CHAPTER 11

We Have Seen a Pretty Hard Campaign

SOME CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS PAID A TERRIBLE PRICE FOR THE BAYONETING OF HARRISON JEFFORDS in the weeks after the fighting at Gettysburg. According to an officer in the division with the 4th Michigan, many Rebels were killed in retribution at Wapping Heights near Manassas Gap on July 23. “We found over 100 bodies of rebels, who had been killed or wounded and afterward bayoneted by our men, who have not forgiven the rebels for their atrocities at Gettysburg and other places,” wrote Lt. Charles Salter of the 16th Michigan. “[T]he majority of the 3rd and 5th Corps declare they will bayonet every rebel they can get at, on the battlefield.”1

But this retaliation was still three weeks off. As darkness fell over the Gettysburg battlefield on July 2, James Houghton, with his wounded captain leaning on him for support, made it to a Third Corps hospital set up in a barn, possibly at the Jacob Snyder farm. Captain McLean was so weak he had to stop frequently. “[A]s we came to the gate we were met by a gard who informed us that they had about 300 wounded in Hospital and could not possibly admit any more,” Houghton wrote. “[T]he captain was to[o] weak to go any farther so He layed down on the ground saying He would lye there till they could take Him in.” If the violence in the trees near the Wheatfield had been horrific, the scene at the hospital was a nightmare. “The wounded were lying on the ground in rows acrost the yard…at the east end of the yard were lying Some of the most hop[e] less cases some were in the agonies of death,” Houghton wrote.

The wounded were laid out in rows, with a path between them. He saw “the Surgeons were busily at work probing for bullets and amputating limbs.” When he walked back by the barn, “filled…with the wounded to its utmost capacity,” Houghton couldn't take any more. As he started back to find his regiment, he came across one of his lieutenants. When Houghton told him about McLean's condition and the state of the Third Corps' hospital, the lieutenant decided they had to get their captain out of there. Borrowing a stretcher, they carried McLean to another hospital, where his wounds were quickly dressed. Exhausted, Houghton tried but couldn't find his way back to his regiment. He lay down and fell asleep by a side of a log somewhere on the east side of Little Round Top.2

Through the morning of July 3 the ranks of the 4th Michigan slowly grew as men who survived the retreat from the Wheatfield found the regiment in the Union line near the George Weikert farm, north of Little Round Top. So did soldiers who worked through the night bringing in the wounded. While they didn't yet know the score of all their casualties, a soldier from Monroe wrote that the regiment had been “handled more roughly this time than ever before.” Yet as bleak and terrible as the previous evening had been, there was some good news. Albert Boies, initially among the scores of men wounded and captured, had escaped from the Confederates during the night. Sgt. Edward Taylor was also wounded and would have been captured, but “managed to escape when they were repulsed by playing wounded and hiding being a large rock,” he wrote. About 80 men were missing, and most of them were prisoners. Some survived the experience, some died, and a few escaped. One of the many captured was diarist George W. Millens of Company B, who didn't survive, while one of his comrades from Indiana, Adelbert F. Day, who'd already spent six weeks in Libby Prison after Gaines' Mill, would “hoodwink” the count of his captors and be released in about two months from Belle Isle in a prisoner exchange.³

Company D, largely made up of men from the Ann Arbor area, suffered a large number of casualties. Letters and personnel records indicate that two captured men, David Webster, about 27, from Washtenaw County, and Sgt. Oliver Smith, about 25 and from Perry in Shiawassee County, also survived. Webster's family correspondence indicates that both men were taken to Belle Isle prison, but there Smith decided to escape, according to a letter written by Dr. William Clark, the regiment's former surgeon. A prison privy set up over the James River provided Smith, Webster, and an unnamed soldier from the 3rd Michigan Infantry the opportunity. The three prisoners quietly visited the privy in the darkness late that summer, where they lowered themselves into the water and swam for it.

Dr. Clark, serving as a surgeon in a Washington hospital in the fall of 1863, informed Webster's brother that Sergeant Smith and the 3rd Michigan man made it across the river, but Webster, who'd been slightly wounded at Gettysburg, felt he couldn't swim that far. He returned to prison. Smith and his partner kept going, moving along the river by night and hiding in woods by day, eating uncooked corn they grabbed from fields. They stole a canoe and on their fourth morning out landed near a shanty of a black man who fed them a real meal. Trading the canoe for food, they continued down the river and made it to Union forces in the Norfolk area. It had taken them a week. The escapees were returned to Washington from Fortress Monroe. By September 4, Oliver Smith was back with the Union army. Webster remained in Confederate prison, first in Richmond and then Andersonville in 1864. But he survived illness, was released, and eventually was discharged from the Union army.4

Then there were the many wounded of Gettysburg. A bullet had smashed into the right side of the head of Royal W. Hamlin of Company F, about 21, from Lenawee County. The projectile tore through his inner ear and part of his jaw, exiting the back of his neck. He was unconscious for two days and suffered horrible pain in the weeks that followed. He spent months in hospitals before his enlistment ended in the fall of 1864. Quimby H. Crawford of Monroe, about the same age and serving in Company D, had been hit in the temple; the ball grazed the side of his head, tearing away his ear. He, too, was found unconscious after the battle, but improved after a period of delirium and deafness. He eventually was well enough to return to the ranks, but never recovered mentally or emotionally. Capt. William F. Robinson, hit in the leg, assured his parents later that month “it is nothing but a flesh wound and I shall be able to walk with crutches in a little over a week.” He insisted that he didn't need his mother to come from Michigan to care for him.⁵

There were scores of other wounded men from their regiment and thousands from other outfits, North and South. As the severity of the 4th Michigan's loss became clearer, men wrote home. “Our loss in killed, wounded and missing is very great,” wrote William Tolford of Company F. “We have only ten men left in our company and not much over 100 in the regiment.” His comrade Frank Clark, who'd been carried to a Confederate hospital at the John Cunningham farm west of Gettysburg, lost his leg. Clark stayed at the farm for weeks as he recovered. So many of the soldiers of the 4th Michigan had been killed, captured, and wounded that the regiment's 10 companies were soon consolidated, wrote a soldier with the initials “J.W.V.” This was Lt. James W. Vesey from Sturgis. “We are temporarily consolidated into five companies,” he wrote to a western Michigan newspaper. “Lt. [Charles F.] Gruner [from St. Joseph County] commands the 2nd Co. consisting of companies C and K.”

