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The Court Legacy
The Historical Society for the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Michigan ©2011
Michigan Lawyer-Soldiers
in the Civil War
By: David G. Chardavoyne ©
Many Michigan lawyers played significant roles for the
Union cause as civilians, such as U.S. Senators Zachariah
Chandler and Jacob M. Howard, who provided
leadership in Congress, or future U.S. Circuit Judge
Halmer Hull Emmons, who spied on Confederate agents
active in Canada. Also, many young Michiganders who
served in the Union armies during the war became
lawyers after the war, such as future Justices Charles Dean
Long and Edward Cahill of the Michigan Supreme Court.
This article, though, is meant to memorialize just a few
of the dozens of attorneys who left their law offices and
judicial chambers in Michigan to join the Union armies.
They joined the army at ages from 20s to 50s and came
from across the southern Lower Peninsula. Some of
them made it home unscathed physically, some were
severely wounded, and some were killed. All contributed
to the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery.
“Thank God for Michigan”
Michigan’s first celebrated lawyersoldier was Orlando Bolivar
Willcox (1823-1907), a native of
Detroit, son of one of the City’s
early American families, and an
1843 graduate of West Point.
After service in Mexico, on the
western frontier, and in Florida,
he left the army in 1857 and
returned to Detroit to practice law.
He found the law dull, though, and when, in April 1861,
President Lincoln sent out a call for the northern states to
provide troops to defend the national existence, Willcox
was a natural choice to command the First Michigan
Infantry, consisting of ten militia companies from across
the southern counties. Rushed to Washington, D.C., it was
the first western regiment to reach the Capital at a time
when many wondered whether the western states would
support the war. Generations were taught the perhaps
apocryphal story that on learning of the regiment’s arrival,
the President remarked, “Thank God for Michigan.”
Vol. XVIII, No. 1
May 2011
The Union army at Washington, then called the Grand
Army, was desperate for experienced field officers, and
Willcox soon was given command of the brigade
containing his regiment. At the First Battle of Bull Run on
July 21, 1861, Willcox’s brigade was one of the few Union
units not to panic. Willcox led several counterattacks to
keep the Confederate forces at bay while the rest of the
army retreated in disarray. During the last charge he was
badly wounded in the arm and captured. Although he was
treated well by Confederate officers, many of them old
friends, when he was transported to a prison in South
Carolina conditions were terrible. For some reason, he was
not exchanged with other prisoners from Bull Run and
did not return to Detroit for more than a year.
After recovering his health, Willcox returned to the Army
as a brigadier general and commanded a division at the
battles of Antietam, Knoxville, the Wilderness, and
Spotsylvania. At the disastrous Battle of the Crater at
Petersburg on July 30, 1864, he led a division that
included six Michigan regiments (the 2nd, 8th, 17th, 20th
and 27th Infantry and the First Michigan Sharpshooters)
into the crater caused by mines under the Confederate
lines. The attack was bungled by faulty planning and
Willcox’s division had 700 casualties, nearly 50 percent of his
force. It was little consolation that in April 1865 his
division was the first to enter Petersburg. After the war,
Willcox decided to remain in the Army and retired as a
brigadier general in 1887. In 1895, he was awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at Bull Run.
National Service
S o m e o f M i c h i g a n ’s m o s t
distinguished lawyers in uniform
never belonged to Michigan
regiments. One was Alpheus
Starkey Williams (1810-1878), a
judge of Wayne County Probate
Court who reached the rank of
major general and command of
the 12th and 20th Army Corps.
Born in Connecticut and educated
at Yale, Williams settled in Detroit in 1836 to practice law,
but he also became heavily involved in the militia. When the
Mexican War began in 1847, he was appointed a lieutenant
colonel in Michigan’s volunteer infantry regiment.
The Historical Society for the United States
District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Established in 1992
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
President
Michael J. Lavoie
Vice President
Brian D. Figot
Secretary
Paula A. Hall
Treasurer
Samuel C. Damren
Executive Director
Judith K. Christie
Catherine M. Beck
David G. Chardavoyne
Hon. Avern Cohn
Thomas W. Cranmer
M. Ellen Dennis
Hon. John Feikens
David A. Gardey
Alan C. Harnisch
Michael C. Leibson
Matthew J. Lund
John P. Mayer
Hon. Stephen J. Murphy, III
Gregory V. Murray
Ross G. Parker
Jeffrey G. Raphelson
Jeffrey A. Sadowski
Matthew Schneider
Hon. Arthur J. Tarnow
I.W. Winsten
Advisor
David J. Weaver
THE COURT LEGACY
John P. Mayer, Editor
M. Ellen Dennis, Assistant Editor
Published periodically by The Historical Society for the United
States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan,
Office of the Clerk, Room 216, Theodore Levin United States
Courthouse, Detroit, MI 48226-2797.
Subscriptions available through any Society membership.
Membership benefits include the Newsletter, voting privileges,
and the Annual Meeting. The Historical Society has extended
the benefits of membership to members of the Eastern District
of Michigan Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
Papers are encouraged to be submitted to the Newsletter editor
for consideration as MS Word (preferred) or WordPerfect
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The Court Legacy reserves copyright to authors of signed
articles. Permission to reprint a signed article should be
obtained directly from the author and The Court Legacy
should be acknowledged in the reprint. Unsigned material may
be reprinted without permission provided The Court Legacy is
given credit.
