CHAPTER 9
Christ How the Canister Flew
COLD, WET WEATHER DESCENDED ON NORTHERN VIRGINIA IN MID-APRIL, BUT THE MEN OF THE 4th Michigan set up a baseball match—officers versus privates, final score unknown—when the storm front passed on the 22nd. Chaplain John Seage, who left on sick leave after the Mud March, returned to the regiment, bringing tobacco for his son Henry in Company E. About the same time more conscripts arrived from the Detroit barracks. These men were divided up among the Michigan regiments; the 4th Michigan's Company K got five of them. One was Pvt. James Houghton, from Cohoctah in Livingston County, drafted in early February, who would leave a journal/memoir of his experiences. Houghton told of an old Detroit washerwoman who smuggled canteens of whiskey in laundry baskets to the conscripts until the officers figured it out and arrested her. He related that his comrades broke into the cargo on the ship that took them from Detroit to Cleveland, stealing boots and candy, but that they'd thrown up the stolen sweets when a Lake Erie storm tossed the ship, making them seasick. Once in camp with his new regiment, Houghton and his comrades were given a kind of “dugout” tent, six or seven feet square and pitched over a hole in the ground, probably the site of a cabin where soldiers previously built raised bunks and floors. It made for uncomfortable living. “This we didn't have to endure for about a week,” Houghton wrote. His hitch as a draftee was only for nine months, but he would be at two of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.1
Corporal Irvin Miner from Company F had taken a couple of lessons in fencing that month, and on April 25 he had instruction of the artistic sort. Miner sketched the nearby Potomac Creek Bridge and surrounding country, possibly at the direction of the talented Lt. Charles Gruner of Company C. The next day, the 4th Michigan left camp with the other regiments of their Second Brigade for picket duty. Miner complained that he'd suddenly taken lame in the foot and was “barely able to walk.”
But now that the weather was clearing, the new offensive by Gen. Joseph Hooker was about to begin. On April 27, the Fifth Corps and two others in the Army of the Potomac, the Eleventh and the Twelfth Corps, began to move out, marching along the Rappahannock River past Fredericksburg. The Fifth Corps was the last to go. The 4th Michigan came back from picket and broke camp, hoisting what Henry Seage called “heavy knapsacks” and starting the march with their division toward a river ford about 20 miles away. Again soldiers threw away extra clothing and blankets and items thought to be too heavy to carry. Houghton said the road was strewn with these, quickly scooped up by the local poor people. The troops only moved several miles that afternoon before they stopped and bivouacked in a field near Hartwood Church. Lt. John Bancroft of Company H found himself “aching and tired.”2
Hooker's plan called for two corps to cross the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg to focus the attention of Lee's forces there, while the Fifth Corps and others moved quietly to northwest, where they would cross the river and head south on the Confederate side, back toward Fredericksburg. He planned to catch and smash Lee's army between these wings of the Union army without incurring the terrible casualties from head-on attacks that the men suffered in December. The Fifth Corps's crossing point was Kelly's Ford. Late on the morning of April 28, the 4th Michigan continued on as the skies opened up. It was a long, wet, and tedious march, but they reached the ford and bivouacked in the woods that night. The soldiers crossed the Rappahannock on a pontoon bridge the next day, with the 4th Michigan going over at about eleven o'clock, marching a few miles south to wade a creek and pressing on. They reached the Rapidan River about sundown, fording this river, too, holding their ammunition and haversacks up out of the water. Lieutenant Bancroft said the water was “deep, rapid and cold” and the rain set in again. “[A]11 of the yelping and yelling mingled in with some horid oaths, anyone would think that the devels School was out for noon,” Houghton wrote about the cursing. The lead elements of their force ran into some Rebels posted in the area as guards and took them prisoner. The men of the 4th Michigan camped that night in their wet clothes on a hill near the crossing, called Ely's Ford, with thousands of other Union troops.3
The next day the men started another slow, careful march by 6:30 A.M. on the ford road to a place called Chancellorsville. This was not a village, but a single large brick house several miles west of Fredericksburg. The house served as an inn for travelers on the pike, who could stop at this opening in the rough, forested countryside called the Wilderness. The 4th Michigan arrived at Chancellorsville around noon; Henry Seage said they passed a small line of now-empty Rebel fortifications along the way. The soldiers of their brigade gathered in a field and probably had a rest and some coffee until orders came about four o'clock from their corps commander, Gen. George G. Meade. Another brigade had run into some Confederates just three miles east of Chancellorsville, so their Second Brigade was ordered to quickly head that way.
Seage said the regiment moved out with the brigade on the road to Fredericksburg. The men could see empty Confederate works up ahead and it appeared the Rebels had quickly pulled back. Corporal Miner indicated that the 4th Michigan moved east a few miles that evening to a point near Banks' Ford, a Rappahannock crossing three miles west of Fredericksburg. Others indicated they didn't go that far. Sgt. Edgar Noble of Company K thought that they marched about two miles. Lt. John Bancroft wrote that some Rebels were taken prisoner, but the regiment didn't become involved in any fighting. Whether they marched five miles or two that evening, Gen. George Griffin, their division commander, ordered their brigade to return to Chancellorsville. The weather stayed rainy, but the men had fresh beef for their dinner when they camped in the woods near the house at about 11:00 P.M. “The prospect is a big fight tomorrow,” Miner wrote in his diary.4
Chancellorsville
Robert E. Lee had by now received reports about the Union troop movements and figured correctly that the main attack on his forces, which were outnumbered more than two to one, was coming from Chancellorsville. Leaving a division and a brigade at Fredericksburg to fight the Union troops there, Lee and Stonewall Jackson marched less than 44,000 men west to face Hooker. Now the battle would begin in earnest. On May 1, Joe Hooker's advance began again, but only briefly. The 4th Michigan's Second Brigade led their First Division out that morning, moving east on a country road that ran toward the Rappahannock River crossings north and west of Fredericksburg. As they marched, other Union troops heading directly east toward Fredericksburg met Confederates again and the shooting began. But by early afternoon, General Hooker made a surprising decision: He ordered troops who had been advancing to halt, pull back, and take up defensive positions near Chancellorsville.