On the morning of July 3 Henry Seage, with other men, helped move and take care of the wounded. They retrieved the body of Colonel Jeffords from a field hospital, the first step in the process of sending his remains back to Dexter, where his funeral “was attended by a large concourse of citizens” from the region. Seage found his badly wounded brother, Lt. Richard W. Seage, at a division hospital, possibly at the Jacob Weikert farm on the Taneytown Road or the nearby Lewis Bushman farm to the west. Henry carried him into the barn for surgery, and here they learned that Lt. Michael Vreeland had also survived and had been brought in. But with so many soldiers killed, wounded, or missing from the 4th Michigan, someone decided that the regiment couldn't afford to have soldiers acting as stretcher bearers and hospital aides. James Quackenbush from Company E appeared with a patrol to take Henry Seage's comrades back to the regiment. Only Seage, for the moment, was allowed to remain behind to take care of his brother and Lieutenant Vreeland.⁶

The survivors of the 4th Michigan were still recovering after the battle, and the main military development of July 3, the famous Confederate attack known as Pickett's Charge, was barely acknowledged by the regiment's diarists. Lieutenant Bancroft of Company H noted that the regiment “lay in position behind a stone wall,” remarking on the heavy cannonading, but nothing of the incredible losses the Rebels suffered that afternoon when they attacked across the open fields attempting to break the Union line. Lt. Orvey Barrett, who'd been wounded in the leg, later recalled that “the anxiety was terrible,” felt by wounded men who couldn't see the fighting, but who heard the blazing artillery. As more wounded Union troops were brought into the makeshift hospitals, others pressed them. How was the battle going? Were the Confederates gaining? Were the Union troops repelling them? “Finally, the awful noise died away; news was brought by an aide-de-camp ‘that the enemy had hauled off,’” Barrett wrote. Even dying men cheered when they heard the news. Lieutenant Bancroft recorded the result: “Rebs fell back from our front during the night,” he wrote. In the meantime, Henry Seage stayed with his brother and other 4th Michigan wounded. On July 4 brigade teams arrived, bringing large wall tents as rain fell. Seage helped put up the shelters and move the wounded, and that night shifted Lieutenants Vreeland and Barrett, Samuel Walker, and Sgt. Ezra Brown into a large tent. All of these men survived their Gettysburg wounds.7

Lieutenant Bancroft recorded the aftermath of the battle on July 4. “Not very lively,” he wrote. Gray clouds hung over the valley in the wake of the fighting. “On the field, sights and smells,” he continued. “Bury our dead. Raining.” Sgt. John Hewitt of Company E agreed it was quiet, but felt the defeat of Robert E. Lee and the halting of his invasion was reason to celebrate the Fourth of July. James Houghton was one of the men who requested to go back out onto the field to find the body of his tent mate, James Johnston. With a friend from his company named George Tracey, Houghton crossed field where Pickett's Charge occurred. In places, they crossed pools of blood. “It was Rebel Blood so it did not seam so bad,” he wrote. Eventually they reached the Wheatfield. “[W]e found men there busily ingaged in burying the dead. They informed me that they had just got my tent mate buried. They showed me his grave.” They had buried Johnston near a large rock on the east side of the Wheatfield. One of the soldiers told Houghton that Johnston had seven bullet holes in his body.

Most of the troops that had died in that vicinity were being carried to the trees on the west side of the field, and Houghton said that the Union dead were being carefully put to rest. In some cases, the bloody uniforms were actually being removed and washed and then dried on the branches of the trees, he wrote in his memoir of the battle. Then the bodies were redressed and placed in burial trenches lined with blankets, torn into pieces so that the dead lay on one piece and had a roll for a pillow behind their head. Lastly they were covered over with more blankets, tucked over the bodies. Near the trench lay the body of a large man, a Confederate sergeant whom soldiers claimed had stabbed Colonel Jeffords with his bayonet. This man had been shot through the head, Houghton wrote, his brains spilling out of the wound. Houghton surveyed the scene and went back to his regiment.⁸

Lt. Robert Campbell, the 4th Michigan's quartermaster, also went out to see the carnage, though he didn't record the grisly details as did Houghton. “After the battle I rode for miles over the ghastly field, was at Culp's Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Wheatfield, Little Round Top with its rocky crest from which a fine view is obtained of a large part of the battlefield, and the improvised hospitals. More than 6,000 dead and nearly 30,000 wounded lay upon that field.” Harrison Daniels in Company G later wrote that it was on the afternoon of the third day of the battle that he learned his friend William H. Plummer, a member of the color guard, was missing. That night, Daniels said, he volunteered to go with details forming to bring in wounded men from the field, taking with him a canteen of water and a candle. Going back toward the trees at the south edge of the Wheatfield, Daniels found Plummer, alive but wounded. He got help and put Plummer into an ambulance. He survived.

In the meantime the Army of the Potomac again began to march. By July 5, Union advances toward what had been Confederate lines showed that Lee's men already pulled out, starting the long trip back to Virginia. The Union army followed, though the 4th Michigan's William Tolford didn't think it was possible that his outfit could go back into battle. “Our regiment may not be called to go into the fight again, very soon, on account of our numbers, and the loss of our colonel,” he wrote. The 4th Michigan waited with its division during the evening on July 5 as thousands of troops tramped out in the rain. At last they marched south toward Emmitsburg, stopping at about 11:00 P.M. to bivouac. The departure of the 4th Michigan from Gettysburg began another separation from the outfit for Henry Seage, who remained behind to take care of his brother and others. Over the course of the next few days, Seage helped take the wounded to Baltimore to a place he called “the Church Home & Infirmary.” By the afternoon of July 23, both Vreeland and Barrett were well enough to travel back to Michigan. Though the summer weather tended to make it uncomfortably warm in Richard Seage's room, he recovered to the point that by early September he was able to go home to White Pigeon. Henry Seage wouldn't rejoin the 4th Michigan until September 23 at Culpeper, Virginia.9

The 4th Michigan, meanwhile, moved with its brigade, going only about a mile on the morning of July 6, and waiting as other troops marched by. The roads were muddy with the rain and the churning boots of thousands of soldiers and sometimes the columns traveled cross-country as the Union army again stayed between the Confederates and Washington. The rain continued for two days as the regiment moved to near Frederick, Maryland, west to Middletown and over South Mountain and drying ground to Boonsboro. Then they crossed Antietam Creek, north of Sharpsburg, drawing closer to the Army of Northern Virginia. Unable to get their forces across the rain-swollen Potomac in a timely manner, Confederate commanders constructed defensive positions stretching several miles from a point west of Hagerstown southwest to the river. Lieutenant Bancroft heard the firing up ahead as he and his regiment came nearer on July 10. The next day Union soldiers formed in battle lines, and at 6:00 P.M. the 4th Michigan moved forward with thousands of troops, knocking over fences and trampling grain. But there was no attack, only skirmishing. The 4th Michigan went on picket that night.