Although his unit arrived in Mexico the day after the
peace treaty was ratified, it remained in Mexico for three
months guarding supply trains.
After returning from Mexico, Williams remained active in
the militia, owned and edited the City’s Republican
newspaper, the Detroit Daily Advertiser, and served for
four years as the City’s postmaster. When Fort Sumter fell,
he was appointed to consolidate and train Michigan’s
militia companies. Although Williams had no formal
military training or experience leading troops in battle, in
May 1861 President Lincoln appointed him a brigadier
general of volunteers and gave him command of an
infantry brigade near Washington, and a year later a
division in the Army of the Potomac. At the Battle of
Antietam in September 1862, he temporarily took charge
of the 12th Corps when its commander was killed, and he
again took temporary command of that Corps during the
Battle of Gettysburg where he conducted the successful
defense of Culp’s Hill.
After Gettysburg, Williams and his division were
transferred to the western theater and saw combat under
General Sherman during the Atlanta campaign and the
March to the Sea. Although he regularly commanded a
corps in Georgia and had a long and distinguished career,
Williams was denied even a brevet promotion during
most of the war. This was due in part to his not being a
West Pointer but also to some hard luck during the early
years of the war when his units suffered heavy casualties.
Eventually General Sherman recognized his leadership
and recommended Williams for a brevet promotion to
major general which he received in January 1865.
After the war, Williams stayed in the Army for a year as a
military administrator in Arkansas. He then was appointed
U.S. Minister at San Salvador until 1869. After an
unsuccessful run as Democratic candidate for Michigan
Governor, he was elected to Congress, serving from
March 4, 1875, until he died of a stroke in the U.S.
Capitol Building on December 21, 1878. His body was
returned for burial to Detroit where citizens erected the
equestrian statue in his honor on Belle Isle.
When General Williams traveled
east in 1861, he took with him as
his adjutant, or aide, Major
William D. Wilkins (1827-1882),
the Clerk of the U.S. Circuit Court
and the son of Michigan’s U.S.
District Judge Ross Wilkins. Born
at Pittsburgh, William Wilkins
came to Michigan in 1832 when
his father was named a Judge of
the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan. Like
General Williams and many other soldiers on both sides
of the Civil War, William Wilkins obtained his first
experience of army life during the war with Mexico,
Page 2
although, like Williams, he arrived in Mexico too late for
the major battles and spent his time there protecting
supply columns from guerrillas.
Hungarian, and Polish immigrants) who would not need
much time to train. In June 1861, McReynolds’s
Mexican reputation led to his being offered command of
the regiment (including a company he raised in Grand
Rapids) which was present at the battles of the Army of
the Potomac throughout the war but rarely was engaged
with the enemy (losing only five officers and 43 men
killed in combat).
Major Wilkins was involved in several battles and was
captured twice as he was trying to rally broken Union
lines, first at Cedar Mountain (August 1862) and then at
Chancellorsville (May 1863). Each time he was captured,
he was incarcerated in Libby Prison [in Richmond,
Virginia] for weeks waiting to be exchanged. In August
1863, after returning to the Union lines for the second
time, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and then
resigned due to an injury to his leg that left him lame. He
returned to his clerkship in October 1863 where he
remained until 1870 when he followed his father into
retirement. Throughout his life he was very active in
promoting education in Detroit. He died at the age of 55,
having never completely recovered from his Civil
War experience.
In 1862, McReynolds was promoted to command of
a cavalry brigade, and for six months in 1863 he
commanded a mixed cavalry/infantry brigade that was
part of a force routed in the Shenandoah Valley. Although
the officer in charge of the overall force was cashiered,
McReynolds was returned to the command of a cavalry
brigade which, despite his 55 years, he led in another
charge at the Battle of Piedmont, Virginia, in June 1864.
Two weeks later, he was honorably discharged at the
expiration of his three-year enlistment. After the war, he
returned to his practice in Grand Rapids and also served
as U.S. District Attorney for the Western District of
Michigan (1866-1867) and Prosecuting Attorney of
Muskegon County (1874-1876).
Unlike Alpheus Williams and
William Wilkins, who arrivedin
Mexico after the war was
over, Detroit attorney Andrew
T. McReynolds (1808-1898)
became a nationally acclaimed
hero, for his courage if not his
judgment. Born in Dungannon,
Ty r o n e C o u n t y, I r e l a n d ,
on Christmas Day 1808,
McReynolds emigrated to the United States in 1830 and
settled in Detroit in 1833. After reading law, he began a
private practice in 1840, was appointed an officer in the
State militia, and was elected to the Legislature. When
war with Mexico began, he recruited and commanded a
company of dragoons (mounted infantry) made up of the
sons of prominent Detroiters, that served as headquarters
guards for General Winfield Scott during his advance from
Vera Cruz to Mexico City. At the Battle of Churubusco in
August 1847, McReynolds and his men joined in a wild
and bloody cavalry charge, in which many dragoons
were killed, up to the gates of Mexico City. McReynolds
received a wound that permanently disabled his left arm.
Michigan at Gettysburg
Although Michigan provided only 6,000 of the Army of
the Potomac’s 93,500 men at the Battle of Gettysburg,
Michigan regiments played important roles on each of the
Battle’s three days (July 1-3, 1863), and Michigan lawyers
provided more of their share of the Battle’s dramatic and
tragic stories.