“We went about 2 miles near the ‘U. States Ford’ and faced about and came back as far as the Rebel camp in the woods and formed ‘Line of Battle,’” Corporal Seage recorded. Col. McQuade's report on the Second Brigade stated that his regiments were headed toward Banks' Ford, farther east on the Rappahannock, and came back late in the afternoon to where they had encamped the previous night. Here, he wrote, the brigade formed in line of battle in support of another division that was trading fire with the enemy troops posted east of Chancellorsville.
But the movement of the 4th Michigan was complicated and more dangerous than McQuade's report indicated. Col. Harrison Jeffords had been given orders by his division commander to “open communication with the left [wing of the Union forces] next the Rappahannock.” In other words, his assignment was to link up with troops who were supposed to cross the river near Fredericksburg. But this effort by the 4th Michigan to reach the other wing of the Union army did not succeed, since events were overtaking Hooker's plan. Some men from the 4th Michigan who probably didn't know about Jeffords's order wrote that their brigade became separated from the rest of the First Division as evening fell—they believed that they had lost their way in the wooded countryside. Seage recorded that after the 4th Michigan sent out skirmishers, they found that the Rebels were “directly in front.” This began an all-night-long “backward and forward” movement. Lieutenant Bancroft recorded similar movements, writing that on a reconnaissance toward the Rappahannock, he and his men had moved so far east that they actually came within sight of Fredericksburg. “On our return the Brigade is cut off by the advance of the rebels and [we] have to return by a new route. March and countermarch all night.”5
“The night was spent in sending out scouting parties to learn the Rebels position,” James Houghton wrote. Like Bancroft, he said that his company traveled eight miles toward Fredericksburg. “We had orders not to speak above a whisper,” he continued. Soon it was understood Confederates were coming toward them, and they pulled back. Others told of this harrowing all-night march back to the safety of Union positions. “Our Brigade was cut off & marched and counter marched from 6 o'c[lock] till 4 o'c[lock] the next morning,” wrote John Hewitt of Company E. Lieutenant George Maltz of Detroit, now assigned to Company E, told of this tense night shifting through the woods, dodging the enemy: “Our Brigade was at one time cut off, this was in the night, and we kept moving, and countermarching.”
Henry Seage later wrote that their brigade was on guard, front and rear, the soldiers concerned that the Rebels were all around them, until enough light came into the sky to see on the morning of May 2. “At last we took the Ford road to the left [west] and went till we joined [Andrew A.] Humphrey's Division and then laid down for an hour,” Seage wrote in his diary. Soon they were sent back to Chancellorsville, marching on a road through the woods. They rejoined their First Division around daylight. The 4th Michigan had been given an important mission, and though they hadn't been able to reach the left wing of the Union army, they had made the attempt and come back without losing a man. Colonel Jeffords was proud of the trust the army brass had in his regiment.6
Fortunately for the soldiers of the 4th Michigan, their division and corps would not become heavily involved in the battle that was now shaping up around Chancellorsville. The regiment was allowed some sleep, had breakfast, and went to work building defensive positions with logs, brush, and dirt about a mile east of the big brick house, along a road that led northeast to the river. The positions of other Union corps extended farther into the woods and fields south and west of Chancellorsville. But the Confederates were on the move that day. Gen. Stonewall Jackson was then marching with his force of about 27,000 men south of the Union positions, circling around to strike them from the west. It was a dangerous but daring move for Lee to divide his force, but it worked even though some Union officers noticed the movement of Jackson's troops and reported them massing west of Chancellorsville. The poor leadership of some Union generals meant that almost nothing was done to prepare for the coming Rebel attack.
The men of the 4th Michigan could hear skirmish fire during the day as they worked cutting trees and brush and digging trenches, but the only danger confronting them was when a Rebel patrol fired on their picket line around six in the evening and then pulled out, James Houghton wrote. Then came the attack of Stonewall Jackson's infantry, striking the Union line two or three miles to the west, late in the afternoon. The brunt of the assault fell on the Eleventh Corps, which was composed largely of German immigrants. Many of these men ran toward Chancellorsville. Though some of the better-led regiments within this corps fought stubbornly and slowed the Rebels, American-born soldiers didn't think much of them. “The fighting continued all night,” Miner wrote that night. “The 11th Corps run disgracefully at the first approach of the enemy.” Lieutenant Maltz repeated the joke that the Eleventh Corps was “composed of Lager Beer, principally” and Edward Taylor complained that these soldiers “have always played the cowards.” But the men of the 4th Michigan only had to listen to the gunfire. By nightfall, they received orders to be ready to march toward the fighting at the center and right of the Union lines near Chancellorsville. “We have to be on the move and under arms all night,” Lieutenant Bancroft wrote.7
That move came at about 4:30 A.M. on May 3. The Eleventh Corps, reorganized after the shattering attack by Jackson, shifted into a position east-northeast of Chancellorsville where the Fifth Corps had been, while the Fifth Corps moved to the Union right, along the Ely's Ford Road about a half-mile north of the big inn. Hooker's critics would charge that he had the manpower and the opportunity to attack and destroy the still-divided Confederate forces. Instead he consolidated his army into a contracting loop around Chancellorsville while also protecting the routes back to the river crossings.
Henry Seage suggested in a later history of the 4th Michigan's Company E that their regiment hurried to stop the attack of Stonewall Jackson's infantry on the morning of May 3 with guns blazing, but other accounts, including his own diary entry for that day, aren't so dramatic. Historians note that Jackson's attack had hours earlier become disorganized, slowed, and ground to a halt. Though it was initially successful, other Union troops entered the fighting on the night of May 2 and formed new defensive lines. After the shooting ended, Confederate units rested and reorganized in the darkness.8
Still, there was danger on the morning of May 3 as the men of the 4th Michigan and their brigade and division established their lines north of Chancellorsville. According to a newspaper account, Capt. Jairus W. Hall, who had started out in the regiment as a lieutenant, was ordered to lead his Company D in a skirmish line to find the Confederate positions. Hall, then about 23, was enough of a veteran to understand that officers were targets, so he took off his officer's coat and hat and put on a private's.
