THE MARCH BACK FROM THE CANCELLED WINTER OFFENSIVE CONTINUED ON DECEMBER 2. THE men of the 4th Michigan complained that they rose and began moving about seven, without food or coffee, and tramped several hours into the early afternoon to the town of Stevensburg. The next day their corps moved across the Rappahannock, and the Second Brigade of the First Division marched on to Bealton Station, part of the Fifth Corps's deployment along the railroad line. For two days the men were allowed to rest. On December 6, the regiment moved to the other side of the railroad, where the soldiers built their winter camp.
“We then went to work with a will putting up winter quarters,” wrote Cyril Brown, the young man from Hudson who joined Company F in the late summer of 1862. “We had to bring logs on our backs about a mile, but that's nothing. It only wants time and patience.” It took Brown and his bunkmate four days to complete their cabin. “We have as good a fire place and bunk as I could ask for,” he wrote with satisfaction. The journals of Henry Seage and John Hewitt, both of Company E, also indicate that the soldiers carried logs and stone to build. They were pleased about its location on the railroad. “I am contented with the place,” wrote Brown. “We have no picket duty to do. Guarding supplies at the depot is our duty.” Yet within a month's time, Brown became quite ill, and he would soon be discharged for disability.
Lieutenant Bancroft and Capt. William H. Loveland were now the officers for the 5th Company, since the regiment's 10 companies had been consolidated into five, though officers and men continued to identify themselves as members of their old alphabetical company designation. The two officers helped the men put up their cabins, and in doing so, helped themselves. Notes in Bancroft's diary (turned into a scrapbook after the war) contain a copy of a letter he wrote in January, in which he stated there was a lack of horses or mules around the brigade early in December since the vast majority of teamsters were busy bringing food and supplies to the Union soldiers. But by managing to secure the services of a team, Bancroft and Loveland provided their men the use of a wagon for several days to carry logs and rocks. As the men finished their own cabins, the two officers got assistance from grateful troops. They put up a comfortable 9-foot by 11-foot cabin with walls four feet high, topped by two wagon covers for the roof. It had a fireplace, stone chimney, furniture, and door. “We took a great deal of comfort there, called it ‘home,’” Bancroft wrote.1
The war had come to a close, more or less, for the season, though there was the occasional raid by Confederate cavalry that could result in an alarm or skirmish. “All quiet along the lines,” wrote Sgt. John Hewitt. The weather was rainy, but fine days still occasionally appeared. The soldiers drew new clothing and got paid. Capt. William F. Robinson of Company H, the former dentist who had escaped with his life at Gettysburg, still found himself having to explain to the War Department what happened to equipment that had been lost when five of his men had been killed, eight wounded, and four captured: “The arms carried by all these men were left on the field, as we were repulsed, and they could not be recovered,” Robinson wrote in a sworn statement about the 17 rifles, belts, cartridge boxes, bayonet scabbards, and various other pieces of gear. He was not alone; Lt. Michael Vreeland, who had barely survived his wounds at the same battle, would also be pressed for an explanation of his company's lost arms and equipment, as were others.
By now word had reached the men of the 4th Michigan of the death of another of their comrades who'd been captured by the Confederates at Gettysburg. This was Sgt. John G. Brownell of Woodstock, who'd been in Company F. Brownell's parents heard that their son had been released in a prisoner exchange in late in October, but died soon after. Was this story true? The parents wanted to know what had really happened, but couldn't get any information. An acquaintance, an officer in the cavalry, investigated and found that it was true; Brownell had been released but died from the effects of starvation suffered at Libby Prison. He was one of several men who died out of a group of 150 prisoners released. After he'd been captured, the Rebels had taken Brownell's shoes, coat, and other clothing, leaving him only his shirt, a pair of pants, and worn-out stockings. He was, the friend wrote, “wasted to a skeleton, and died of sheer starvation and exhaustion.” The friend had wanted to send Brownell's body home, but had to have him buried at Annapolis, Maryland.2
As the winter camp was established in early December, Lt. Col. George Lumbard penned a politically astute note to Gov. Austin Blair. Lumbard had wanted to become full colonel and commander of the 4th Michigan since the late fall of 1862. Although he now ran the regiment, he still was hoping to get that colonel's commission. But because his regiment was so reduced in number, he needed it filled up in order to justify that promotion, since the War Department seemed to be satisfied with having lieutenant colonels and majors run small regiments. “I have made up my mind to remain the service as long as the war lasts providing I can and [I] shall do all in my power to get this regiment to reenlist,” he wrote. “I hope the organization [of the 4th Michigan] will be kept up and that we shall receive in January 5 or 6 hundred men and then by spring we shall have as good a regiment as ever and one that will maintain the reputation of Michigan troops and do its full share in closing up the war, which I hope will be closed ere another year.”