July 1, 1863
One Michigan regiment, the 24th Michigan Infantry,
was crucial to the survival of the Army of the Potomac
on July 1st, the first day of the Battle, although
ironically it was a regiment that was raised as a result of
anti-war and pro-Confederate sentiments in Detroit. At
the beginning of the war, Michigan’s regiments had been
filled quickly and enthusiastically, but when President
Lincoln called on the states for 300,000 more volunteers
in 1862, filling Michigan’s quota proved to be much
more difficult.
McReynolds returned to Michigan a hero, a status he
used to promote his legal and political careers in Detroit.
He was elected Wayne County Prosecutor in 1852, but
he moved his practice to Grand Rapids in 1859. Like
Willcox, in April 1861, McReynolds was determined to
return to action despite his age (52) and his disability.
President Lincoln’s first call for state troops in 1861 did
not request cavalry units because his advisors believed
that the war would be over before cavalry units could be
adequately trained. New York politicians prevailed on
the President to accept at least one volunteer cavalry
regiment, to be known as the Lincoln Cavalry, made up
veterans of European armies (principally German,
The war was going poorly for the Union, particularly
in the east, and war weariness was setting in among
the people. On the evening of July 15, 1862, various
politicians and other eminent citizens held a rally at
Detroit’s Campus Martius to encourage men to volunteer
for the State’s six new infantry regiments, to be numbered
18th to 23rd. Rumors, likely planted by Confederate
agents who operated openly across the river in Canada,
circulated that a secret military draft had begun and that
the purpose of the rally was to announce the draft. As
speakers droned on, heckling began with mocking shouts
of “Bull Run,” and the crowd quickly became aggressive.
Page 3
On July 1, 1863, the Iron Brigade was the army’s lead
infantry unit as it marched north to confront Robert E.
Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia which had invaded
Maryland and Pennsylvania. At the crossroads town of
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Iron Brigade found Union
cavalry fighting off a growing force of Confederate
infantry that was, as it turned out, the head of Lee’s
army. Rushing to a wooded ridge west of the town,
the Iron Brigade attacked and crushed the nearest
Confederate brigade. While almost all other eastern
volunteer units wore a tight, short, jacket and a blue kepi
(cap), the Iron Brigade dressed in the long, dark blue
jacket and a high-crowned black hats issued to soldiers
of the Regular Army. Captured Confederate soldiers later
ruefully remarked that they thought they were fighting
untrained militia, “not you damned black-hat boys.”1
When they could no longer be heard above the crowd’s
roar, the speakers began to climb down from their
platform, whereupon the crowd rushed forward and tried
to assault them. The rioters were stopped only because of
Wayne County’s enormous and intimidating sheriff, Mark
Flanigan, who drew a pistol and stared down the crowd.
Embarrassed, U.S. District Judge Ross Wilkins and other
civic leaders met on July 23rd. Determined to prove that
the heavily Democratic Wayne County supported the
Union, they proposed raising a seventh new infantry
regiment recruited entirely from Wayne County. Henry
Andrew Morrow (1829-1891), a Judge of Detroit’s
Recorders Court and another veteran of the war with
Mexico, agreed to command the regiment as colonel.
Sheriff Flanigan was named its lieutenant-colonel and
second in command, and a lawyer just finishing his term
as Detroit’s City Attorney, William Johnson Speed (18321863), became captain of Company D. Within a month,
the ranks were full and on August 13th and 15th, the
men of the 24th Michigan were sworn into service and
were sent east to the Army of the Potomac. On October
10th, the regiment was assigned to reinforce the veteran
Iron Brigade (the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Army
Corps), made up of regiments from Wisconsin and
Indiana who had already earned a fierce reputation.
Still, waves of Confederate infantry advanced and the
Iron Brigade found itself outnumbered and taking heavy
casualties; firing volley after volley, the brigade fell back
slowly. As Confederates attacked the 24th’s left flank,
Captain Speed tried to swing two companies back to
meet the attackers, but a bullet pierced his heart, killing
him instantly. Lt. Colonel Flanigan went down, shot in
the leg, and as Colonel Morrow waved the regiment’s
flag. he was shot in the head. After a final stand near the
Lutheran Seminary, what was left of the Iron Brigade
retreated back to the hills south of town.
Henry A. Morrow was born in
Warrenton, Virginia, attended
Rittenhouse Academy in
Washington, D.C., and was a
Senate page where he met and
became friends with Michigan
Senator Lewis Cass. At age 17,
he enlisted as a private in the
Battalion of District of Columbia
and Maryland Volunteers that
fought with Zachary Taylor’s
army in Mexico. After the war,
at Cass’s recommendation, he moved to Detroit in 1853
to read law. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, served
two terms as Detroit City Recorder and was elected first
judge of Detroit’s Recorders Court.
Of the brigade’s 1,829 men, 1,153 had been killed,
wounded, or captured in a matter of a few hours. The
24th Michigan alone lost 79 men killed, 238 wounded,
and 80 captured or missing, the highest percentage of
casualties (81 percent) of any Union regiment at
Gettysburg.2 Their sacrifice, however, managed to delay
Lee’s army long enough for the rest of the Army of the
Potomac to arrive and dig in along the ridges and hills
south of town, the “fish-hook” position that Lee tried
and failed to break over the next two days. Were it not
for the Iron Brigade’s stand, the Confederates could have
“rolled up” (in Lee’s words) the Union army, corps by
corps, as it marched up the roads towards Gettysburg.