One member of the company was Henry W. Newton, 21, who joined at the formation of the regiment in the spring of 1861 but who'd been sick for almost two years. As a result, he had never been in battle. Hall, knowing of Newton's fragile health, asked him to stay behind and guard the company's knapsacks, but Newtown pleaded to go on the patrol. Hall relented. The company moved into the woods northwest of Chancellorsville. As they advanced, a Confederate officer suddenly stepped out from behind a tree, and so did two or three of his men. Hall realized there were other Rebel soldiers behind nearby trees, leveling their muskets at his patrol. “Surrender, you damned Yankee,” one yelled. “Surrender be damned,” Hall shouted, jumping behind a tree as he pulled his revolver. The woods erupted in gunfire and the Confederates soon fled, but not before one of Hall's men was struck and fatally wounded. It was Newton. His father, Thomas Newton, about 45 years old and a member of the regiment then on duty with the quartermaster at the United States Ford, soon got the terrible news. Tom Newton was given his son's watch and pocketbook. “I would rather hear that he had been killed than to hear that he had turned his back to the enemy,” the father reportedly said when told how Henry had died. As he turned away with his son's effects, tears streamed down his face, the regiment's quartermaster wrote.9
In the meantime the 4th Michigan and its brigade took their places along Ely's Ford Road, on a hill across from the woods where Hall had taken his patrol. The Second Brigade took control of a section of the road not far from a local landmark called “the white house,” less than a mile north of Chancellorsville. Here Union guns were posted, with three of regiments of their brigade lying down nearby, facing the west and forming a defensive position to the left of the battery. Then came more guns and then the 4th Michigan, posted in support of the 16th Michigan Infantry from their division's Third Brigade. A Detroiter in that regiment, Lt. Charles H. Salter, wrote of the pride the men of the 4th and 16th Michigan regiments had when their division commander, Gen. Charles Griffin, placed them on the hill, facing the Confederates that morning. Soon the Union guns were firing.
“Whilst the ball was going, Gen. Hooker came where we were and sat down amongst us for about an hour,” Salter wrote from the battlefield. “He told Gen. Griffin that our position must be held at all hazards; and that everything depended on our being able to hold this place. Gen. Griffin told him that he had two of his best regiments here, and could hold it against all the devils in hell, and that the rebels had not men enough in the Southern Confederacy to take it.” The anecdote would be proudly remembered and retold, with variations, for years by men of both Michigan regiments.10
Out in front of the Michigan troops, the men of the 32nd Massachusetts were deployed as skirmishers. Beyond their line were woods that hid the Confederates until they launched a renewed attack at about 7:00 A.M. “[Our batteries] Give them grape and canister,” Bancroft wrote when the Rebels came out of the Wilderness. “Woods on fire where there are many wounded. We take many prisoners.” The Confederates charged the Union lines in that vicinity over the next few hours, but their advances were stopped by the batteries, throwing out what Private Houghton called “a wall of fire.” Lieutenant Salter of the 16th Michigan said he'd never seen anything so “terribly grand” as when the Rebels charged, only to be shattered by the artillery. “I saw one officer, ahead of the rest, waving his sword, when a discharge of grape took him and cut him all to pieces; and we could see them destroyed in every possible manner,” Salter wrote.
All day long the men of the 4th Michigan lay on the ground by the guns. There was sharpshooter firing and periodic shelling from the Confederates, and at some point the woods on the other side of the ford road caught fire. Some wounded soldiers in the forest who hadn't been removed or weren't able to crawl to safety died in the flames. Henry Seage would remember years later that the cries of wounded men could be heard as the smoke and fire reached them. So did James Houghton: “We could plainly hear the poor fellows scream and yell,” he wrote. The drifting smoke from the fire was so thick by the afternoon that the sun was obscured, Seage wrote in his diary. The Massachusetts men were pulled back from their skirmish line, seemingly replaced by pickets from the various regiments along the road.11
The 4th Michigan suffered casualties from hidden Rebel marksmen. At least two men were killed by sharpshooters, one of them being Corporal Theodore Haberfelder of Company A. Haberfelder had been wounded at Fredericksburg, but recovered. According to an account in his hometown newspaper, he was on picket that day when he was shot by a Confederate who had climbed a tree in the woods across from where the 4th Michigan was posted. This report said Haberfelder's comrades were able to kill this sharpshooter, though Houghton wrote that it was Union gunners who brought a small rifled cannon to bear on a tree where the puff of smoke had been seen. After the artillery piece fired into the tree, he wrote, no more sharpshooter fire came from it. Lt. John Bancroft was also hit by a Rebel sharpshooter, but remarkably it was a spent bullet that smacked him on the back of his right hand. It did no damage other than a bruise.
There was little rest for the men of the regiment that night, for two or three times there were alarms that brought them awake and ready for battle.12 The worst scenes of the fighting that day were further to the south, closer to Chancellorsville, where thousands of soldiers, North and South, were killed and wounded in terrible artillery barrages and infantry attacks. By comparison to the casualties suffered by the regiments involved in this combat, the soldiers of the 4th Michigan and their brigade and division had an easy time.
The morning and early afternoon of May 4 were quiet in the salient northwest of Chancellorsville, with only some picket fire. At 4:00 P.M., however, an order came from Gen. Charles Griffin ordering the Second Brigade to make a reconnaissance toward the Confederate position, to see whether they had pulled out. The 4th Michigan would act as skirmishers, leading a fast-moving probing action into the smoking forest. “We had to advance through a piece of woods which was a filled with ‘Rebs’ watching our movements,” wrote Lt. George Maltz. “They were taken by some surprise. And the first thing, we were rushing in there in double quick style, and they [Confederate pickets] had to skedadle to their main force.” Some Michigan men stopped to fire when they spotted Rebel riflemen. As they charged in ahead of their brigade, Orvey S. Barrett of Company B saw a Rebel sharpshooter with a telescopic rifle and an old plug hat tumble “some sixty feet” from a tree, shot down by one of his comrades. “We took 8 prisoners and killed and wounded several,” Lieutenant Maltz said.
There were nightmarish sights in those burned-out woods as the 4th Michigan charged in—the bodies of men who'd been left, dead or wounded, in the woods that burned the day before. “[We] see soldiers crisped, burned and cracked open,” Lieutenant Bancroft noted. “Horrible site.” Pvt. Houghton agreed—the dead had swollen and charred in fire, beyond any recognition. A drafted soldier who had come in at the same time as Houghton, John S. Conant, 26, in Company H, concurred. “It was a hard sight to see those that were killed two or three days ago nearly burned up,” he wrote, “for the rebels set the woods on fire and it run through and doubtless killed some that were wounded.” But there was no time to stare.