This was Lumbard pushing all the right buttons: Linking his request for promotion to colonel to his desire to get hundreds of more men for his regiment in order to help defeat the Confederacy—something that mattered greatly to Blair. Lumbard insisted that “nearly every man in the regiment would reenlist for three years if they could go home soon and remain sixty days.” The men of the 4th Michigan were in good spirits, he maintained, but because the regiment was so small, “that spirit of invincibility which they formerly had” was lacking. Still, Lumbard wrote, his men and officers were not discouraged: “They say let the war go on until the Rebels call for quarters and cry enough.” Major Jairus Hall and most of the officers would continue to serve, he said.
It would turn out that Lumbard was overconfident when he predicted “nearly every man” would reenlist, but it was the right thing to say to Blair. Lumbard was also careful not to cross the governor on the subject of who should be the next regimental surgeon for the regiment. Initially he had recommended Dr. John Watts, who'd been the 4th Michigan's assistant surgeon for some time. Before he'd been killed, Harrison Jeffords had recommended Watts for the post. But the governor had decided to appoint Dr. Luther French, a physician from Hudson who'd resigned as assistant regimental surgeon because of sickness back in the spring of 1863. That was fine with Lumbard; he just didn't want to make an enemy of Watts. Lumbard needed no reminding of the trouble he had with Blair when the governor appointed then–Captain Jeffords to be colonel early in 1863. Lumbard didn't want a recurrence of this kind of trouble. “I did not wish by refusing to recommend him [Watts] to make myself another enemy, having as I thought[,] incurred the displeasure of the Gov. through the representations of former members of the regiment, under similar circumstances,” Lumbard wrote.3
While Lumbard lobbied for promotion, the issue facing most of the soldiers of the 4th Michigan was that question of reenlistment. On December 20, Major Jairus Hall read the assembled troops the order that dealt with this. Essentially it was an offer aimed at the men who joined for three years back in the spring of 1861. In six months, their hitch would be up and the spring campaign would be well under way; the government needed these men to reenlist now. In exchange for committing for three more years, they would be formally designated as “Veteran Volunteers.” They would also collect a bounty from the state of Michigan of hundreds of dollars, and go home on a 30-day furlough. But it was said that they needed three-quarters of the men present to sign up for that hitch in order to get that leave and those benefits. Sergeant Hewitt noted that “staff officers [are] doing their best to get the men to reenlist.”
This “great effort,” as Capt. William F. Robinson characterized it, continued over the next several days, and about 20 men reenlisted on Christmas. The next day, the 4th Michigan was formed in a square just outside Lt. Col. George Lumbard's tent; Hewitt said the men heard “some fine speeches but I am not going to enlist.” Henry Seage, who joined in September 1861, said he was “taken,” apparently swept up by the rhetoric, and he and his cabin mate Amon C. Lake did sign up, though service records shows that Seage mustered out of the army at the expiration of his original three-year hitch, while Lake was fated to die that spring. Neither is listed as a Veteran Volunteer in the state regimental record. How was this possible? Seage's diary shows that within several weeks of his signing up for the extended hitch, he was apparently allowed to change his mind. On February 19, 1864, he went to talk to Captain Monteith about “my term of enlistment.” Henry Seage would leave the service in September 1864, the end of his original three-year term. By comparison, Tom Tarsney, who had entered the 4th Michigan when Seage did and who also signed up for the additional hitch, had to serve most of it. Like other 4th Michigan “Veteran Volunteers,” Tarsney was not discharged until early in 1866.4
Perhaps it was also significant that one of the immediate rewards for men who reenlisted was a party courtesy of Lumbard and Major Hall—a party with plenty of liquor. On the night of December 29, 1863, Seage wrote, probably with sarcasm: “Major & Col. distributed whiskey among the vets and an awful drunk ensued. A fine way to get men to enlist.” Hewitt, who'd refused to sign up again, also noted the party in his journal. Another member of the regiment who was refusing to reenlist was Sergeant Major Edward H. C. Taylor. Ever since Ned Taylor had resigned his lieutenant's commission in that feud at the formation of the regiment, he'd longed for a promotion back to an officer's status. But this didn't happen; it had taken him nearly three years to reach the rank of sergeant major. Now that his colonel and major were pressuring him to reenlist, Taylor said no—not unless he was given a commission. “I fear the Colonel and Major don't like it at all,” Taylor wrote of his demand. “What do I care?”