Morrow was captured but claimed to be a doctor and
was left behind when the Confederates retreated south
after the battle. Flanigan’s leg was amputated and he
returned to a hero’s welcome in Detroit. Morrow’s
wound was not as serious, and he returned to the
regiment from convalescent leave in August. He was
wounded again at the Wilderness in May 1864, returned
in November, and was wounded a third time at Hatcher’s
Run in February 1865, ending his combat service. He
was breveted brigadier and major general for his service.
After the war, Morrow decided to take a commission in
the Regular Army and ended his career as colonel of the
21st U.S. Infantry Regiment. Upon retirement he moved
to Niles, Michigan, with his wife, Isabella.
William J. Speed was born in
Caroline, New York. His father
was a pioneer in the telegraph
business who brought his family
to Detroit in 1852 to establish
Michigan’s first telegraph network.
Known for his “gentle manners
and kindness of heart,” Speed
studied law in the office of Senator
Joshua Howard, was admitted to
the bar in 1855, and served as
Detroit’s City Attorney from 1860 to 1861.
Page 4
As he tried to extricate his men, his right-wing companies
were forced to surrender and most of his left-wing
companies went off with another regiment, leaving
Jeffords, three other officers (Major Jarius W. Hall,
Lieutenants R. Watson Seage and Michael Vreeland), and
the color sergeants isolated. The regiment’s new flag (the
old one was too full of bullet holes to be used) fell to the
ground and a Confederate picked it up. In a sequence that
took a few seconds, Jeffords grabbed the flagstaff, Seage
killed the Confederate with his sword, Jeffords was shot
in the leg and bayoneted in the chest, Major Hall killed
the man with the bayonet, Seage was shot in the chest and
bayoneted in the leg, and Vreeland was shot in the chest.
Colonel Jeffords was carried to the rear where he died the
next day; his body was returned to Dexter for burial.
Seage and Vreeland recovered from their wounds and
returned to the army in 1864. The 4th suffered 165
casualties at Gettysburg, about half of its roster, but
reinforcements kept it in action until its term of service
expired in 1864. After returning to Michigan, many of the
survivors volunteered to re-enlist in the Reorganized 4th
Michigan Infantry which fought on until the war ended.
The much-reduced 24th Michigan continued as part of
the Iron Brigade until it was sent on recruiting duty in
1865. Although it received replacements and had other
hard fights during General Grant’s Overland Campaign
against Lee in 1864, nothing could compare to its stand
at Gettysburg. The end of the war found the regiment at
Springfield, Illinois, the home town of President Lincoln.
When the body of the President Lincoln arrived there for
burial, the 24th served as honor guard. The regiment
was discharged on June 30, 1865.
July 2, 1863
B o r n a n d r a i s e d i n D e x t e r,
Michigan, Harrison Henry
Jeffords (1834-1863),3 the oldest
of six children, graduated from the
University of Michigan Law
School in 1861 and returned home
to practice law. In May 1861, he
joined the rest of the Dexter Union
Guard in the 4th Michigan
Infantry which was assigned to the
Army of the Potomac and fought in several of that army’s
bloody battles leading up to the Gettysburg campaign,
including First Bull Run, the Peninsula Campaign,
Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Starting
as a lieutenant, Jeffords was promoted to captain in May
1862 and then to colonel of the regiment in May 1863.
Other officers in the regiment complained that Jeffords
had unfairly lobbied Michigan Governor Austin Blair
while home on a recruiting trip, but his promotion was
popular with most of the regiment. When Jeffords took
command, the regiment’s original complement of 1,025
officers and men had been reduced to 342.
Not long after Harrison Jeffords
was bayoneted in the Wheatfield,
Norval E. Welch (1835-1864),
lieutenant colonel and commander
of the 16th Michigan Infantry, was
facing a professional and personal
crisis about a half mile east on the
slopes of a steep, unnamed hill,
now famous as Little Round Top,
that constituted the far right of the
Union line. Although the movie Gettysburg extolled the
exploits of Joshua Chamberlain defending the southern
end of that line, his 20th Maine was just one of four
regiments in the brigade of Col. Strong Vincent rushed into
position at about 4 p.m. just ahead of a Confederate
attack. About 150 officers and men of the 16th Michigan
were clinging to the hillside at the northern end of
Vincent’s force. Since they arrived at their positions they
had been shelled continuously, and they had repulsed
several attacks by infantry from Texas and Arkansas. The
regiment had lost many men, and they could see that
another attack was forming.
On July 2nd, General Daniel Sickles’s Third Army Corps
was stationed at the southern end of the Union line. A
blustering know-it-all, Sickles was the epitome of the
“political” general who owed his position to his ability
to recruit rather than to any military experience or
talent. Not liking the position in the defense assigned to
his corps, he placed his regiments several hundred yards
closer to the enemy, leaving his ten thousand men
unsupported on three sides. That afternoon, waves of
Confederate infantry attacked the Third Corps’s position,
a horrific free-for-all in what became infamous as the
Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and the Devil’s Den, with
infantry and artillery firing into each other from every
angle through dense clouds of smoke.
Norval E. Welch was a handsome, strong-willed,
28-year-old Detroit lawyer, originally from Ann Arbor,
who graduated from the University of Michigan Law
School in 1860, a year before H. Harrison Jeffords. A
friend remembered him as “the embodiment of physical
beauty, ruddy with health, overflowing with animal
spirits.” Like Henry Morrow, he was close to Senator
Cass and had served as his assistant before the war. The
16th Michigan was organized at Plymouth and Detroit
in August and September 1861 under federal authority
As the Third Corps reeled, reinforcements were rushed
forward from the 2nd and 5th Army Corps, including
Colonel Jeffords and the 4th Michigan Infantry. After
some rather aimless maneuvering, his brigade advanced
into the Wheatfield, but Jeffords suddenly found his
small regiment surrounded by larger Confederate forces.