The regiment again advanced as reserves for the Union skirmish line on July 12 as Lee's army contracted back toward the river. The Fifth Corps moved forward and there was more skirmishing with the Confederates in another line of trenches and breastworks. That afternoon the 4th Michigan was among the outfits that were relieved and moved into some woods to bivouac. “When we saw them [the extensive Rebel works] we thought that another fight was shure to take place,” James Houghton remembered. The regiment soon moved back up, constructed works through a cornfield, and appears to have skirmished with Rebels near Williamsport. But it was too late for the Union army to destroy Lee's army now. On July 14, as troops advanced on Williamsport, the soldiers learned what happened. “Rebels all gone acrost the Potomac,” Bancroft wrote. John S. Conant of Company H wondered about the decision of their commander, Gen. George Meade, not to throw the Union army against the Confederates while they were cornered. “It was a shame to let Lee get across,” he wrote, “if we attacked him probably we would have given him a hard one but they had a strong position but did not want to fight that is pretty certain.”10

Though the Confederate army crossed the Potomac, Meade continued a pursuit. On July 15 the soldiers of the 4th Michigan and their brigade and division were awakened at 3:00 A.M. and soon were on an exhausting all-day march back over South Mountain to the town of Burkettsville. As troops collapsed from the heat the regiment's number got even smaller. “At one time during the day only 19 all told [were] in the regiment,” Lieutenant Bancroft noted. The soldiers got “a good supper” at a farmhouse and it was here, the lieutenant wrote, that the 4th Michigan was reorganized into five companies. The next day began at 2:00 A.M. and the soldiers marched to the town of Berlin near the Potomac, where the men were issued new clothing—they had long since worn out and ripped and torn their uniforms during the Gettysburg campaign. The 4th Michigan camped with the others on the hills above the river that night. Though it was late when the troops went into bivouac, Lieutenant Bancroft stayed up to write a letter to Abraham Purdy of Marathon Township in Lapeer County, father of George Purdy. George, at 18, joined the army in place of his father, who had been drafted in February 1863. The younger Purdy reached the 4th Michigan at Falmouth in late March, and he had been killed in action at Gettysburg.

In the meantime engineers built pontoon bridges over the Potomac at Berlin, and on the afternoon of July 17, the 4th Michigan crossed back into Virginia with its corps. For the next two days the marches south were easier, but Bancroft was getting sick and by the 20th rode in an ambulance with the columns to near Ashby's Gap. The next day, though he was very sick, Bancroft wrote to his friend Theodore H. Hinchman back in Detroit, complaining that the 4th Michigan badly needed new men and that the newspaper reports about the regiment at Gettysburg were inaccurate. “We hope the Governor will send men to fill up our ranks to keep up our good name and to have some one to go home with us,” he continued. “We have some good officers as are to be found in the field and enough of them to[o] while we now have only 101 men a captain commands.”

Of course, there was the question of what would happen with the command of the 4th Michigan, now that Jeffords was gone. Bancroft said that most of the line officers of the regiment hoped that Major Jairus Hall would “jump” or be promoted past Lt. Col. George Lumbard, just as Jeffords had jumped Lumbard earlier that year at the direction of Governor Blair. Bancroft had heard that “Blair had said he would not commission Lumbard as Colonel and I see no reason why he should reverse his decision.” But if Lumbard was made colonel, Bancroft wrote, then Major Hall should be made lieutenant colonel. As a practical matter, that would put Hall in charge of the regiment in terms of day-to-day leadership. Bancroft wrote that he hoped that his friend would raise these views with the governor.¹¹

The Union army kept moving over the next few days, to White Plains, toward Manassas Gap, to Salem, and through Warrenton, and there they camped for several days. “Since crossing the river [the Potomac], our line of march has been over the roughest, crookedest, hilliest, dryest roads Virginia has,” Lieutenant Vesey complained. “The weather being very hot; the men have suffered much from the heat, several cases of sun stroke occurred.” It was here outside of Warrenton that an officer from the 4th Michigan wrote a long letter about what had happened to the 4th Michigan at Gettysburg, and that letter was soon published in a Detroit newspaper. After several days the regiment marched on from the Warrenton area with its comrades on the afternoon of August 3, moving only six or seven miles to Bealton Station, not far from the Rappahannock River. Though the march wasn't far, it was slow and started late, making for a tiresome move. Again on August 8 the soldiers struck their tents and moved their camp to the Rappahannock, near Beverly Ford. Here the regiment would stay with its comrades in the Second Brigade of the First Division of the Fifth Corps for more than a month in the summer heat, tending to regular duties and sometimes greeting comrades who'd been lightly wounded at Gettysburg, now recovered, or who had been placed on hospital details. Several of them arrived on August 9.

Among them was Sgt. John Hewitt of Company E. Hewitt had been assigned temporarily as an attendant in the weeks after the battle, probably at Camp Letterman. This was an army hospital set up in a field south of the York Pike, about a mile or so east of Gettysburg. One of his journal entries mentioned his assignment: “At 2 pm a detail of Cooks Pioneers & nurses was made to stay at the Hos[pital] & I had to stay.”12

Hewitt recorded visits of the townspeople to the wounded, of their bringing food and his work helping set up the hospital. He had gone out into the country to a dance on July 10, heard preaching by “a celebrated devine [religious leader] from Baltimore” two days later, and seen “an old acquaintance” when a group of women from Adrian came to visit Michigan soldiers in the hospital on July 14. Hewitt's duties ranged from helping to clean the hospital to going to Gettysburg to kill a cow for beef for the men. One night he even managed to attend “singing school” and walk home with the daughter of a local captain.