They chased on after the Rebel pickets, part of A. P. Hill's division. As these retreating Confederates reached the safety of their defenses made of log breastworks and trenches in the woods about a mile west of Chancellorsville, their gunners opened on the 4th Michigan with a fury. “We drove the pickets about ½ mile when we came upon the entrenchments and received a murderous volley,” Irvin Miner wrote. This wasn't just musketry, but also grapeshot and canister. Bancroft wrote that the smoke and flying lead “looks like a storm.” As the Confederate guns fired, Col. James McQuade, the commander of the brigade, was thrown from his horse and the Michigan soldiers dropped to the ground. “Christ how the canister flew in to us,” wrote Charles Phelps. “I never had balls fly around much thicker.” Barrett and Houghton said that ground in front of the Confederate defenses was low, so some of the artillery blasts passed over them. Still, they were in a terrible position. General Griffin, satisfied that the Rebels hadn't left, gave the order for his men to withdraw.13
“Our bugle sounded the ‘recall,’” Orvey Barrett said, “and then we proceeded to ‘git.’” Though he considered himself a fast runner, he “could not gain an inch” on the man in front of him. “I put a big tree between me and them mighty quick,” Phelps agreed about this retreat. “We found out they had not gone so we fell back where we came from,” he wrote. The Confederates fired after the 4th Michigan and then their infantry left the defenses, chasing the Union soldiers back through the woods. Barrett said that the men of the 9th Massachusetts had followed the 4th Michigan into the trees when they went in, but they had been ordered to stay low and await developments. Now as the Michigan men ran past them on the way out, the Massachusetts troops rose and fired into the Confederates, discouraging further pursuit.
The skirmish was over. Six of the 4th Michigan troops had been killed and 12 others wounded that afternoon. Phelps thought his Company D had come out of the business rather fortunately—none of them had been killed. In Irvin Miner's Company F, three men were wounded and one was missing, though it would turn out that the wounds of one of those men, Henry L. Lawrence of Hudson, then about 23, were fatal. Worse for Miner personally was that his younger half-brother, Corporal Austin D. Miner, probably 22 years old, was the missing man. In time the Union army would determine that Austin Miner was killed in action. The regiments of the Second Brigade went back to their positions near Ely's Ford Road. Lieutenant Maltz wrote that other Union regiments cheered them when they returned from their mission, but that reconnaissance wasn't enough for his captain. Henry Seage noted that Company E had to undergo an inspection that evening. Still, the brigade commander was pleased about their mission. “I feel it my duty to make especial mention of the conduct of the Fourth Michigan Volunteers, deployed as skirmishers during the reconnaissance on the 4th,” Colonel McQuade reported. “Their advance was so rapid and determined that the skirmishers of the enemy were driven to their works without being afforded an opportunity to return our fire effectively. To this I attribute the slight loss sustained during the skirmish.”14
That night the Union generals met with General Hooker to discuss whether they should withdraw back across the Rappahannock or continue the offensive against Lee. The Fifth Corps's commander, Gen. George G. Meade, argued that they should attack, and most of his colleagues agreed. But Hooker, who had suffered a concussion a day earlier, ruled otherwise. Within hours, elements of the Union army began their retreat.
There were more alarms through the night and early morning of May 4–5, Lieutenant Bancroft noted, and the regiment's pickets may have sounded some of these warnings. Harrison Daniels later wrote that his Company G was on picket, and that suddenly he saw a small light in the darkness ahead of him. Daniels was willing to investigate, so Lt. Jerome Allen warned the pickets that Daniels was venturing out beyond the line. Daniels said he carefully stepped forward and then dropped onto his hands and knees, crawling until he was about 150 feet from the light; it was a small fire in the woods. “I saw plainly the cause of the light[,]…a Confederate soldier who was trying to draw our fire.” Of course, if Union pickets shot at that firelight, they would give away their positions to Rebel sharpshooters. Daniels watched as the soldier dropped twigs and leaves into the fire; he raised his rifle, aimed at the Rebel and fired. “The light went out,” Daniels wrote. Had the Confederate collapsed and smothered the small fire? Had Daniels wounded him or even missed, allowing him to kick away the burning sticks? Daniels couldn't tell. He went back to his own lines.15
When the sun rose on May 5, the situation was relatively calm for the men of the 4th Michigan and their brigade—“Very quiet along the lines,” John Hewitt wrote, “no fighting except for the sharp shooters.” The men heard firing to the south, where Lee was hoping to step up the attacks on the Union positions, but the attack was repulsed, according to Bancroft. By the afternoon, the men knew they were leaving. Rain beat down and orders came for them be ready to move out at 8:00 P.M. They packed their gear and waited for hours as the rain came harder. Finally, the order to move came about 3:00 A.M. on May 6. The Fifth Corps acted as the rear guard during those early morning hours while the Union army quietly pulled out of Chancellorsville in the rain. The soldiers trudged northeast through the mud and woods to the U.S. Ford, where engineers had made pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock. “Hooker commenced a retreat,” Hewitt continued in his diary when he had a moment. “[V]ery bad roads.”
Bancroft wrote that the 4th Michigan marched and countermarched with its brigade, probably reflecting their brigade's shifting movement while covering the retreat. Private Houghton said that Union telegraph wires cut down along the roads tripped many a soldier in the darkness, sending them sprawling in the mud. “There was Swear words heard over the matter,” he wrote. Houghton jokingly asked one friend who fell “what he was doing down there[.] His reply was that He was just getting ready for inspection.” The 4th Michigan made the crossing at about 6:00 A.M. “No Rebels in sight,” Bancroft noted. Charles Phelps claimed they were the second-to-last Union regiment to go back over the river. The regiment stopped to make coffee after the all-night work. Then the 4th Michigan marched back down the river toward Falmouth.
It was about 10 miles or so from the ford to the encampment that they'd left in late April, and it rained all day. Hewitt said the roads were in “horrid” shape; Colonel Jeffords described it as “mud [as] deep as I ever saw it.” No one disagreed. “I was mud all over,” Phelps wrote. “We were the worst looking seeds you ever see.” The regiment reached the site of its old camp at about 3:00 P.M. Lieutenant Bancroft said that his comrades built a fire in a hospital tent; he took a bath (likely in a nearby Potomac Creek) and someone gave him a swig of whiskey. He wrote that he “slept soundly” after the rigors of the retreat.16
Some records state that eight men from the 4th Michigan had been killed or fatally wounded during Hooker's failed, nine-day offensive, but the number may have been higher given that at least one of the missing men would in time be classified as killed in action. At least another dozen had been wounded.17 Compared to regiments that had been involved in fierce fighting or subject to artillery barrages near Chancellorsville, their casualties were light. “Our Regt. has been very fortunate during all the engagements and I have escaped as usual unhurt,” Jeffords wrote.