Page 5
and named Stockton’s Independent Regiment for its
original colonel, Thomas Stockton of Flint, who selected
Welch as major and third in command. The regiment
was soon added to the State forces as the 16th Michigan
was sent east where it fought in most of the eastern
battles. Although he had personality problems with
Stockton (who had him court-martialed unsuccessfully),
Welch performed well, and was mentioned in the New
York Herald as “recklessly brave” for his actions at
Middleton, Virginia. When Stockton grew tired of the
internal wrangling and left to raise Union troops in
Tennessee,4 Welch took over the regiment.
a Confederate fortification. Welch climbed the fort’s wall
and was urging his men to follow him when he was shot
twice in the head and died instantly. The regiment took
the fort and another line of trenches, but suffered another
51 casualties. The 16th Michigan remained in combat
until Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House and
was among the regiments lined up to accept the formal
surrender of Confederate flags and weapons.
July 3, 1863
The first Union cavalry regiments, poorly trained and
equipped, were easily routed by Confederate cavalry. By
the summer of 1863, though, new commanders, better
training, and the introduction of repeating rifles brought
Union cavalry to par with their southern counterparts,
and by the end of the war they were clearly superior.
Michigan’s cavalry regiments earned a reputation second
to none in both the eastern and western fronts. Best
known was the Army of the Potomac’s Michigan
Cavalry Brigade, consisting of the 1st, 5th, 6th, and
7th Michigan Cavalry, regiments that contained many
notable lawyer-soldiers.
As the 16th watched, the next wave of Confederates
poured up the hill through the darkness caused by thick
smoke and approaching twilight, and amidst the noise
and confusion of war, the regiment’s color party
suddenly retreated over the brow of the hill, followed by
Norval Welch and about a third of the men who found
themselves on the safer side of the hill, dazed and
confused. Later, some of the soldiers remembered
hearing an order to move back, others did not. Some
thought there had been an order to swing back the right
flank to meet an attack, and what actually started the
debacle is unknowable. The result, though, was clear:
a hole opened in the line at the worst time. Colonel
Vincent rushed over to salvage the situation but
was shot. Fortunately, as Welch and his fifty or so
Michiganders fled to the rear, Brigadier General Stephen
Weed and Colonel Patrick O’Rorke led the five hundred
men of the 140th New York in the opposite direction to
close the hole and drive the surviving Confederates
back, although both Weed and O’Rorke were shot.
Joseph Tarr Copeland (18131893) was the first commander
of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade.
Born in New Castle, Maine, he
studied at Harvard College and
read law under Daniel Webster.
In 1844, he moved to St. Clair,
Michigan and later built a
sawmill in Bay City. From 1846
to 1849, Copeland was Judge of
the St. Clair County Court. In
1851, after the State abolished the county courts, he was
elected to the County’s Circuit Court, which by law also
made him a Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. He
left the judiciary in 1857 and moved to Pontiac. In August
and September 1861, Copeland helped organize the First
Michigan Cavalry, was appointed its lieutenant colonel,
and then became its colonel. A year later, in August 1862,
he organized and became colonel of the 5th Michigan
Cavalry, and in November 1862, he was promoted to
brigadier general of volunteers and given command of a
cavalry brigade consisting of the 5th, 6th, and 7th
Michigan Cavalry. In June 1863, as Lee’s Army of
Northern Virginia moved north, Copeland’s brigade
added the First Michigan Cavalry and Battery M, 2nd
United States Artillery.
As the sun went down, Little Round Top and the Union
line were safe, but O’Rorke was dead, Weed and
Vincent were dying, and Welch was in disgrace. As the
army crossed the Potomac into Virginia in the pursuit of
Lee’s retreating army, Welch was on his way home on a
“sick leave” for the rest of the summer. Victory cures
many problems, though, and when he returned to the
army on September 3rd, all was forgiven, officially at
least. He was promoted to colonel and retained official
command of the regiment, but he stayed away and did
not take up active command until June 1864. Welch was
well aware that in an army that regarded steadfast
physical courage as the prime virtue of a commander,
many officers and soldiers could not forgive him his
lapse or his attempts to blame other officers.
In the summer of 1864, General Grant had pinned down
Lee’s army outside Richmond and was probing Lee’s
flanks looking to cut his supply lines. On September 30th,
Union forces attacked Confederates defending a key road
near Peeble’s Farm, southwest of Petersburg. Welch, still
trying to prove himself worthy of command, led the
16th across six hundred yards of open ground to attack
To his great disappointment, Joseph Copeland was not
allowed to lead his brigade into battle. A new commander
of cavalry for the Army of the Potomac, Alfred
Pleasanton, was determined to provide more aggressive
leadership in the cavalry by replacing older commanders
(Copeland was then 50) with younger officers such as
Page 6
23-year-old George Armstrong Custer who was born in
Monroe, Michigan. On June 29, 1863, Custer, who had
graduated from West Point just two years before, was
promoted from captain to brigadier general and given
command of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade. Although
Copeland remained in the army until the end of the war,
he never led men into battle. He returned to Michigan
after the war and in 1878 moved to Orange Park, Florida,
where he was elected judge.