Slowly but surely Hewitt and his comrades moved wounded soldiers to the railway station for transport to other hospitals and home, and on August 1 “the last of the wounded were taken away,” he wrote. Two days later, the attendants themselves boarded a train in Gettysburg and “bid adieu to Pennsylvania].” They traveled to Washington, D.C., and on August 5 arrived at Camp Convalescence (also given as Convalescent) near Alexandria. Sergeant Hewitt didn't enjoy that place at all: “About come to the conclusion that a convalescent camp is a nuisance,” he wrote. “Hope we shall get out of this damned hole soon,” he complained again three days later. He got his wish when he and his comrades boarded a train the next day that took them down to their part of the Union army at Bealton Station, where he rejoined his regiment on the Rappahannock.¹³

The soldiers had established their camp on a hill just above the river. The temperature during the day sometimes soared above 100 degrees, but their camp on high ground above the Rappahannock often caught the breeze and they could sometimes take a swim. Tim Regan of the 9th Massachusetts recorded a ghost story he'd heard that reportedly involved a member of the 4th Michigan. According to the tale, an unnamed soldier, while on picket at the river on the night of August 10, got into an increasingly angry argument with a Confederate on the other side over who had the better army. “Both men agreed to fight it out in the middle of the river (considering it neutral territory) accordingly they stripped to the skin and met in the middle of the river[,] each grasping a knife,” Regan wrote. The two hotheads fought in the water, until, bleeding from their wounds, he wrote, both “sunk out of sight into the water.” The eerie kicker to the story recorded by Regan was that the next night, pickets in the same area were said to have seen the spirits of the two dead combatants rise from the depths of the river and refight their knife fight until both ghostly forms again disappeared into the Rappahannock. It was a fine and macabre story, yet no record, letter, or report from any officer or soldier in the 4th Michigan indicates anything like the deadly fight in the river took place.14

During the same evening on which the river duel in Regan's ghostly tale allegedly took place, Edmond R. Bliss of Oakland County, about 23 and serving in Company D, composed a letter about a real battle—the battle of Gettysburg. “[W]e have seen a pretty hard camppaign since I last Rote to you, we was in the battle at gityeesburg,” Bliss wrote. “[O]ur company had 31 men when it went in to the fight and when it came out it had six men. I tell you that they fell thick and fast.” He explained it was because it had been a season of hard marching and fighting that he had been unable to reply to a letter he received in late May.¹⁵

Later that month, Lieutenant Vesey noted that those who volunteered back in the spring of 1861 now had nine months left to serve. “We hope to end, or least, help to end this rebellion, and to see Jeff Davis and his gang hung higher than Haman, the volunteers at home and ‘in business’ before that time,” he wrote. But what the regiment needed badly in the meantime was more men. There had been a rumor that the regiment would be sent back to Michigan to recruit more troops, though Vesey admitted there was probably nothing to it. “We are very anxious to have the draft enforced in Michigan immediately, and our regiment filled up,” he wrote. “If Gov. Blair will send us 500 men we will be satisfied without going home to recruit.”

Still, there was concern about conscription, which could draft any sort of man, no matter what his character might be, into the army. Those who patriotically volunteered at the start wondered about these some of these men. James S. Conant, a Wayne County man himself drafted earlier in the year, commented on them: “Michigan sent…a hard lot of boys when the[y] sent the squad that I came with,” he wrote. Barely had that group reached Cleveland when the first man deserted. An officer from the 4th Michigan, Capt. Alvan C. Lamson, who'd been serving as a brigade staff officer, expressed doubt about conscripts. Could drafted men really replace volunteers? Though life in the Union army was “almost unbearable,” wrote Lamson, “yet to leave it now would only be to rush to ‘ills we [k]now not of,’ the draft I mean, which according to accounts is not a respecter of persons. I am glad I enlisted when the Regiment was organized, ain't you?” he asked his friend William F. Robinson.¹⁶

Lamson started out the war as a sergeant major, and now he was serving as the acting assistant inspector general for the Second Brigade. But he still wanted to share gossip about fellow officers. Writing to his friend Captain Robinson, who had been wounded at Gettysburg, he noted that Lt. Benjamin Westfall of Company F, originally a Hudson volunteer who'd also been slightly wounded, had returned to the regiment after a visit home. Lamson had recently seen Lt. George Yates from Detroit, who'd been away from the regiment since late in 1862, now serving on the staff of a Union general. Apparently Yates had proved an entertaining figure while drinking and gambling with his old comrades. “Yates made us a riot a few days ago,” Lamson wrote; “we laid him out as usual, sending him home a wiser if not a better man.” But the question that really interested Lamson was what was going to happen with the command of the 4th Michigan. “What news do you have about our Regiment, who is to be the Col., Lt Col, and last though not least Major, the latter has many aspirants, myself among the number,” he wrote.¹⁷

Lamson and other officers such as John Bancroft had reason to wonder, after all, since the late Harrison Jeffords had been promoted past Lt. Col. George Lumbard earlier in the year. But in fact Lumbard was eventually promoted to be the colonel of the 4th Michigan this time, while Jairus Hall would soon be commissioned the new lieutenant colonel.

