Sharpsburg, Md., I thought that was complete,” he wrote. “But it was only child's play compared to this.” An order came for men to clear out several houses for use as hospitals; Chamberlain said that everything in these residences was smashed to pieces.29

There was also time for a mistake that sent the some of the soldiers of the 4th Michigan back to the east side of the Rappahannock River. Henry Seage, after noting in his diary the regiment had crossed over to Fredericksburg about 2:00 P.M., then stated: “came back again & countermarched again.” Years later, in a small history of Company E, Seage explained that he and others returned to the Falmouth side of the river because of “mistaken orders.” How many soldiers this involved is not clear. But Seage wrote that an aide to the division commander, a Lieutenant Ross, galloped after the wayward soldiers, calling them “damned cowards.” Seage's father, though a practicing minister, was furious at this insult, calling Ross a “drunken liar.” These soldiers of the 4th Michigan went back over the bridge to Fredericksburg, rejoining their command.³⁰

The order came for their First Division to move forward to a position just outside of town. To the troops, it seemed as if the artillery opened up on them as they became visible to Rebel gunners on the heights. The 4th Michigan filed around an old brickyard followed by the 9th Massachusetts, the 62nd Pennsylvania, the 32nd Massachusetts, and the 14th New York. Here was a brook or a “mill race,” and as the men lay down to escape the artillery fire, they filled their canteens, Major Randolph wrote. Lieutenant Colonel Lumbard, impatient to advance, walked over and asked Colonel Sweitzer three times over the course of several minutes for permission to go into battle. A soldier from the 118th Pennsylvania, thinking that Lumbard was leaving because he was afraid to make the attack, started to draw his pistol on the lieutenant colonel, but some men from the 4th Michigan grabbed this soldier, handling him roughly until officers intervened.31

About 3:00 P.M. the First Brigade of their division moved out to support and relieve other Union outfits that were being beaten back by Rebel artillery and infantry. Major Randolph wrote that he saw hundreds of Union troops advance, only to be shot down. “[T]he brave fellows fell by scores in almost every rod of the road,” Randolph wrote. “The sight was horrible and one I hope I may never see again.” The soldiers of the 4th Michigan waited, crouching or flat on the ground. About an hour after the First Brigade advanced into the fight, the division commander, General Griffin, received orders to send the rest of his men forward to carry the Rebel works. Griffin reported that a brigade from another division would go with them. Colonel Sweitzer was on horseback, as were his aides. One of them was Lt. George Yates of the 4th Michigan. Sweitzer took off his hat and waved it above his head. “Second Brigade, forward—double quick—march!” he shouted. The soldiers cheered and hustled up a small hill and into the open. Immediately men began to fall, hit by gunfire, along their brigade's line.³²

Major Randolph, the acting lieutenant colonel of the 4th Michigan, commanded the right wing of the regiment, while Capt. Harrison Jeffords, who had been in charge of Company C since May, commanded the left. Henry Seage later wrote that as other troops advanced and fought up ahead near the Stone Wall, the Second Brigade reached a little ravine or depression that afforded them some protection from the Rebel guns. Sweitzer's men lay down. But there was no way for Union soldiers in front of them to fight in the open for very long while exposed to the heavy fire. Finally these men turned and retreated. Seage wrote that General Griffin was on the field and saw what was happening, ordering the Second Brigade to remain in place and not let the retreating soldiers disrupt them. “Lie still, boys, and let them pass through,” he ordered, according to Seage's Fredericksburg account, and the fleeing soldiers jumped over the rows of prone men, heading back to town. Now it was the Second Brigade's turn to attack. By some reports, it was 4:00 P.M. or later.