Many histories speak of the disappointment and frustration the Union soldiers felt after turning away from Chancellorsville, and Edward Taylor of the 4th Michigan certainly felt that way. “Hooker has failed entirely in this move—has been outwitted, in fact,” he wrote. A few days later, he conceded that “we did whip them in actual battle, but as a whole we did not gain our end…. Our men are brave but no advantage was made of our actual gain and our valor was wasted by poor generalship.” Taylor's prior letters had shown him to be a McClellan man, yet he insisted that he and the rest of the Union army “don't so love McClellan that we would be unwilling to fight under any good General whom the government would favor and support.” Taylor wrote that he had had doubts about Hooker for months. “Most of the winter I have lived within ten rods of his quarters and know him to be a whiskey ‘bloat’—one of the most profane men I ever knew and a terrible braggadocio. Still when he took command particularly just as this move began I was willing to give all support in word and deed, for I thought there must be something beneath his exterior.” That had turned out to be a false hope. Now with the Union army back in camp, Taylor complained, Hooker didn't want the soldiers to see critical comment in the press. “Now no papers are permitted to be sold within the lines unless they contain laudations of Hooker and the Administration. All others are prohibited. Is he afraid the soldiers will see their own opinion in print?”18
Not all soldiers felt that way. Lt. George Maltz said that the men had had faith in the general and his plans, and had cheered him on the battlefields at Chancellorsville. “We are now waiting patiently for what the future brings forth,” he wrote to a friend back in Detroit. “The army is not in any way demoralized.” Lt. Michael J. Vreeland of Company I, from Brownstown Township in Wayne County, then sick and in a division hospital, agreed. “You all seem to think the Army has suffered a serious defeat,” he wrote home, “but be assured such is not the case[.T]he Army never was in better spirits.”
Vreeland insisted the Rebels hadn't been victorious—they had suffered “a severe blow,” the worst they experienced so far. It was just that the Union army couldn't follow up on the losses they'd inflicted on Lee. Vreeland, then about 24, explained that the Union Army of the Potomac always had be make sure that Washington was safe, and so couldn't risk offensive movements that might allow Lee to strike it. “I wish the people could understand this,” he wrote. Writing late that month, Lt. John Bancroft agreed with Vreeland that the soldiers trusted their commander. “Gen. Hooker has gained the confidence of the army and they want no interference,” he wrote in an apparent reference to reports that General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck wanted to replace Hooker.19
Perhaps some of the most positive comments to come out of the 4th Michigan were from Col. Harrison H. Jeffords. He was proud of his regiment and of the confidence that his superiors had in it during the battle. The brass asked the 4th Michigan four different times “to perform some duty requiring the utmost skill and bravery and I am happy to tell that every time they have done it to the entire satisfaction of the Generals and received their warmest thanks,” Jeffords bragged.
In the meantime, the Union army was under orders to be prepared once again to move out from its encampments near Falmouth, but no such movement materialized. They heard that the great Confederate general Stonewall Jackson had died after being shot by his own men at Chancellorsville. As mid-May brought out fine weather and the greening of the countryside, it occurred to men like Bancroft that it was now the second anniversary the creation of the 4th Michigan. And though he'd only been their commander for a brief time, the enlisted men of the regiment presented Colonel Jeffords with what some of them called “a splendid horse,” complete with saddle and bridle. The presentation on May 11 was made with a speech by Sergeant Major Richard Watson Seage, who was soon to be promoted to the rank of second lieutenant in Company I. Clearly, the troops of the 4th Michigan trusted and respected their commander. Jeffords was delighted and proud; the horse, he said, was “magnificent.” “I wish you could see him,” he wrote friends. “He is such a splendid fellow, the best horse in the Corps. So you see I am all right, and my good qualities are appreciated.” At the same time, the commander of the brigade of which the 4th Michigan was part, Col. James McQuade, wrote a glowing endorsement of Capt. Jairus Hall to the governor of Michigan. “He is not only a gallant officer, but one of the very best disciplinarians that I know,” McQuade wrote, recommending a promotion for Hall. This soon happened.20
There was disconcerting news in the army. Some regiments formed for only two years back in the spring of 1861 had now served out the term of their enlistments; so had regiments that formed for nine months, back during the summer of 1862. “9 mo[nth] and 2 yrs. troops are leaving every day,” Lt. George Maltz told a friend. “We had one div[ision] commanded by Gen. Humphrey leave since our return, beside many other N.Y. Regts of our corps. The 14th N.Y. of our Brigade left today.” The army needed thousands of more men, Maltz wrote. “Every man in the South is a Soldier and when we attack, these men rally to fight, leave their work, and go in with a will,” he continued. “I think the North will learn in course of time what has to be done. Give us enough men and we can see the thing through and we can save the Union—Draft—Conscript, or anything else, I want to see it out now.”21
On May 22, Major John M. Randolph, 36, of Ann Arbor, who'd started out his service with the 4th Michigan as the captain of Company D, was discharged for disability by a War Department order. Lt. John Bancroft hoped the major's post would be filled by Capt. Jairus Hall, who'd started out the war as a second lieutenant but who'd been leading Company D since late in the summer of 1862. “We hope to have him for Major in place of Randolph,” Bancroft wrote. “[Capt. David D.] Marshall [of Company G] expects it but will not get three votes if left to the [officers of] the line.” Bancroft had nothing to worry about. Harrison Jeffords had a good sense of the sentiments of his officers and men, and he recommended to Gov. Austin Blair that Jairus Hall be commissioned major.