Friends in the regiment warned him not to reenlist on the promise of a promotion, and Taylor was taking their advice. “[T]hey can't make me remain in the service longer than the 20th day of June next,” he wrote. Another experienced soldier who'd been with the 4th Michigan who'd refused to sign up again was Silas Sadler of Company G. He was sorry that his mother, back in Tecumseh, wrongly believed he was reenlisting, for he heard she had suffered “a crying spell.” “But you must not worry any more about it for I won't reinlist now,” Sadler wrote his parents. Sadler and other soldiers were hoping their hitch would come to a close while his regiment was doing guard duty along the railroad line near Bealton Station.5
Men like Sadler and Hewitt and Taylor had had enough. They had risked their lives and endured hardships for three years. Now they believed it was time for someone else to step up and serve. Nor were they exceptions. More than 150 of the soldiers and officers in the 4th Michigan were unwilling to reenlist, slightly more than half of the men who were eligible to do so. A man who signed his letter to his hometown newspaper “Veteran” gave the example of Company A. Between promotions, casualties, and illness, 35 of the original 106 enlisted men and officers of this company were still present for duty by the spring of 1864. Of those, 13 men, or less than half of those eligible in the company for the reenlistment offer, actually signed up for it. Other companies seem to have had similar situations.6
One soldier who had enough of the war was Sgt. Jonas D. Richardson, from Washtenaw County. He was hoping for a discharge or at least a transfer back to Michigan. Richardson, who enlisted at the age of 21 in the spring of 1861, twisted his ankle in the retreat from the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. By the fall of 1863 he'd become sick and lame enough that he was transferred to the Veteran Reserve Corps, or what had first been called the “Invalid Corps.” This was a relatively new branch of the army that allowed men who'd been wounded or sick, but not completely disabled, to do light duty and remain in the service. On Christmas Eve, from Lincoln General Hospital, not far from Washington, Richardson wrote to his brother, convinced that if he could get his hands on $20 to pay a surgeon, he could buy a discharge, just as he said others were doing. Richardson urged his brother to hurry and send this amount. Otherwise, he wrote,
The chance may slip by. So if you have that amount on hand and can spare it for a short time send it to me by express without delay. A Surgeon in the City, whose wife holds the rank of Colonel in the Sanitary Commission has been authorized by the Vice President and ten Senators to make out the discharges of all Soldiers who they think not fit for service, the amount to be paid for said discharge is $25. No examination to be held[;] the papers are all made out and sent to the Surg. Genl. for his signature[;] the money is then forked over and all the accounts settled. I have seen this Surgeon today and paid him $5 to bind the bargain and he says that within 4 or 6 days after I pay him the balance I shal have my discharge.
Once he got his discharge, Richardson wrote, he would get the back pay due him and repay his brother. “If I had the money today, I could get home by New Year's day,” he wrote. He wished his brother a merry Christmas and urged him to answer as quickly as he received the letter.7
Yet this wasn't the only tactic Richardson tried to get home. He also managed to get Governor Blair to request his transfer to Michigan, and this arrived three days later on December 27 in the form of a letter for Richardson to present to federal authorities. The next day Richardson took that request from Blair to the office of the Provost Marshal General but got a big disappointment when he was “informed that the Secretary of War had forbidden the transferring of any more ‘individuals,’ only companies.” “[I] am bust up on that affair,” Richardson wrote. That left open only the possibility of buying a medical discharge. Richardson appealed to his brother again, urging him to “make no delay” in sending the $20 needed to pay the surgeon for signing a discharge. “4 soldiers got there [sic] discharges today while I was there,” he fretted. But Richardson didn't get the money; he wouldn't get his early discharge, and he remained in the hospital.8
December passed slowly by. Lieutenant Colonel Lumbard wrote out the obligatory year-end report to the state adjutant general that summarized the movements, marches, and battles of the regiment through 1863. The regiment had marched over 700 miles that year, he wrote; between November 1, 1862, and the same date in 1863, it had lost 57 killed or mortally wounded; 24 had died of disease, with another 141 discharged for disability; 135 had been wounded, and 57 were missing in action; 105 had been taken prisoner. Another 25 men had deserted the regiment, and 47 had been discharged by order.