Colonel Sweitzer rode to the front of his brigade and ordered the charge. Captain Robinson said Sweitzer swung his sword in the air, shouting, “Come on, boys, there is nothing here that will hurt us!” The men rose to their feet, again cheering, and moved quickly up the slight ascent. This land was open until it reached to a kind of embankment or berm—the sort that struck Randolph as typical of the crests or elevated mounds on which Virginia fences were built, while Seage and others described it as an unfinished railroad ditch and embankment and even an old canal. Another 500 feet or so beyond this berm was the sunken, stone-lined road where the Confederate infantry was firing.³³

“As we reached the crest of the hill, the leaden and iron ball was awful and many a brave one fell,” Maj. Randolph wrote. “But quickly closing up our broken ranks, we marched into that terrible fire.” Henry Seage agreed that the troops advanced over bloody ground. “[W]hat a sight! Over the bodies of headless, armless, legless, disfigured men we pass,” he wrote in a memoir of the battle. “To the right and to the left are the lifeless forms of the slain! Oh! What a sacrifice!…But on we go, with a yell.” The winter sun was dropping behind the hills and there was much smoke drifting over the field, but as their line pressed on toward the base of Marye's Heights, the Confederate gunners saw them and redoubled their fire. Seage wrote that as the soldiers reached the embankment, they found a ditch filled with water. “If we succeed in crossing the ditch, then the stone wall must be scaled, then the batteries above must be taken at the point of the bayonet,” he said in his memoir of the battle. “All this flashes through our minds and we know that with our terribly thinned ranks and without support this is impossible.”34

The soldiers therefore flattened themselves on this low ground, he wrote in his account of the battle, “and refuse to make further useless effort.” In his Company E history, based largely on his diary, he gave a similar description. “[We] went into fight in the ‘horse shoe;’ got as far as old canal and laid down. Kept up constant fire all day.” His words “old canal” apparently referred to the ditch created by the berm, something he also referred to as the unfinished railroad in his paper on the battle. Major Randolph also described the men throwing themselves down behind the berm running parallel to the Stone Wall.³⁵

Though most of the men of the 4th Michigan were on the ground, firing at the Confederate infantry, Randolph wrote that some soldiers stood up to take their best shots. “In a short time we were ordered to relieve the regiment on our front,” he said. “As they fell back, our men took their places and we opened fire on the enemy. And the men were ordered to keep down as much as they could. But as they became more and more excited they would get up and take deliberate aim as though they were shooting squirrel.” Officers were also exposed. Lieutenant Yates suffered multiple wounds when a shell exploded in the stomach of his horse, throwing him to the ground. “The rebels have got a very strong fortification here,” wrote Charles Phelps about the fight at the Sunken Road; “when we went in we were under a heavy fire of both musketry and artillery.” This was the climax for the battle for the 4th Michigan and their brigade. Though darkness was falling, the Confederates could see the flashes of the Union rifles. The 4th Michigan's new acting adjutant, Lt. James Clark, from the Ann Arbor area, walked over to his comrades in Company D, urging them to keep their front rank filled. “One of the boys told him to keep down, or he would be hit,” Randolph said. “The words were hardly out of his mouth when a musket ball struck poor Jimmy on the third button of his overcoat, glanced to the left and went directly through him.”

Another Ann Arbor soldier, Corporal Fred Wildt, was also hit and killed instantly. Edward H. C. Taylor of Company A described the Confederate fire as “murderous.” Walter C. White, 28, his friend and tent mate from Hudson, died as he lay on the ground. A bullet or projectile struck him in the top of his head. Others had close calls. Lt. Michael Vreeland of Company I, who been promoted from sergeant earlier in the fall, had his forage cap blown off his head. When he picked it back up, there was a jagged tear of a projectile through the top.³⁶

The firing tailed off. Though the fighting was over, the men of the 4th Michigan and other regiments of their division, spread across the field, were not withdrawn. Exhausted, they would spend the night, literally holding the ground in the bitter cold. “Into the smoke and dust of battle,” Lt. John Bancroft wrote. “Words cannot tell. We lost but few men but there are many on the field dead and dying.” Bancroft was correct. Regimental losses were reported at nine killed, 41 wounded, and one missing, but the death toll would rise in the days after that battle as men who'd been severely wounded died. In all, 14 men from the 4th Michigan would be tabulated as killed or mortally wounded. This was low compared the casualties suffered by regiments that had attacked the Confederates in broad daylight—the 4th Michigan, though having taken part in a disastrous battle, was fortunate to be among the last soldiers sent in, as evening and darkness settled over the smoky field. More than 7,000 Union soldiers had been killed or wounded or were missing.