In the days after the regiment's disaster at the Wheatfield, officers wrote to the relatives of those who'd been killed. Lt. Edwin H. Gilbert of Company D wrote to the brother of Cpl. Charles Phelps. “The company—his Corps[,] as well as all that knew him, [knew that] he was a brave man and one that will be missed when the time of action comes, as well as in camp,” the lieutenant wrote. “He was buried as well as circumstances would allow us to do and his grave marked with a head board so that his friends could find his remains if they wished to remove him.” In another letter to Phelps's brother, Gilbert told Jay Phelps that if his brother had had any personal effects on him when he died, they were lost since “his body was not recovered until the day after the battle.” If Jay Phelps wanted to find Charles's grave, he should look on “the left side of the Battlefield,” where Charles's name had been “penciled” on a board at the head of the grave. “The 4th Michigan could not boast a braver or better Soldier than Corp. Charles W Phelps,” Gilbert wrote.18

Lt. John Bancroft had written to the next-of-kin of the men from Company H who died at Gettysburg, and now he heard from some of them. “Yours of the 16th [of July] brings painful tidings to my heart, a great loss to me and family,” wrote Abraham Purdy from Lapeer County. “But when I consider the cause in which my son was engaged I forebear to grieve and hope a speedy success to all the brave who are engaged in the defense of our glorious flag.” Purdy hoped that Bancroft would soon be able to return home to “enjoy the society of your friends,” but he also asked that the lieutenant look into the matter of $20 his son had loaned one of his sergeants. Bancroft had also written to the parents of Charles Wilson, who had signed up for the army in the small town of Litchfield but whose parents lived in Attica, Green County, Wisconsin. “It is hard news but it is the fortune of war,” Solomon Wilson wrote. “We have the pleasure of thinking that he died in a good cause, fighting for the flag of his country.” Wilson asked Bancroft to send the $20 allotment that Charlie had coming; Mrs. H. Wilson, the young man's mother, hoped Bancroft could tell her more about her son's death. “Now if it would not be asking to[o] much of you I would like to know the surgeon's name that attended Charles in his dying hours,” she wrote. “We have not ever had an opportunity of knowing or hearing what kind of soldier he was and we feel anxious to hear something about how he bore the struggle of death, if he had his senses or not. It is painful to think of one dying among strangers and no friend to speak one kind word to them.” Whether Bancroft was able to provide those details to Mrs. Wilson is unknown.¹⁹

Other letters written by officers were to comply with what must have seemed like the endless details of army bureaucracy. Captain Lamson found there was no escaping the government's requirement for accountability regarding its property—in this case, the gear of three soldiers who'd been badly wounded back at Fredericksburg in December. “The Regiment to which my command belongs was directed to advance under the fire of the enemy to take a certain position near Fredericksburg,” Lamson explained to government auditors, “in doing so (3) three Privates were severely wounded. The arms carried by these men were left on the field, as we were repulsed, and they could not be recovered.” The explanation wasn't good enough, however, and four months later Lamson was asked to give a list of the three lost sets of gear, from .58-caliber Springfield rifles and caps to waist belts and cartridge boxes.²⁰

Joel H. Barnes of Company K knew the importance of such paperwork, and he was concerned that his brother Luke, captured by Confederates back on June 26 after falling out on the march toward Gettysburg, would face court-martial and have to pay for losing his rifle. Some months earlier, Joel had sent an army equipment receipt—a kind of “rain check” good for one rifle—back to the western Michigan community of Leonidas. Luke Barnes had been quickly paroled by the Confederates, and his brother thought Luke could use that receipt to try to replace his lost rifle. But Joel had a surefire way to replace Luke's weapon if that didn't work. “[I]f he cannot [get a rifle with the receipt] I will steal one for him,” Joel asserted. He also assured family members that the casualties suffered by the U.S. Navy in dramatic sea battles they read about in newspapers were minimal compared to losses of the Army of the Potomac. “[O]ur last battle was the bigest that has been fought or that will be fought for they cannot get two such armies together again very soon,” Joel wrote about Gettysburg.21

August days continued hot with an occasional rain shower, though by the end of the month there was sometimes cool weather. “Meanwhile we go through the lazy routine of camp life in Virginia in ‘dog day,’” wrote Sgt. Edward Taylor, “a little drill—a little parade—much sleep, and ‘don't-know-what-to-do-with-oneself.’” A dramatic exception for the soldiers in their division was witnessing the execution of five deserters from the 118th Pennsylvania. Sgt. John Hewitt called it “an impressive scene.” James Houghton later recalled that the men were given a postponement of their sentence for three days since three of the men were Catholic and wanted a priest to pardon their sins. The end came for them on August 29. “[W]e were formed in two lines,” Houghton wrote, “the deserters were taken from a farm house that was near by and marched down in front of us[.] The Catholic Priest marched with them muttering words of consolation.” Then came a band playing the Death March, the drums muffled; the condemned men were walked to their graves, and seated on their coffins made of rough boards “where each one could see His final resting place,” Houghton recalled. Two of the men were cousins, and one got up and stepped over to his relative, kissing him and bidding him good-bye. “Each was then asked if they had anything to say, they all shook their heads no,” his account continued. Blindfolds were placed on the men and a firing squad of some 60 soldiers marched up. Half of these men had loaded rifles, while the other half had guns that were charged but without bullets. “[T]he order was soon given to ready ame [sic] and fire and they were all except one was swept back on to the coffins in an instant,” Houghton wrote. The men were marched back to camp. Lt. John Bancroft, who recorded so many experiences in the war, recorded nothing of it.²²

Private William J. Cunningham, 24, from Company K, mentioned the executions in a letter to his mother, but he stressed that “I have not the room on this page or the time to tell you about it.” He promised he would “some other time.” Regarding the terrible bloodshed he had witnessed, the soldier from Washtenaw County wrote that it seemed “that God is chastising his children with the fiery rock of correction, but I think [we] will come out of the fire after many trials a purer & wiser nation.” Of course, he realized his own enlistment would end in the coming year. “If my life is spared until next spring I will then return[,] but knowing what one day or hour mite [reveal] the hidden future and bring to light which is now hidden from our view.” Cunningham wrote. “[B]ut I am resigned to my fate let it be as it may.” As he closed his letter, he asked his mother to pray for him.²³

The 4th Michigan went on picket the day after the executions and came back into camp on September 2, when they received their new stand of colors, Sgt. John Hewitt of Company E noted in his journal. Lt. Robert Campbell, quartermaster, said he also procured this banner for the regiment, later describing its prominent feature as an “American eagle surrounded with stars upon a blue field.” Though drill, dress parade, and inspection occupied the soldiers, there was time to construct a race course; after it was completed, “horse racing [was] the order of the day,” Hewitt noted. “Major Hall Beat Col. [Gaines?] out of $100.”24

By now the war in northern Virginia had settled into a kind of stalemate in part because both the Union and Confederate armies in Virginia had grown smaller in the wake of Gettysburg. In the case of the Army of the Potomac, thousands of men were sent to New York because of draft riots. The enlistments of thousands of other soldiers also ended that summer. Yet thousands of new conscripts were arriving and their training began immediately. On the Confederate side, Lee's forces saw Longstreet and his troops leave for Tennessee in September, and soon the Union army knew it. Under pressure from Lincoln and chief general Henry W. Halleck, Meade planned a demonstration or raid.