Philip Sheridan. Alger was promoted to captain and then
major in the 2nd Cavalry in April 1862, became lieutenant
colonel of the 6th Michigan Cavalry in October 1862. In
early June 1863, as the Army of the Potomac was starting
north in pursuit of Lee, Alger became the colonel and
commander of the 5th Michigan Cavalry. Five days after
the cavalry battle at Gettysburg, he was severely wounded
while pursuing Lee’s retreating army, but he returned to
the regiment, which he commanded until September 1864
when he resigned and returned to Michigan as disabled.
On June 30th, just hours after taking command, Custer
led the Michigan Cavalry Brigade in a sharp fight outside
Hanover, Pennsylvania, with the Confederate cavalry
of J. E. B. Stuart, and in another skirmish north of
Gettysburg on July 1st. Then, on the afternoon of July
3rd, the brigade faced Stuart again in the fight that
established it as the premier cavalry unit in the Army of
the Potomac. As the Confederate infantry attack known
as Pickett’s Charge reached its height on the main
battlefield, the Michigan Cavalry Brigade was with other
cavalry in the farmland east of Gettysburg when scouts
discovered the approach of about 3,500 Confederate
cavalry and artillery under Stuart. 5 Custer had been
ordered to return his brigade to the other flank but the
senior officer on the spot, David McMurtrie Gregg,
accepted his offer to stay. Stuart first tried to maneuver
around the Union forces, but artillery fire and the
repeating rifles of the dismounted 5th Michigan made
that too costly a tactic. In frustration, Stuart ordered two
mounted charges straight at the Union position, but each
time Custer, yelling “Come on, you Wolverines,” led a
countercharge, first with the 7th Michigan and then with
the 1st. Of the second attack, one observer remembered:
“As the two columns approached each other the pace of
each increased, when suddenly a crash, like the falling of
timber, betokened the crisis. So sudden and violent was
the collision that many of the horses were turned endover-end and crushed their riders beneath them.” As the
1st Michigan stopped the head of Stuart’s force, other
cavalry, including part of the 5th, hit the Confederate
flanks, forcing Stuart to order a retreat.
Although Custer went on to higher command, his
Michigan cavalry regiments continued as part of General
Sheridan’s cavalry corps until the end of the war. At
Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, they
were part of a cavalry force that blocked General Lee’s
retreating army long enough for infantry reinforcements to
arrive and convince Lee that he had to surrender. The
regiments expected to be mustered out in June or July with
other Michigan units, but they were sent instead to Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. There, soldiers with two years or
more left in their enlistments transferred to the 1st and 7th
Michigan, while the remaining men were mustered out
and returned to Detroit, arriving on July 1, 1865.
For his service in 66 battles and skirmishes, Alger
was breveted brigadier general and major general of
volunteers. After the war, he moved to Detroit and
conducted a very successful lumber business. He was
active in veterans’ issues and in Republican politics. In
1884, he was elected Governor of Michigan, although he
declined to run for a second term. He was a strong
candidate for the Republican nomination for President in
1888, but stories that he had loaned Sheridan $10,000 in
1864 to buy his way onto the disabled list ended that
attempt. President McKinley appointed him Secretary of
War in 1897, but his term was marred by complaints
about the almost criminal incompetence of the army’s
supply system during the war in Cuba, and he resigned in
1899. In 1902, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate and
served there until his death in 1907.
The Western Theater
The colonel at the head of the 5th
Michigan in those actions was
Russell Alexander Alger (18361907), a young attorney and
lumberman from Grand Rapids.
Alger was born on February 27,
1836, in Ohio. Orphaned at age
13, he worked on a farm and
taught country school to support
himself and two younger siblings.
He was admitted to the Ohio bar
in 1859 and moved to Grand Rapids in 1860. At the
outbreak of the war, he joined the 2nd Michigan Cavalry
where he became a protégé of its colonel, cavalry guru
Although the eastern battles of
the Army of the Potomac are the
best remembered by the public
t o d a y, t h e U n i o n a r g u a b l y
won the war in the campaigns
that took place in the “west,”
between the Appalachians and
the Mississippi River, where
m a n y l a w y e r- s o l d i e r s f r o m
Michigan served. William Lewis
Stoughton (1827-1888) was born
in Bangor, New York, moved to Sturgis, Michigan as a
young man, and was admitted to the bar in 1851.
Page 7
Stoughton was Prosecuting Attorney for St. Joseph County
from 1855 to 1859 and a delegate to the 1860 Republican
National Convention. President Lincoln appointed him
U.S. District Attorney for the District of Michigan in
March 1861, but he resigned a few months later to
become lieutenant colonel of the 11th Michigan Infantry,
made up principally of men from St. Joseph County. The
regiment was assigned to the Army of the Ohio at
Cincinnati and later the Army of the Cumberland in
Tennessee. In April 1862, Stoughton became the regiment’s
colonel and led it in battles at Gallatin and Murfreesboro,
Tennessee. Because of a vacancy, Stoughton took
command of the brigade at the Battles of Chickamauga
(September 1863) and Chattanooga (November 1863). In
the former battle, Stoughton and the 11th were among the
last troops to leave the line and retreat to Chattanooga; in
the latter, they were part of the spontaneous charge up
Missionary Ridge that sent the Confederate Army of
Tennessee tumbling back towards Atlanta.
when the Union troops ran out of ammunition, the brigade
commander surrendered. The 19th was marched to
Richmond; many men died of wounds on the way and
many others died of disease in Libby Prison. The enlisted
men were exchanged in April 1863, and the officers in May,
and the regiment was reinforced and returned to the army.