There was a train derailment on the line in the vicinity of the 4th Michigan's camp, but no one was injured, and the regiment's clerks were busy preparing muster and pay rolls as the year closed with a gray, rainy day. “Good by 1863,” Sergeant Hewitt wrote in his journal; “it has been an eventful year.” Henry Seage also bid farewell to the year, “with its toils and hardships.” Lt. John Bancroft had been after a furlough for some weeks, and just after the middle of the month December, he was allowed to visit family in Massachusetts. He arrived back in Washington on New Year's Day and returned to the regiment on January 2. Men were still reenlisting, but the routine of winter camp was monotonous, and Bancroft spent his days studying for an examination before a board of officers from the Ordnance Bureau. He often rode in the countryside with his friend, Captain Loveland. “Life here is now very tedious,” he complained as the days dragged on. “Nothing to do.”
In the meantime Jairus Hall sent information back to Michigan about the reenlisting of the regiment's veterans. “By a letter from Major Hall, of the 4th Infantry, we learn that 121 men of that regiment were mustered into service on the 8th inst. [of January] as veterans, and would be paid off the next day,” a newspaper reported. That number would go up to 124 by later in the month and by another account, tick up to about 140. The paper noted the 4th Michigan's record in battle and mentioned that several of its former officers had gone on to command other regiments—Capt. John Oliver had become the colonel of the 15th Michigan, while Marshall Chapin was now the colonel of the 23rd Michigan. Capt. Charles Doolittle had become colonel of the 18th Michigan, with another 4th Michigan alumnus, George Spalding, serving as Doolittle's lieutenant colonel.9
The ties between the 4th Michigan and the communities that sent its men off to war remained strong. Some soldiers from Tecumseh sent $50 back through Lt. Jerome Allen in January 1864 for the building of a new First Methodist Episcopal Church. More importantly, in Hillsdale County and other nearby communities, men were trying to recruit new companies for the 4th Michigan. The first was Cornelius Van Valer, about 47 and a former captain of the 18th Michigan, which formed back in the summer of 1862; now Van Valer was to be a captain of a new company in the 4th Michigan. His lieutenant was 21-year-old William H. Sherman. Another officer with this new company, John V. B. Goodrich, 27, from Lenawee County, would be a familiar face to the regiment's veterans. He had enlisted in the 4th Michigan's Company A in the fall of 1861 but was discharged for disability slightly more than a year later. Now he was given a second lieutenant's commission for helping to recruit the new company. Another supporter of the 4th Michigan, Enos Canniff of Hudson, a former sutler to the regiment, also was attempting to recruit another company, though Canniff himself would not actually serve with it. One man who was signing up, James B. Dickerson of Hudson, essentially rejoined his old regiment. Dickerson was 34 when he originally joined Company F back in the spring of 1861, and he'd been promoted to sergeant that fall. But he'd been discharged for disability after the Seven Days. Now at the age of 37 he enlisted again in the 4th Michigan.
Despite the efforts of Van Valer and Canniff to form two companies, they simply couldn't enlist enough men. They did, however, have enough men between them to make one full company. As a result, within a few weeks, the state adjutant general and the U.S. Army officer in charge of the recruiting office in Detroit would order Van Valer's and Canniff's recruits consolidated into a single company, which was designated “the Independent Company” in the state's published roster of the 4th Michigan after the war. Months would pass, however, before these men finally joined the regiment at the front in Virginia.10
Snow and rain kept the 4th Michigan and other soldiers in their division from doing much other than the routines of guard duty and washing. Muddy conditions sometimes helped bring the cancellation of inspections and parades and Henry Seage noted that camp life had indeed become boring. “Hope we will soon have some excitement,” he wrote. The only real action came when some Confederate cavalry tried to make a raid on a nearby general's headquarters, but were repulsed. More cerebral and entertaining sorts of conflict came when Dr. John Watts, Capt. James McLean and Lt. Josiah Emerson, among others, organized debate teams that included some privates. The Reverend John Seage, prominent in the debates, was on the team that argued against the proposition “that men in the field are better qualified to elect our National officer than citizens at Home.” The chaplain's team lost. Perhaps those who judged the merits of the debate couldn't set aside a belief that they, rather than average civilians, better understood who should be president of the United States. Other pastimes included a dance that was held somewhere in the neighborhood (“but it is [too] muddy to go,” Sergeant Hewitt complained), impromptu concerts and speeches, and rabbit hunting in the nearby countryside. One dance, sponsored by some officers, abruptly ended when a brawl broke out. The arrival of four women a couple of days later, seemingly prostitutes who came to the camp from Kelly's Ford, “drew off the looser part of the Regt after them,” Henry Seage noted.11
Sgt. Maj. Edward Taylor was pleased to take the role of acting regimental adjutant when George Maltz went on leave, and the Reverend John Seage performed a wedding service for Pvt. Daniel W. Langford, a Company B soldier about 28 years old from Lenawee County, when he married a Virginia girl, one Miss Grove. “Bully for him,” Henry Seage wrote approvingly. But there was no happy ending for Langford and his wife. Already captured at Gettysburg and afterward exchanged, he was captured again by Confederate troops in less than a few months' time. Langford would die in the notorious Andersonville prison camp before the year was out.