The day after the soldiers of the 4th Michigan watched the horse racing, Union cavalry moved out on a reconnaissance and clashed with Rebels at Culpeper—the regiment heard firing in the distance on the morning of September 13. The next morning the officers were given their marching orders, though they remained in camp for two more days, continuing to drill, packing on the 15th, and marching the next day. The Fifth Corps tramped in the heat to within a two or three miles of Culpeper. Though the men were tired, they were pleased when the paymaster caught up and began to distribute some of their back pay. In the morning their division marched on through Culpeper and went into camp a short distance beyond it. For about three weeks they remained in this area. But no offensive materialized from the Union army's forward movement, though some of the more advanced elements reached the Rapidan River. The weather started to turn cold, sometimes rainy, and the troops witnessed the execution of yet another deserter, from the 12th New York. After having been absent from the 4th Michigan since Gettysburg, Henry Seage of Company E returned to the regiment, along with his father, the Reverend John Seage. “Boys all glad to see us,” the son wrote in his journal that night. Henry Seage had escorted his wounded brother to White Pigeon, arriving on September 10. After several days of socializing with family and friends, Seage and his father, more or less recovered from the wounds he received in May, boarded a train on September 21, arriving at Culpeper about 50 hours later. That same day, Seage later noted, three men from the Second Brigade were hanged for assaulting “an old negro woman.”²⁵

Major Jairus W. Hall wrote to Gov. Austin Blair that week, asking for an appointment to a new cavalry regiment forming in Michigan. “I am of the opinion that the cavalry service suits my disposition better than Infantry does,” Hall wrote hopefully, but ultimately in vain. A Spanish general visited and inspected their division, the 4th Michigan went on picket, and September waned. Sergeant Major Edward “Ned” Taylor thanked his sister Lottie for some tea she'd sent him; he mentioned that he shared some with his cook, an Englishman called “Old Jimmy,” who also cooked for Company A. Old Jimmy, he wrote, “declares it is the best he has tasted since leaving England.” As September came to a close the next day the regiment returned from uneventful picket duty and on October 1 marched back to Culpeper to witness the punishment of yet another deserter, this time a man from the 32nd Massachusetts whose head was shaved. Then he was branded and “drummed out” of the army. The 4th Michigan went back to its drill and inspections, while Lieutenant Bancroft was appointed to serve on a division court-martial, where he met Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain, the former commander of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. Chamberlain, of course, had been hailed as a hero at Gettysburg for charging Rebels at Little Round Top.26

In the meantime the effects of that battle continued taking their toll. Corporal David Laird, probably 20, had been in Company A and on the far right of the regiment's ill-fated line in the woods at the southwest corner of the Wheatfield. Like many others, he'd been shot in the back. As he lay in the hospital that summer and on into the fall, he told the Reverend R. J. Parvin of the U.S. Christian Commission that he was concerned about the nature of this wound—that the fact he'd been struck in the back would give people a bad impression of him, Laird said. From Hillsdale County, David's father Robert wrote back to Parvin, saying that David's wound “need give him no uneasiness. None who know him will suppose it to be there on account of cowardice.” His parents wrote and prayed, but David's condition deteriorated. A soldier serving at the army hospital telegraphed his father, who arrived in time to be with his son when he died on the morning of September 24. Parvin attempted to comfort Robert Laird, but the father told the pastor that wasn't necessary. “God has given me so much, in seeing the happy death of my boy, that I am perfectly content.” But Laird's faith may have been tested days later when he learned that another son, David's brother Sam, had been killed while serving as a sergeant with the 42nd Illinois at the battle of Chickamauga in the western theater of the war.²⁷

For just over a week camp life was quiet for the 4th Michigan until word reached the Union army that Confederate forces had crossed the Rapidan River on the Union right flank. Lee heard that two Union army corps had been detached from the Army of the Potomac. To take advantage of this opportunity, he pressed forward. In order to protect Washington, D.C., and his own supply lines, General Meade pulled back in what became several days of marches, dodges, clashes, and general back-and-forth movement nearly 50 miles from the Rapidan northeast toward Washington. Early on October 10, the 4th Michigan came back from picket, collected rations, and broke camp, marching to the southeast with other outfits from their division on what Bancroft described as reconnaissance toward the Rapidan. Soon they were pulled back to the site of their camp near Culpeper. The next day reveille sounded at 5:00 A.M., Sgt. John Hewitt noted, as the Union army marched northeast, back to the Rappahannock. A brass band played “Year of the Jubilee” and other tunes as they went through Culpeper and back across the river.²⁸

They were among the troops guarding the Beverly Ford as thousands of wagons and soldiers crossed on October 12, bivouacking that night at the site of their old camp by the ford. The next day, still watching for a Confederate attack, the regiment went into rifle pits near the river and then marched back over on a bridge with other troops from the Fifth and Sixth corps, advancing to Brandy Station, about midway between the Rappahannock and Culpeper, acting as rear guard as Union cavalry skirmished with Confederates. That evening the soldiers of the 4th Michigan and their division set huge campfires on the hills to indicate the presence of a huge Union force, but quietly picked up their gear at 1:00 A.M. on October 13, arriving at the Rappahannock at daylight. All day long the troops trudged to the northeast, covering 25 miles and camping that night at Catlett Station. Henry Seage, detailed to go with the pioneers and musicians who acted as ambulance and medical assistants, complained that his feet were so sore that he could hardly walk.