But in the wake of Chancellorsville and the mustering out of thousands of soldiers, it didn't seem to men like Charles Phelps that the Union army was going anywhere soon, for the brigade commissary had recently moved ovens up to Kelly's Ford. “That looks like [we are] staying here,” he wrote. Two years had passed since he'd joined the outfit that became Company D in the 4th Michigan. “I am on my last year now,” Phelps wrote. “One year from the 16th of this month. The time will soon pass I hope[.] I don't think we will see more than one Battle if that (no knowing though),” he added.22
Many of the regiments of the First Division of the Fifth Corps cleaned up their camp or shifted into a new site, since it was thought this would improve their health. As the weather turned hot and muggy, the men put their quarters “in summer trim” on May 25 and 26, and a visit by Austin Blair to their camp and those of the nearby 7th and 16th Michigan regiments made for a pleasing distraction. “Gov. Blair made a speech here yesterday and it being the 1st one the men had heard for a long time, he tried several times to get a laugh or cheer,” Lieutenant Bancroft wrote. “But when he told them he thought they would have been more successful [at Chancellorsville] had they been 100 miles farther from Washington, that succeeded.” Yes, the men found that line funny, since many in the army believed government interference was its biggest problem.
It was, Bancroft said, “a gala day.” The governor reviewed their brigade that afternoon before making his speech to the 4th Michigan, and the lieutenant was impressed that Blair, a Radical Republican, didn't use the opportunity to make critical comments about the Union army's favorite former commander, George McClellan. But Blair was an experienced politician and he was aware of his audience. “The boys were better satisfied than they expected as many of them curse the Republican for continuing the war etc., making it a negro war,” Bancroft wrote about the speech. The governor had spoken of home and of the friends who prayed for the soldiers. The men liked that, and they were pleased to see that Blair brought along his wife and his niece. “The presence of the ladies was an unusual and pleasant thing,” Bancroft said. Corporal Irvin Miner was among the men pleased with the governor's words. He wrote that Blair's speech was “enthusiastically received.”23
The paymaster came the next day and the men were naturally pleased to see him. But hardly had they finished rebuilding their tent-covered shanties and their discussions of the governor's visit when they were ordered to pull up stakes and start on the march for Kelly's Ford, miles upriver to the northwest. Doubtless there was grumbling about the army's commanders and their knack for untimely decision-making. Again the soldiers broke down their tents and that afternoon marched 10 miles to Hartwood Church and bivouacked for the night. Their division and corps were on the move, heading for positions along the Rappahannock to guard the fords. The next day, the 4th Michigan marched on to Kelly's Ford along with a battery and another regiment, while another part of their Second Brigade took up positions at Ellis Ford a few miles away. Bancroft noted that the Fifth Corps commander, Gen. George G. Meade, came to look over his soldiers and their placement along the river.
Union soldiers, including companies from the 4th Michigan, were quickly put to work digging rifle pits. There were open fields at this location, mountains in the distance, and attractive women in the neighborhood, Lieutenant Bancroft said. Harrison Daniels of Company G remembered being smitten by a dark-eyed girl named Julia Reese who lived with her mother near Kelly's Ford. Daniels had stopped at the house to fill his canteen and shared sips of water from a gourd with Miss Reese. “Now I never would have believed that I, a Union soldier, could have fallen in love with a black eyed rebel, but when I had gone away, I found that to be a fact.” Daniels visited her several times and managed to spend a few “happy hours” with her over the next three or four weeks.
The soldiers of the 4th Michigan could also see Confederates across the river. The men of the regiment did picket and underwent inspection, but they could also go fishing and swimming when they were off duty. One soldier, writing to a newspaper in Monroe, said it was a much more pleasant place than their last camp, where trees had been cut for miles around and where the grass had been trampled into the mud or dust. “Here we have plenty of shade and the fields are green with grass,” wrote the man, who signed his letter “W.” John Hewitt noted that Colonel Jeffords was put in charge of the forces guarding the ford near them on June 4, but one of the regiment's new soldiers, James Houghton of Company K, had a much more personally important matter to complain about—he'd been the victim of theft. “To day I got 37 dollars of my money stole,” he complained.
The next day, Corporal Irvin Miner, like Harrison Daniels, became enamored of a girl of about 18 who was among a group of women he escorted into camp to trade. “I nearly lost my heart,” he wrote, to this young lady who he decided was “good looking, accomplished, agreeable and rich though rather inclined to be rebellious.” (Whether this young woman was the lovely Miss Reese, with whom Daniels was so taken, is unknown). The men could hear gunfire in the distance on June 6 as Union and Confederate cavalry clashed up the river, and the men expected to be moving out at any moment. Yet there were meetings between the two sides that weren't so hostile. Three days later, a sergeant from Company D swam over to the Rebel side of the Rappahannock while a Confederate soldier came over to the 4th Michigan's side. They exchanged newspapers. “Lieut. [Edwin] Gilbert [of Ann Arbor] commanding our company gave him a drink of whiskey,” Charles Phelps wrote of the hospitality shown the visiting Reb. “That is the way it goes [—] one day on good terms and the next a Battle.”24
But it was the regiment's chaplain who had the most dangerous experience of any member of the regiment in those early June days—the Reverend John Seage, father of Henry Seage and Lt. Richard Watson Seage. Chaplains routinely did duty as regimental mail carriers or took on other responsibilities, and on June 8, the English-born John Seage, 53, had an even more important job. At 4:00 P.M., he rode out of the 4th Michigan's camp at Kelly's Ford on a good horse, with $6,000 or more from the men of the regiment and a few broken watches in his haversack. The chaplain was on his way to Washington, D.C., to forward the money on to men's families and to get the watches repaired.
Reverend Seage had made himself a reputation as a caring but tough, no-nonsense preacher. When a Union officer insultingly questioned the courage of 4th Michigan soldiers separated by mistake from the regiment at Fredericksburg, John Seage, enraged, called the officer “a drunken liar.” Nor did the chaplain sit back and watch as others went into combat. Colonel Jeffords noted that during battle, Seage “fights or prays & don't care which.” After Chancellorsville, Jeffords wrote, Reverend Seage had come across a man burying dead soldiers, but one had been a tall fellow in life and his corpse wasn't going to fit in the grave dug for him. When the chaplain saw that the gravedigger was about to cut the dead soldier's legs off rather than dig a proper grave, John Seage dealt him a severe lesson in respect for the dead. “The Chaplain knocked him down & kicked [him] after he was down [and] licked him handsomely,” Jeffords wrote with satisfaction.