The snow turned to rain, and days of fine weather sometimes appeared in what were otherwise cold times as January gave way to February. Major Hall left for Michigan on recruiting service—as it turned out he wouldn't return to Virginia—and the regiment was called out one night at 11:30 P.M. when what sounded like gunfire came from the direction of the Second Brigade headquarters. “The firing proved to be the falling of the Mule Barn,” Henry Seage wrote. A petition circulated among the officers and men asking Gov. Austin Blair to promote George Lumbard to the post of full colonel. Lieutenant Bancroft passed the time reading the novels of Alexander Dumas, while Sergeant Hewitt sometimes was assigned to act as an orderly for Lumbard. As the weather improved late in the month, the men were able to play baseball. But as officers returned from leaves there was also a resumption of favorite officers' activities for the soldiers—inspection, drill, and parade.12
At last the time had come for the veterans of the 4th Michigan who had reenlisted to go home on leave, boarding trains for the first leg of the trip back for Michigan on February 25. They arrived in Michigan after three days of travel. The citizens of the town of Adrian had been expecting the soldiers' arrival since late January, “making arrangements to give them a grand reception,” one newspaper reported. But this welcome didn't happen. According to the Detroit Free Press, the 4th Michigan “did not return as a regiment, with arms and colors.” This was because only about half of the regiment's complement of men who'd been with the 4th Michigan since 1861 had reenlisted. Thus the soldiers returned more as a band of weary travelers. “[N]o notice had been given of their arrival, and consequently it was unknown, and no public demonstrations were made,” the paper reported. “The men preferred to return quietly.”
In Adrian they were issued their furloughs for 35 days and went their various ways. Eight of the officers and 138 of the men took a train to Detroit after getting their leaves. A visit by these returning soldiers was a notable event for small-town newspapers. “We were pleased to receive a call from our old friends Seth Bolles and James Harroun of the 4th Mich. Inft. who are at home on furlough,” the editor of the Hillsdale paper reported. “The boys are in good spirits, and say they are bound to see the rebel game played out.” The editor of the Monroe Commercial, in the town where local volunteers comprised much of Company A, mentioned the names of 13 men and officers as it reported the reenlisting veterans' return home. “These are nearly all left in the service in Co. A who left Monroe in 1861,” the paper reported. “Several have been transferred to other Regiments, but the greater portion have departed from life and its scenes and battles, never to return.” In fact about half of the original company, or 49 soldiers, remained on the regimental rolls in the spring of 1864, though only a part of this number was fit for duty or otherwise present.13
In Indiana, a military ball was thrown in Angola in honor of the return of the men from Steuben County who had joined the 4th Michigan's Company B back in the spring of 1861. The band that provided the music was “Freygang's Quadrille Band,” and it is likely that the bandleader was an in-law to the Indiana soldier in the regiment named George E. Young, who had married his sweetheart, Elizabeth Freygang, back in 1861 in Adrian. During his career as a soldier Young had been wounded in battle and captured and held, sick, as a prisoner, before finally being released. But Young was not there at the ball with his wife and family, for he had declined to reenlist. Young wouldn't get back to Indiana until his original enlistment was up in June.14
There were honors for Lt. Col. George Lumbard, originally from Hillsdale, fetes he doubtlessly enjoyed. In Detroit, some of the veteran officers and men of the regiment, led by Capt. William H. Loveland, presented him a “beautiful sword, sash and belt, worth at least $150,” while the leading citizens from his old hometown sponsored a dinner for him at the Waldon House hotel in Hillsdale. Perhaps just as important if not more so to Lumbard was that he at last was given the commission of colonel of the 4th Michigan Infantry by Governor Blair.15
While the reenlisting veterans of the 4th Michigan enjoyed themselves, the weather continued to moderate in Virginia, allowing men like Sgt. John Hewitt to play baseball and to work on their winterized tents. With so many men gone, the officers sometimes cancelled tasks such as inspection and dress parade. “Very pleasant today,” Hewitt wrote on March 9, “more Recruits arrived[.] Playing Ball the Chief occupation.” A period of relatively good weather was sometimes broken up by rain and even snowfalls, but the soldiers had a comparatively easy time of it. “Some of the 62[nd Pennsylvania] were Drunk tonight,” Hewitt wrote about his fellow soldiers on St. Patrick's Day. Henry Seage enjoyed the 9th Massachusetts's celebration of the day with horse racing and jumping, bag races for the men, and a mock parade that poked fun at army discipline and order. Four days later, Hewitt noted that he walked over to the railroad line where one of the Irish regiments from the east was posted. “Had a great time with the Micks,” Hewitt wrote, perhaps referring to the men of the 9th Massachusetts.