The long marching continued, the 4th Michigan passing Bristow Station and reaching Manassas Junction. Confederates attacked the Union rear and were repulsed, but commanders decided that the Fifth Corps units needed to hurry back to reinforce those troops. The 4th Michigan ran three or four miles along with others, but the shooting was over when they got there at dark. They turned around at ten o'clock and marched to a point just beyond Bull Run. There they stopped to camp early in the morning of October 15. Lieutenant Bancroft called this “a very tiresome march.”29

The skies opened up as the Union army moved toward Washington over the next two days. The 4th Michigan marched to Fairfax and then to Centreville and a wet, miserable bivouac. But at last this cat-and-mouse retreat was over. The Union army had prevented the Rebels from threatening the capital, but the ordeal of the weeklong march from Culpeper accomplished little for Lee or Meade. The sun came out on October 17 and dried out men's tents and blankets, and that “put a more cheerful aspect on our conditions and situation,” Henry Seage noted. The Confederate army moved back to the southwest and the Union army followed. Early the next morning, the march took the 4th Michigan to Fairfax Court House and then to a place called Fox's Mill. Capt. William H. Loveland of Company B was sent with a group of volunteers to lay an ambush for the infamous Confederate raider Mosby that night, but nothing came of it. On the 19th the 4th Michigan and the 32nd Massachusetts were designated as guards for the wagon train, and they covered about 15 miles that day, crossing over Bull Run and reaching the old battlefield in the evening. The ground was marked with the bones of the dead and entire skeletons that hadn't been buried sufficiently. Bancroft noted that the surviving fence rails on two nearby farms were “full of bullets,” another sign of the battles that had been fought here.³⁰

The wagon train moved a few miles to Gainesville the next day, where the 4th Michigan camped in the woods. On October 21 the wagons moved on towards Warrenton, and the regiment rejoined its Second Brigade and First Division that evening. Over the next few days the soldiers of the regiment sometimes stayed in bivouac and sometimes marched and camped in rain and mud, finally reaching Warrenton Junction. The location of their camp shifted along the nearby railroad line as the month ended, first to a place called Three Mile Station and again just days later to another point nearby. But there was good news for the soldiers that last week in October—it was now quiet along the lines. They received some soft (fresh) bread and they got paid. And when they were issued hardtack, the men were delighted to find “that it had no worms for the first time in 3 months,” Sergeant Hewitt noted.

The regiment was on picket in early November, and Lieutenant Bancroft periodically served on courts-martial. Though he had applied for a 15-day leave after learning that his mother was gravely ill back in Massachusetts, the generals turned him down—the Fifth Corps was under marching orders and no leaves were being granted. The 4th Michigan now numbered 207 soldiers, what with the addition of some drafted men, but it was still a small regiment with an even smaller core of experienced troops. Word began to circulate about the army's new offer to sign up soldiers who had enlisted back in 1861—they were being asked to sign up for another three-year hitch. “About 100 of our men are willing to reenlist if they can go home to reorganize,” Bancroft wrote.31

The 4th Michigan returned from picket and the next morning, November 7, was called out at 4:00 A.M. to strike its tents. Three hours later the men were marching with the rest of the Fifth Corps south past Bealton once more toward the Rappahannock River to a place called Rappahannock Station. Here the Confederates had built a fort surrounded by trenches in order to protect a pontoon bridge. The Fifth Corps and the Sixth Corps reached that vicinity in the afternoon and formed in line of battle in woods in front of the Rebel defenses. Corporal Henry Seage wrote that the 4th Michigan halted at the edge of the trees and lay down. Soon two artillery batteries rolled up in front of the regiment and opened fire on the Confederate works, and so did other Union guns up and down the line.

Lieutenant Bancroft had a “fine view” of this battlefield as soldiers from the Sixth Corps, to his right, advanced and traded fire with the Rebels. But the 4th Michigan and its brigade did not have to fight this day. In the evening skirmishers from the Sixth Corps and from the Third Brigade of the Fifth Corps's First Division boldly charged the Confederate works, causing hundreds of Rebels to surrender or flee. Men of the 4th Michigan were on guard duty that night as the soldiers bivouacked near Rappahannock Station, and the next morning marched south on the road to Kelly's Ford with the Fifth Corps. As the men were forming on the west side of the river after crossing on pontoons, General Meade rode by and the proud soldiers “gave him a lusty cheer,” Seage wrote. The Second Brigade marched two or three miles from the river and went into bivouac.32

The next day many of the men of the First Division of the Fifth Corps found they were short of rations, so they greeted their new temporary division commander, Brig. Gen. Joseph Bartlett, with calls of “hardtack!” as he rode by. Irritated by this lack of respect, Bartlett ordered them out to drill for the rest of the day. Their brigade moved their temporary camps across the river. It was a very cold night as the 4th Michigan went into bivouac, and when the men rose on the morning of November 10 they found everything covered in snow. Rations were issued in the morning and the men marched to a point between Morristown and Bealton Station. Here they stood picket for several days in the rain and cold. It was here that Henry Seage was assigned to the color guard on November 16, just as the man he would identify as having been the flag bearer at Gettysburg, Thomas Tarsney, was demoted to private. New clothing was also issued, and early on the morning of November 18 the 4th Michigan was sent back to Kelly's Ford. They crossed the river and rejoined the Fifth Corps. Using wood and stone from the old Confederate quarters here, the men put up their tents and built fireplaces, believing that now the Union army would be settling into winter camp.

It was not to be. Meade ordered another offensive across the Rapidan River. On November 24, the 4th Michigan moved out with its brigade and division in a rainstorm. “But the progress was slow and difficult,” Cyril P. Brown of Company F wrote to his parents. “Artillery wagons sunk in mud to the hubs, and men to the ankles.” They'd only moved about a mile when an order came for the troops to head back to camp, which the men cheerfully obeyed.³³

The Mine Run Campaign

After this false start the men got to stay in camp for a couple of more days. On November 25, the regiment was visited by Michigan adjutant general John Robertson, who made a gift of six new snare drums and a bass drum he had purchased from a sutler. But the next day, Thanksgiving, the offensive began anew, and the 4th Michigan moved out with the Fifth Corps. The troops marched several miles south to the Rapidan, arriving at about 1:00 P.M., crossing that evening at a point Henry Seage described as a mile-and-a-half above Ely's Ford. Two or three miles beyond the river, the column reached the Orange Plank Road and marched about a mile toward Chancellorsville. After that long day's tramp into the night, the soldiers camped on a large hill in the cold.