In the spring of 1864, the 19th, like the 11th, took part
in the Atlanta campaign. On May 15, 1864, at Resaca,
Georgia, Col. Gilbert, mounted on his horse, led the 19th
in an attack on a Confederate artillery battery. As the
regiment approached the battery, Gilbert was shot in the
chest; he died nine days later. After his death, his regiment
participated in the siege of Atlanta, the March to the Sea,
and Sherman’s march north through the Carolinas, and
was mustered out of service on June 10, 1865.
L u t h e r S t e p h e n Tr o w b r i d g e
(1836-1912), another young
attorney in the 5th Michigan
Cavalry at Gettysburg, made his
reputation in the west. Born in
Oakland County’s Troy Townhip,
Trowbridge received an M.A.
degree from Yale University,
returned to Detroit to read law,
and was admitted to the bar
in 1858. After the Gettysburg
campaign, he was sent home on sick leave where he was
offered and accepted the position of lieutenant colonel
of the new 10th Michigan Cavalry. Assigned to the
western theater, this regiment fought at Chickamauga
(where Trowbridge was wounded) but spent most of its
service in eastern Tennessee fighting small unit actions,
including one in which Confederate raider John Hunt
Morgan was killed. In March and April 1865, it
participated in General Stoneman’s 6,000-man, 600-mile
cavalry raid through western Virginia and North Carolina
intended to crush resistance by destroying factories,
bridges, and cotton crops.
Stoughton and the 11th took part in General Sherman’s
pursuit from Chattanooga to Atlanta, the Confederacy’s
second most important city. On July 4, 1864, Stoughton
was leading the regiment in a charge at Marietta,
Georgia, when he was shot in the leg. Amputation was
necessary and he resigned and resumed his practice in
Sturgis. At the end of the war, he was breveted major
general. He served as Michigan Attorney General (18671868) and was elected to Congress for two terms
(1869-1873). In September 1864, the term of service of
most men in the 11th expired and the regiment returned
to Michigan and was discharged, although many of the
survivors joined the Reorganized 11th Michigan Infantry
which served from February to September 1865.
Another southwestern Michigan
attorney, Henry Clark Gilbert
(1818-1864), served in the
western theater as Colonel of the
19th Michigan Infantry. Gilbert
was born in Onondaga, New
York, and moved to Coldwater,
Michigan, in 1841. He was
Prosecuting Attorney for Branch
County for six years and had a
successful private practice,
including among his clients the Michigan Southern
Railroad. In September 1862, he was 44 years old,
a wealthy lawyer and owner of a newspaper, a saw mill,
and a flour mill, with a wife and eight children. He
nevertheless volunteered to become colonel of the 19th
then organizing at Dowagiac.6 The regiment was sent to
the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee where, on
March 5, 1863, where it fought its first battle. The
inexperienced brigade commander led his force into an
ambush at Thompson’s Station, near Franklin, and
Trowbridge was breveted both brigadier and major
general in June 1865. After the war he was provost
marshal for Tennessee, practiced law there for three
years, and then returned to Detroit. In 1875, President
Grant appointed him U.S. Collector of Customs for the
Eastern District of Michigan. He later became city
comptroller and a banker, and from 1902 until his death
he was appraiser for the Port of Detroit. He was a
pioneer of organized baseball in Detroit, and he
published both a regimental history and a detailed
account of the fight with Stuart.
Benjamin Dudley Pritchard (1835-1907) and his troopers
of the 4th Michigan Cavalry spent most of their war
service in Tennessee and Alabama, but they achieved
national fame in April 1865 by capturing Jefferson Davis
Page 8
in southern Georgia as the
Confederate President and his
entourage tried to flee the country.
Born in Ohio, Pritchard worked as
a carpenter to earn his college
tuition at Hiram College and in
1856 he moved to Allegan County,
Michigan, near the shore of Lake
Michigan, to teach school and
read law. In 1858 he entered the
University of Michigan, earned his
degree in 1860, and returned to Allegan to practice law.
the Union soldiers, who blamed Davis for starting the
war and for the death of so many of their friends, were
not inclined to show him any courtesy and ransacked
the camp for souvenirs.
Davis spent the next two years in Fort Monroe, Virginia,
but in the end he was not prosecuted for treason. As his
reward for making the capture, Colonel Pritchard was
breveted a brigadier general and received a $3,000 share
of the $100,000 bounty which President Johnson offered
for Davis’s apprehension. The 4th Michigan Cavalry
mustered out on July 1, 1865 and Pritchard returned
to Allegan, his wife Mary, and his law practice. The
Gothic-style house they built on Allegan’s Davis Street is
still there, part of Allegan’s historic district. In 1870,
Pritchard organized the First National Bank of Allegan
and served as its president until 1905. Pritchard refused
to run for Governor or Congress, although he was
elected Michigan’s treasurer. He was also a driving force
in the development of the Allegan school system.