On other nights men went to dances or attended the regiment's intramural debates on topics like “War is promoter of Civilization,” “the U.S. should treat the States in Rebellion as alien enemies,” and “women should have the right of Election Franchise in the U.S., the same as men.” The team arguing for the proposition won the first debate, while the teams arguing against the latter two propositions won. Henry Seage was proud to have been elected secretary of the regiment's “Lyceum,” the organizers of the debates, for the month of March.16
There were, however, contests of a physical nature when soldiers had too much to drink. Joseph H. Jagger of Company E, then about 24, from the town of Reading, got into a fight with Lt. James W. Vesey of Sturgis, from Company C. Alcohol seems to have induced Vesey's aggressive behavior, with charges brought against him for instigating the affair. But he apparently paid no serious penalty for it. Other soldiers joined in the brawl, with Francis Waller, 23, of Hillsdale County punching one of his comrades, David Fox, 22, who'd probably been one of his neighbors back home. Each of these men would soon be among the casualties in the coming battles of the spring of 1864. The soldiers of the 4th Michigan lay on their arms in line of battle on the night of March 18 expecting a Confederate raid on their section of the rail line, but nothing came of it.17 “I took cold owing to the Regiment being obliged one cold damp night to remain up all night under arms in expectation of an attack on the R.R. at this point,” Sergeant Major Edward H. C. Taylor complained. “We didn't have an hour's sleep till after daylight and it was so cold and chilly and damp it took me a week to get warm again.” Ned Taylor had been acting adjutant and regimental clerk during this period when so many officers and men were on leave, but when Lt. George Maltz returned later in the month, he said: “I sink back to my old rank of Sergt. Major.”18
A more significant arrival for the Army of the Potomac occurred just two weeks earlier in March, and it portended great and terrible things. Ulysses Grant had come to the front from Washington after being promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, commander of all Union forces. The soldiers knew of Grant's reputation as a leader who would consistently attack—he'd done that in the western theater of the war. But they also knew that fighting in the eastern theater of the war was not at all like combat in the west, where Grant made his name. “Gen. Grant is at Culpepper and superintending the reorganization and remodeling of this Army,” Taylor wrote that month. “A large number of troops have been sent out to the front from Washington and things look like a move in less than a month—I think Grant will do well if not hampered by Washington with its dead weight of intrigue and politics.” Taylor believed if the new commander was allowed to handle things his way, he would “fight” the Army of the Potomac that summer. “I hope so,” Taylor wrote,” and have full confidence in his generalship as does most of the army.”19
New men periodically arrived at the 4th Michigan's camp and those of other regiments, too, and some of them seemed to have to undergo some hazing. “Raised Fits with the recruits,” Henry Seage wrote in his diary. “Smoked, burned, etc. This was the initiation.” A cold snap brought a sudden snow on March 22, and the some of the men had a snowball fight. Still there were signs that in very short order, the active campaigning of spring would soon resume. “The sick of the Regt were sent off today,” Hewitt wrote on March 25. Soldiers understood that when the regimental hospitals were emptied and the sick were sent back to Washington or other towns, it usually meant that a move was coming. But when? As April began, the veteran enlisted men and officers who'd been sent home on furlough arrived back in camp. Some seem to have brought with them the rumor that the 4th Michigan was going to be sent back home within the coming month.