The march resumed in the morning of November 27 through the rough, forested area called the Wilderness, with the brigade and division trudging along the plank road and then turning off onto a country lane that took them to the Gordonsville Pike. But then came the sound of gunfire from the rear as Confederate cavalry from the brigade of Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Rosser attacked their wagon train. Seage thought that 14 ammunition wagons were captured, but Rosser reported his troopers captured eight ordnance wagons and seven ambulances and destroyed between 35 and 40 wagons. Two 4th Michigan teamsters, Tim Burtch and William Smith, were among the nearly 100 Union wagoners captured by the Rebels; both men ultimately survived the war.

Meade's offensive pressed on. By late morning, the soldiers heard skirmish fire. “We were now hurried forward—the last mile we double-quicked,” Cyril Brown wrote. The men moved off the road into the woods, loading their rifles. His company was deployed as skirmishers when the 4th Michigan arrived at the front—the Union army would once again confront the Confederates in strong defensive positions. Shots were exchanged, but that evening the regiment's skirmishers were sent back to their regiment's place in the line. Though Rebel guns opened on them, none of the Michigan troops were injured. The men spent another cold night on their arms, since no fires could be built or food cooked.34

This was the opening of Meade's ill-fated Mine Run campaign, named for a high-banked creek that flowed in a northerly direction through the countryside to the Rapidan. The soldiers were roused in the morning, Brown said, a few at a time; they were allowed to walk to the rear to make coffee as rain fell. An expected Confederate attack didn't materialize, and the soldiers of the Fifth Corps were drawn back to the plank road, “where we right-faced and marched to Robertson's Tavern, reaching there about noon,” Brown said. The men were again put in line of battle—Sergeant Hewitt said they “layed in the mud all day.” It seemed to Lieutenant Bancroft that there would be a fight, but the men ended up encamping in the fields. According to Brown's understanding of the situation, they had moved that day from near the left of the Union line toward its center. The next day, November 29, the soldiers of the 4th Michigan, with the other regiments of their corps, advanced and formed line of battle on the Union right, near Mine Run. But Lee had reacted quickly to this winter offensive, moving his men into strong positions above the steep river banks with trenches for the infantry and strong artillery placement. The orders the Michigan men now received gave many soldiers pause, particularly those who'd seen the results of infantry attacks on strong defensive positions at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. “[I]n the afternoon we were informed that our corps would storm the Rebel works at sun down,” Sergeant Hewitt wrote. The Fifth Corps would be one of four that, according to Meade's plan, would charge across the creek, Lieutenant Bancroft noted. The Third Brigade of the division would go first, as skirmishers, and their Second Brigade would follow.

Orders came for the soldiers to take nothing with them except their weapons and canteens, so the soldiers of the 4th Michigan piled their knapsacks. “Many of the men gave their money and watches to the Chaplain and all felt serious enough,” Bancroft wrote. Cyril Brown also noted that men knew many of them wouldn't survive the charge, set for 4:00 P.M. “There naturally were some long faces,” he wrote. “None of us knew who would see the morning sun.” The men lay down with their rifles at the ready, and darkness fell. But the order to charge didn't come. The men began to feel the tension lift. They were ordered to pull back.³⁵

Still, they weren't out of the woods. At 1:00 A.M. on the morning of November 30 the soldiers were told to get to their feet and eat whatever breakfast they could find. Again they were told to prepare to charge and again the soldiers left their packs with a guard. The 4th Michigan marched to the right with its brigade, division, and corps, and began to form into multiple lines of battle in the woods. “Our regiment formed a portion of the 3rd line,” Cyril Brown wrote. They waited in the freezing weather. Lieutenant Bancroft wrote that men “tramped around and around until the woods were trodden like a path” as they attempted to keep warm. “It was bitter cold,” Brown agreed, “and fires of course could not be allowed…. In spite of all exertions, it seemed as though we would freeze.” Men who lay down and fell asleep had to be helped off the field. The charge was scheduled for 8:00 A.M., but the hour came and went. They waited.

At 8:30 Union batteries posted on a hill to the left of the 4th Michigan opened fire, and the Confederates responded. This was it, the soldiers thought. “We now fell in and took our guns, every one expecting the hour, and perhaps his last hour[,] had come,” Brown wrote. “But the attack is postponed. Slowly the day wears away.” “No fires, no coffee, no charge,” Lieutenant Bancroft wrote. The soldiers heard that other troops—pickets from the Sixth and Second Corps, who waded the stream and got soaked—froze to death. But more importantly Union commanders looked at the Confederate positions and were surprised by what they saw. Lee's men were in strong, lengthy defenses. The generals made their decision—there would be no assault. Pleased they weren't being sent on a suicidal attack, the Union soldiers tried to keep from freezing throughout the rest of the day. At dark the 4th Michigan pulled back, as did thousands of other soldiers. “Went back to our camping ground of the previous night,” Bancroft wrote. “Had a good supper. Felt relieved in not charging.”36

Brown agreed. The men marched back cold and “sick of the army and everything connected with it. But a good fire and hot cup of coffee soon put me in a better state of mind.” Bancroft and others made beds of pine boughs in the shelter of the trees, with huge fires blazing nearby. “Slept soundly, feeling thankful We were not on the hillside between our lines and the rebel works,” he wrote. A few days later Brown added a postscript about the Mine Run campaign. “I have since learned that the reason of Meade's abandoning his plan of attack was that he learned by a reconnaissance sent out Sunday night that Mine Run was from three to ten feet deep,” he wrote. “For men to charge thro' such a stream, up a craggy hill covered with cannon, supported by thousands of armed men, would be a useless slaughter.”

The next day, December 1, the men woke, gathered around their fires, and eventually prepared to move out. “About dark we commenced a retrograde movement,” Sergeant Hewitt wrote about the pullout from Mine Run, “arrived at the Rapidan about 12 oc [o'clock] and camped for the night.” Henry Seage noted that he and his father took their place in the ordnance train and went along the pike through the nighttime woods and back to the plank road to the Germanna Ford. The 4th Michigan guarded this train, crossing the river at about three in the morning and proceeding on a mile or so to build camp, only to be promptly ordered to take everything down and march another half-mile or so, to be closer to the rest of their division. The men were aggravated as well as exhausted. “About ten minutes after stopping, or five minutes after, everyone was asleep,” Lieutenant Bancroft wrote.³⁷

The Mine Run campaign was over.