This was the picture of the Reverend Seage as he rode into the late afternoon, carrying the thousands of dollars entrusted to him by his regiment. Lt. Robert Campbell later wrote that Seage spoke of riding into a thicket of woods, with a ravine on one side of the road. “I was alone & on horseback When 12 miles from the Camp near Deep Run Mill I was halted by a party of men who ordered me to halt & surrender,” Seage reported. “I asked by what authority? The leader replied [‘I]n the name of Mosby's Cavalry.[’] I replied, ‘I don't recognize that authority & shan't surrender.[’]”
In one account of this incident, John Seage said there were five horsemen confronting him that evening, armed with revolvers. Three of them fired as Seage wheeled his horse, “or rather the horse turned,” Seage wrote. A bullet ripped through the chaplain's right wrist, tearing the artery and smashing bone, lodging in his ribs. His horse jumped across the ditch as the gunmen fired. Seage was hit in the back, the bullet going through his left shoulder and breaking his clavicle as it exited. A third bullet cut his left ankle and a fourth, he said, “made a flesh wound in my thigh.”25
But even as he was hit, his horse plunged on through the trees. The crippling wounds to his wrist and shoulder left Reverend Seage's hands useless, and he was bleeding heavily, but he was fortunate in one important regard: he had the best horse. Seage's mount quickly outpaced the pursuing Rebels as they galloped after him. He was barely conscious, but he stayed in the saddle. “Our Division train & Commissary was about a mile back, thither my horse took me,” he wrote. In the meantime, some men from the 4th Michigan were detailed to guard that supply train, and they heard the gunshots. When they saw a rider approaching a short time later, they ran to see who it was. “My God!” someone shouted. “It's our chaplain.” Seage, having lost so much blood his vision was failing, was taken to doctors there with the wagon train. Word was carried back to the regiment's camp, and his sons and two other men hurried over to see him that night. By the time his sons returned the next day, “we found Father doin well,” Henry Seage wrote in his journal.
The Reverend John Seage survived. He hadn't lost any of the five watches, 26 letters, and thousands of dollars that officers and men of the regiment entrusted him to transmit to their families. As it turned out, John Seage only had a few days to rest there with the Union army before it marched north on the start of what would become known as the Gettysburg campaign. By ambulance, train, and boat, Henry Seage took his father to a Washington hospital, his wrist in splints and both arms in slings. His wounds were restitched and rebandaged, and a medical man John Seage identified as the surgeon-in-chief of the army, a Dr. Clymer, sent him home for two months to recover. Though the Reverend Seage was partially disabled by his wounds for the rest of his life, he would return to his regiment.
Over the course of the war, Mosby's raiders and other guerillas would interrupt, waylay, rob, capture, or destroy hundreds of Union wagons and wagoners, expresses, trains, messengers, and dispatch riders. But the Reverend John Seage was one who got away.26
There were bigger, more momentous events in the works, and even newspaper correspondents recognized it. “Mysterious Movements of Rebel Troops,” one headline read late in May. “Believed they are Preparing to Make a Demonstration.” Union balloonists could plainly see columns of Confederates marching, dust rising. But why, the papers asked. Was it simply a ruse? A distraction so that J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry could conduct a deep raid into the North? How would the Union Army of the Potomac respond? None of the soldiers knew. But by early June Union generals had reports that the Army of Northern Virginia was marching north. The 4th Michigan remained at Kelly's Ford, the men walking picket, swimming in the river, and enjoying the first crop of cherries and mulberries. But persimmons were not ripe, at least not yet; Lt. Orvey S. Barrett of Company B experienced a close call when he separated himself from his fellow pickets on the river to get some of this fruit.
Temporarily posted at the Mountain Run Ford, about three miles from Kelly's Ford, Barrett wrote, his company patrolled the river, watching for Rebel cavalry and keeping their eye on the house of a rabid anti-Union man named Atkinson. One morning, Barrett said, he climbed a persimmon tree on the bank of the river to pick some fruit while his comrades moved on. Suddenly a squad of Rebel cavalry appeared across the river, their carbines aimed at him. “Yank, come over,” one ordered. Barrett replied that he couldn't swim, but they weren't interested in his excuse. As Barrett dropped down from the tree, one of the troopers fired over his head to impress upon him the need to obey. But rather than comply, Barrett rolled and scrambled to cover as the Rebels fired at him. The shots brought his patrol and the reserve pickets on the run and the troopers rode off. Only Barrett's pride was hurt, and it turned out the persimmons he picked weren't ripe, but horribly bitter.27
Finally on June 10, proof of the much-talked of movement came into the 4th Michigan's camp—orders for their brigade to be ready to march with three days' worth of rations. They did not leave just yet, though, and that week heard cannons in the distance as the cavalry clashed upriver and they watched as two other Union corps marched by. The companies of the 4th Michigan underwent inspection, waiting for word to move out. As the soldiers stood watch along the river or swam or did washing, they continued to trade items and sometimes insults with Confederates. Barrett said one wag from the 4th Michigan called over to a raggedly dressed soldier on the opposite bank: “I say, Johnny Reb, why don't you wear better clothes?” The Rebel didn't miss a beat. “We-uns don't wear our best clothes when we go to kill hogs,” he replied.28
Edward H. C. Taylor, who had been working as clerk at the First Division, wrote to his relatives that he was now back with the 4th Michigan and promoted to sergeant major. “It will not be so easy as my clerkship,” he wrote, “but chances are good for the future.” That same night Irvin Miner and other soldiers bathed in the Rappahannock and noticed that two Confederate officers were watching them, but a thunderstorm blew in bringing a hard rain. The next day, June 13, was warm, and new clothing was issued to some of the troops—another seemingly routine day. But then the order came around 4:00 P.M. and the men of the 4th Michigan struck their tents. In the evening they marched, moving only six miles to the town of Morrisville. Though they did not know it, the lead elements of the Army of Northern Virginia were as far as 100 miles north on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Maryland, on their way into Pennsylvania.
The regiment reunited with their Second Brigade, First Division, and Fifth Corps. Their job guarding the fords along the Rappahannock was over, and they marched from the river on a route that headed north-northeast, in the direction of Washington, D.C., with most of the rest of the Army of the Potomac. Over the next two days, they moved about 20 miles, first to Catlett Station and then to Manassas Junction in the rising heat, the army on its guard. The regiment remained at the junction with its division and corps on June 16 but was shifted to the west a few miles that night into the Thoroughfare Gap, to picket along the railroad line at this passage through the Bull Run or Catoctin Mountains. The march resumed the next day, about 15 miles through Centreville and on to Gum Springs. It was so hot that a man dropped out of the ranks from exhaustion every few moments that afternoon, Lieutenant Bancroft wrote. The men learned that Lee's army was invading Pennsylvania.