The weather turned rainy and men did household chores or entertained themselves by visiting friends, serenading (holding impromptu musical performances and speeches), attending the “Lyceum” debates, or sometimes going fishing. The men also learned that one of their comrades who'd been captured by the Confederates at Gettysburg, Sgt. William Limbarker of Company F, had been shot down some months earlier while leading a cleanup detail at the Belle Isle prison camp in Richmond. “It seems an officer spoke to him but he did not hear, whereupon a guard drew up and shot him down—C[onfederate] Chivalry!” Ned Taylor wrote with indignation.20
Lt. John Bancroft, who had applied for a transfer to another part of the Union army, received orders to report to a board of examiners that would consider his application on April 20. On March 30, he arrived in Washington and took a room, intending to prepare for the exam. During his time in Washington, Bancroft attended a debate in the U.S. Congress and took a day to study philosophy at the Smithsonian; he would meet old friends and attend a festival. The coming spring offensive, however, would derail his plans for a transfer. Back in Virginia the men from the 4th Michigan bided their time, waiting for the new offensive to begin. Reverend Seage, who had survived being shot by Rebel guerillas in the spring of 1863, got leave to travel to New York to perform the marriage ceremony for his own son Richard Watson Seage, who'd survived his Gettysburg wounds. Henry Seage said heavy rains destroyed three railroad bridges over which Union supply trains ran on the night of April 10, but within a couple of days they were rebuilt and the trains were once again bringing men and supplies to the front.
Soldiers who'd been sick or on leave continued to return to the regiment, although one soldier's arrival rankled young Henry Seage. “Tho[ma]s Terwilliger arrived,” Seage noted. “This skunk went to Hosp[ital] while at Gains Mill and has been bumming around the convalescent camp until today.” In Terwilliger's defense, it should be noted that thousands of other soldiers also hung around the Union's convalescent camps for long periods of time. Some of these long stays were unjustifiable, but a summary of Terwilliger's record shows that he had been transferred to the Invalid Corps in the fall of 1863 until being ordered back to his regiment. It may be that Terwilliger was malingering, but it's also possible the soldier was recovering and moved around at the whim of unknowable reasons for which military bureaucracies are famous.
Jonas D. Richardson, the sergeant with the 4th Michigan who'd been lame for some months and placed in the Veterans Reserve Corps, was now sick and doing what he could to get out of “this worst of all holes[,] Lincoln Hospital.” Though unhealthy, Richardson had worked for some weeks in early 1864 delivering messages from one floor to another in the War Department, a job he said would be fatiguing for a person who was well, let alone for a soldier who was sick. His health had deteriorated to the point where he was sent back to the hospital. By early March Richardson was still hoping he could get his medical discharge. “But I have in a measure learned to put up with misfortune and endeavor to console myself with the reflection that I have only 3 months and 17 days to serve Uncle Sam.”21
Richardson was given the job of doing guard duty at the hospital, and he was hopeful, as were other soldiers in the 4th Michigan who hadn't reenlisted, that he would be discharged on May 16, the date in 1861 that the regiment had come into being with the commission of Dwight Woodbury as its commander. Many of them believed, wrongly, that May 16, 1864, marked the end of their original three-year enlistment, but they would soon find out otherwise. Like other soldiers Richardson was optimistic about the coming of Grant's command. “I think that before the elapse of many weeks that we will hear pleasing news from the Army of the Potomack,” he wrote. Still, he was hoping to get home. “I am desirous of seeing some place outside of the military and marshal [martial] law[.] I shall hail my departure from Washington with great joy, feeling and knowing that I am once more free from the clutches of Uncle Sam and his administration,” he wrote. But it was death that freed Richardson from the clutches of the Union army. Less than two weeks after he wrote that letter, he died of disease. He was 24.22
April days in camp were sometimes rainy and sometimes quiet and uneventful, except for the death of Second Lieutenant James E. Hawks, who was probably 26. A Washtenaw County man who'd joined Company K in the spring of 1861, he died just after returning from Michigan with the reenlisted veterans. Other officers and men continued to arrive, including Dr. Luther C. French from Hudson. French had been assistant surgeon of the 4th Michigan since the late summer of 1862, but had to resign because of illness in the spring of 1863. French regained his health and was given permission to recruit for the regiment in Michigan. Appointed to the post of surgeon by Governor Blair, Dr. French returned on April 16.