A bad night was now in store for those who survived. The soldiers, who had to leave their knapsacks behind, spent the night without tents or campfires or blankets on that spot in the bloody field below Marye's Heights. “The living laid down with the dead,” Randolph wrote, “and thus they slept.” Lieutenant Bancroft said sleep wasn't possible: “Lay all night on the cold damp ground, hearing the groans and calls of the wounded. Too cold to sleep.” George W. Millens noted that they spent the night lying in mud.37

Lt. William F. Robinson said some of the corpses on the battlefield were covered with blankets after night fell. But since the surviving soldiers didn't have their packs with them, some shared the dead men's blankets. Others warmed their cold hands and their ears by pressing them against the still-warm carcasses of horses. But if that seemed macabre, he wrote, it was nothing compared “the groans of the wounded and the dying”—men calling for water and for help.

The 4th Michigan, like other regiments that spent the night on the field, was resupplied with ammunition for what some figured would be the terrible continuation of the battle the next day, but thankfully that did not happen. As the sun came up across the river behind them, thousands of men, both dead and alive, still covered the field. There was some periodic sharpshooter firing and skirmish fire, but if the Union soldiers did not get up, they were reasonably safe. “We were protected by a little rise of ground,” Phelps wrote of their situation, “if we laid down we had to lay flat all day until dark.” Perhaps no man's diary expressed that day, December 14, as succinctly as Lieutenant Bancroft's. “Sunday 14th 1862,” he wrote. “Battle of Fredericksburg. Sharpshooting all day. Lay low all day. Almost every man who stood up is shot. How would you like it? five regiments lying close to the ground and have to lay there all day long—waiting—for what—thinking of what? on that bright December day—home and church and friends. Nothing to eat save what we have. No coffee or meat. No orders all day.”³⁸

“Sunday morning [Dec. 14] dawned upon us,” wrote Maj. Randolph. “The rebels during the night had dug some pits for their sharpshooters, and if one of our men showed his head a dozen bullets would be after him.” The men wondered whether they would be ordered to get up and resume the attack on the Confederate position, which would result in even greater numbers of casualties. But General Burnside had been dissuaded from making a further assault on the heights. George Millens of Company B wrote that “we are still upon the front skirmishing,” but strictly from a prone position. “We lay flat on our faces.” Irvin Miner of Company F said that they kept up the skirmish “fire all day.” The hours passed slowly by, the men unable to get up. Finally, the sun began to set, and the men began to understand that they would live for at least another night. They were not going to be sent in again to attack the strong Rebel defenses. As night fell, the soldiers noticed a peculiar curtain of light in the sky, a “splendid Aurora Borealis in the evening,” John Bancroft noted. Still they waited. George Millens wrote in his diary that it was 10:00 P.M.—Henry Seage said 11:00 P.M.—when other troops came up to relieve them in front of the Stone Wall. The 4th Michigan men moved out, back down the sloping fields into Fredericksburg. With the rest of their brigade and division, the hungry soldiers drew rations in the darkness, and some men made their way through the town to try to get their knapsacks. Someone in the command structure of the Union army had the sense to provide a ration of whiskey to these men. “Lay down,” Lieutenant Bancroft wrote in his journal that night of December 14, “and sleep in the streets near the railroad.”39

Though gunfire would continue through the next day, the battle of Fredericksburg was over.