The 4th Michigan, with its division, remained in bivouac under a blazing sun there on June 18 and most of the next day, and they could hear the sound of gunfire as the cavalry clashed at the mountain passes. They marched at 4:00 P.M., covering a few miles to the town of Aldie, situated on the edge of mountains where the Confederate cavalry was screening the northward movement of Lee's army in the Shenandoah Valley to the west. A hard rain set in that night, and again the regiment got a rainy day of rest when their brigade stayed in bivouac on June 20.29
The next day they awoke before dawn and marched west with a force of cavalry and infantry from their division, through the pass to the town of Middleburg, where other Union troops pushed the Confederate cavalry back. The 4th Michigan, acting as a support or reserve, wasn't involved in the fighting, and soldiers used the opportunity to forage chicken, mutton, fruit, and milk in the countryside. They bivouacked in the field and came back to Aldie on June 22, remaining for four days. Jim Houghton said the soldiers of the regiment were the victims of fraud when they stopped at a mill on the return to Aldie at dusk. The men crowded in to get flour, which was a rare thing for soldiers on the march. But it wasn't until they were leaving that the realized they'd gotten plaster of Paris instead. In revenge, some of the soldiers went back to the mill and stole a beehive full of honey, while others helped themselves to the milk of local dairy cows; some butchered a calf. The men were in good spirits, Lieutenant Bancroft wrote, though they would be glad of the chance to get clean clothes and food that was more than hardtack, boiled beef, and coffee. The next day was June 24, and Corporal Henry Seage, who had escorted his wounded father to Washington and put him on a train home, returned to the regiment.
There was one more day in camp at Aldie—the men heard the news that tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers were marching toward Harrisburg. Their own march north continued early in the afternoon of June 26 and into the night, going about 15 miles through Leesburg, across the Potomac at Edwards Ferry over a pontoon bridge into Maryland. It was around this time that the soldiers of the 4th Michigan went through the property of a northern Virginia plantation owner who'd become an officer in the Confederate army. Though Houghton didn't give a specific date, this incident occurred while the army was on the march out of northern Virginia. The place had many cherry trees that were full of fruit. But they didn't just pick the cherries—they chopped off all the trees' branches and limbs. “Other trees were served in the same way till the Boys got all they wanted,” he wrote.
The regiment's diarists noted it rained on the 26th, and Lieutenant Bancroft, who had been sick, called their travel that day “one of the most tiresome marches of the war.” Luke Barnes of Company C, now about 23, was unable to keep up and was captured that day by Confederates. But exhaustion and foraging aside, the men understood what was at stake. The Army of Northern Virginia was now strung out in long columns as it invaded Pennsylvania, and this could be the opportunity the Union army needed to trap and destroy it. In four days, their corps, too, would be in Pennsylvania, joining most of the rest of the Army of the Potomac. “It is thought throughout the army that he [Lee] is getting himself into a trap of his own setting by going so far north, and that he had better remain on his own ‘sacred soil,’” a soldier from the 4th Michigan wrote to his hometown newspaper. “Should he with his army get captured up there, it would be a gigantic death blow to the rebellion.”30
The soldiers of the 4th Michigan marched seven miles into Maryland, having moved about 15 miles that day with their corps. The Union army continued north by different roads and routes, staying between the Confederate army and Washington. Irvin Miner of Company F said the country they'd left behind was “the most beautiful” he'd seen in Virginia. The next day, June 27, they marched at 6:00 A.M., their brigade reaching the Monocacy River around noon. But the horses couldn't cross at this point, so the troops continued up the river to a ford and crossed about five in the afternoon Some soldiers like Henry Seage fell out, exhausted, while their comrades tramped on. Their brigade paused for dinner and then continued into the night, finally stopping near Frederick. Sgt. John Hewitt, also of Company E and one of the regiment's farm boys, marveled at the scenic countryside, the picturesque farms, and the good crops.
The regiment stayed in bivouac on June 28 and walked picket that evening, guarding the nearby railroad. That day word spread that their corps commander, Gen. George Gordon Meade, had been made commander of the Army of the Potomac—Joe Hooker had resigned in an angry feud over the movement and placement of forces with the general-in-chief at the War Department, Henry Halleck. The promotion of Meade to command of the army resulted in the promotion of Gen. George Sykes, a career army officer, to command of the Fifth Corps. There had also been a temporary change in the command the corps's First Division—just after Chancellorsville, Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin went on sick leave, so the senior brigade commander in the division, Brig. Gen. James Barnes, took his place.
The next day the men of the 4th Michigan returned to their bivouac from picket, packed up, and marched to the northeast, covering some 20 miles. Two of Cpl. Henry Seage's Company E comrades, Frank Waller and George Walker, got into a fight along the way, and their company commander, Lt. George L. Maltz of Detroit, “parted them by knocking Waller down with his sword.” But Waller apparently got the last shot in, throwing a punch that left Walker with a gash under his eye. It was well past sundown when their division stopped for the night a couple miles beyond the town of Liberty. A summer rain soaked the landscape and the troops.
The men broke camp at 3:00 A.M. on June 30 and began their march without breakfast. It continued a rainy day as they trooped east and north, their packs heavier with the soaking. They passed through the tiny town of Unionville, Maryland, where residents turned out to cheer, wave flags, and sing patriotic songs, James Houghton remembered. “This made us forget our tired limbs and sore feet for a while,” he wrote. As their brigade reached the town of Union Mills that night, they learned that thousands of Rebel troopers, J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry division, had ridden through that very morning. Henry Seage said the Union officers decided to send out skirmishers two miles ahead before they camped, tired and hungry. The men washed off the days' sweat and grime and mud in Pipe Creek.31
In the meantime General Meade organized his new staff and received reports about the strength and location of the Confederate army, some 80,000 troops under Lee. Moving along scores of miles of Pennsylvania roads from Chambersburg to York and Carlisle, they were in a dangerous situation. When Lee learned the Union army was much closer than he'd thought, he ordered his generals to pull their divisions together. By the night of June 30, they had almost all done so. The confrontation between the armies would begin the next day as both converged on a small crossroads town called Gettysburg.