About this time the new company for the 4th Michigan under Capt. Cornelius Van Valer, containing between 60 and 70 men and 18 commissioned and noncommissioned officers, left Hudson and arrived in Washington three days later. It would be another three weeks or so before Van Valer's company joined the 4th Michigan, after the new spring offensive had begun. But while some officers returned to the regiment after furlough, others were leaving. Capt. Alvan C. Lamson from Wayne County resigned and was discharged on certificate of disability, and a day later the resignation and discharge of Capt. James McLean from Livingston County, who had been wounded at Gettysburg, was also accepted. Within about two weeks the War Department approved the resignation of Capt. Ebenezer French, 29, from St. Joseph County. French had started as a second lieutenant in Company C and was wounded at both Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.23
One of the stranger activities by the men of the regiment in April was a rat hunt, held to rid the camp's dump of vermin. “Killed about 60 rats old and young,” Henry Seage wrote. The men played baseball and resumed the typical duties and drill, such as target practice. Col. George Lumbard and one of the senior captains, William H. Loveland, came back from Michigan, while two men from Company E, Charles Hartson and Tom Tarsney, sent a comical letter to a newspaper, hoping they could get “the young lady readers” to correspond with them. “Come, ladies, write to Tom and Charley. We don't care what town you live in, if it isn't Woodbridge…. We also certify on our honor that a wife is absolutely necessary, rendered so by the fact that we never had one, and claim that we are entitled to one according to revised army regulations,” the soldiers joked.24
But the signs pointed to a new offensive. “The sick have been sent away from the army,” a soldier from Company A wrote home, “and other preparations made for a move.” A man from the Hudson area dashed off a similar note. “Everything betokens a forward movement,” the soldier wrote on April 27. “Sutlers and speculators have been sent to the rear, as well as all extra baggage. We have eight days' rations on hand, and under orders to march at a moment's notice.” Two days later the men of the 4th Michigan saw the start of the new campaign for themselves. At about ten in the morning, a division of cavalry started to ride by. It was said to be 7,000 strong and took four hours to pass the camp.25
The next morning the regiment was ordered to stand for muster at 10:00 A.M., and some men got their washing done before the bugle call known as “The General” sounded, summoning them to assemble, prepared to move out. They marched from Bealton Station with the other regiments of their brigade at about four in the afternoon, covering just a few miles to the place where they bivouacked for the night. “Today began our campaign for the ensuing summer,” Henry Seage wrote when the 4th Michigan halted between Rappahannock Station and the headquarters of their division commander, Gen. George Griffin. On the first day of May the regiment formed with its brigade and marched at 9:00 A.M., crossing the Rappahannock an hour later. By early afternoon, the men of the 4th Michigan were camping near Brandy Station as other units from the Fifth Corps, who had been spread out for miles around the countryside, gathered. In the new organization of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. Gouverneur Warren commanded their corps.
They stayed in that bivouac for another day and mustered for pay. Powerful winds picked up, raising clouds of dust and sand before rain set in. On May 3 the 4th Michigan with its division moved a few miles in the afternoon to Culpeper as the Union army continued to assemble. Those soldiers who went to bed early got a couple of hours rest before they were roused about 11:00 P.M. by the call of the buglers. They struck their tents and were under way by midnight for the fords across the Rapidan. At daylight the regiment, numbering about 247 men and around 15 officers, passed with its brigade, division, and corps through the town of Stevensburg and reached the Germanna Ford at 8:00 A.M. Moses Luce of Company E recalled the soldiers stripping down and rolling up their pants and coats around their rifles, which the men carried above their heads as they waded across in water up to their necks. “On the other side we stopped to wring out our socks, put on our shoes again, and marched on,” he wrote of May 4. Other accounts say the men were allowed to stop and have some breakfast once they crossed.
The sun was hot and the road was dusty, and Henry Seage, along with many others soldiers, realized the plank road on which they were marching from the ford was taking them back to the vicinity of Chancellorsville—the wooded land called the Wilderness. At the plank road's intersection with the Orange Turnpike the Fifth Corps turned right, heading west. Soon the brigades of Griffin's First Division were filing off the road into battle lines. “Awful tired and foot sore [—] a great many of the boys fell out,” Seage wrote that night. Sgt. John Hewitt agreed; he noted that night that they bivouacked “about 3 miles from Robinsons' [Robertsons] Tavern.”26
This position was several miles west of where they'd skirmished near Chancellorsville, and once again they were in dangerous territory. The last battles in which the men of the original 4th Michigan would fight as a regiment were about to begin, in the Wilderness.