In August 1862, Pritchard was commissioned a captain
in the 4th Michigan Cavalry and in October 1863 he
was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and
given command of the regiment. The regiment served in
Kentucky and Tennessee until 1864 when it was sent to
Major General James Wilson’s cavalry corps in
Alabama. In March and April 1865, the 4th took part in
Wilson’s cavalry raid across Alabama and Georgia that
ended with the capture of Macon on April 20th. General
Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on
April 9, but Confederate General Joseph Johnston did
not formally surrender his scattered and demoralized
troops in Georgia and the Carolinas until April 26th.
At War’s End
In Washington, D.C., on May 23rd and 24th, the armies
of Generals Grant and Sherman, representing the eastern
and western theaters, conducted a grand review past
President Andrew Johnson and members of Congress.
Many of the men mentioned in this article, such as
Alpheus Williams, Orlando Willcox, Joseph Copeland,
Benjamin Pritchard, and Luther Trowbridge were soon
on their way home relatively safe and sound, but William
Speed, Harrison Jeffords, Norval Welch, and Henry
Gilbert were dead; William Stoughton and Mark
Flanigan were already back in Michigan, each minus a
leg, while Russell Alger, Henry Morrow, William Wilkins
and Andrew McReynolds had long since been discharged
for lesser wounds and pure exhaustion. The survivors
could, and did, take great pride in having resolved the
great issues that had dominated politics before the war –
slavery and secession – and like veterans of most wars
they looked forward to making up for lost time.
Whatever their fate or future, they were all a credit to
the legal profession of the State of Michigan. I
Jefferson Davis, his wife, and the Confederate cabinet left
Richmond with the Confederate treasury on April 3rd
and made their way south. On May 5th, Davis dissolved
the Confederate government at Washington, Georgia,
and continued his flight south and west, apparently
hoping to recreate the Confederacy in Texas or Mexico
or to flee to Europe. Intelligence reports placed Davis
near Macon and Wilson was determined that one of his
regiments, rather than one of General Stoneman’s would
capture Davis.
On May 9th, the 4th Michigan and Stoneman’s 1st
Wisconsin Cavalry were both patrolling near Irwinville,
Georgia. Former slaves told Pritchard that a party that
might include Davis had passed through the day before.
Another ex-slave guided the 4th to the campsite in a
clearing. Pritchard sent a company to the woods on the
other side of the clearing, and at dawn on May 10th he
charged into Davis’s encampment with 150 of his
troopers. The Confederates offered no resistance, but
unfortunately the Wisconsin troopers arrived on the
scene unexpectedly and in the dark woods a firefight
erupted between the two regiments that killed two and
wounded nine troopers. In the confusion, Davis tried to
escape wearing a woman’s cloak, but a group of
troopers saw the “woman” was wearing pants and spurs
and captured him.7 As a captive, Davis exhibited the
arrogance that had handicapped his administration by
refusing to surrender to a sergeant and by insisting on
being treated as a head of state. Understandably,
Bibliography
Barnett, Le Roy and Roger Rosentreter, Michigan’s Early Military
Forces (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003)
Belknap, Charles E. History of the Michigan Organizations at
Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Missionary Ridge, 1863
(Robert Smith, Printing, 1899)
Bertera, Martin N. and Ken Oberholtzen, The 4th Michigan
Volunteer Infantry at Gettysburg: The Battle for the Wheatfield
(Morningside Press, 1997)
Bertera, Martin N. and Kim Crawford, The 4th Michigan Infantry
in the Civil War (Michigan State University Press, 2010)
Crawford, Kim, The 16th Michigan Infantry (Morningside Press, 2002)
Page 9
Lanman, Charles, The Red Book of Michigan (E.B. Smith &
Co., 1871)
Longacre, Edward G. Custer and His Wolverines: The Michigan
Cavalry Brigade 1861-1865 (Combined Press, 1997)
Nolan, Alan T. The Iron Brigade: A Military History (Indiana
University Press, 1994)
Smith, Donald L. The Twenty-Fourth Michigan (The Stackpole
Co., 1962)
Starr, Stephen Z. The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: From Fort
Sumter to Gettysburg, 1861-1863 (Louisiana State University
Press, 1981)
Trudeau, Noah A. Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage (Harper
Collins Publishers, 2002)
Welcher, Frank and Larry G. Ligget, Coburn’s Brigade: 85th
Indiana, 33rd Indiana, 19th Michigan, and 22nd Wisconsin in
the Western Civil War (Cardinal Publishers Group, 1999)
Williams, Alpheus S. The Civil War Letters of General Alpheus S.
Williams: From the Cannon’s Mouth, Milo Quaife, ed. (Wayne
University Press and Detroit Historical Society, 1959)
Woodford, Frank B. Father Abraham’s Children: Michigan Episodes
in the Civil War, 2d ed. (Wayne State University Press, 1999).
End Notes
1. The quote has many versions, but “damn” and “black-hat”
seem to be in all of them.
2. One of the units the Iron Brigade crushed on July 1, the 26th
North Carolina, had the additional misfortune of being
selected for Pickett’s Charge two days later and ended up
setting the record for number of casualties at Gettysburg, a
total of 687 of the 840 men it brought to Gettysburg.
3. Note that in the records of the University of Michigan he is
Henry Harrison Jeffords.
4. Editor’s note: East Tennessee was predominantly pro-Union
and provided many Union soldiers. There were also strong
pockets of pro-Union sentiment in West Tennessee. These
factors contributed to Tennessee being the last state to secede
from the Union and join the Confederacy in June 1861.
5. What Stuart was doing behind the Union lines has never
been established. Some assert he was sent there by Lee to
capitalize on Union panic if the infantry assault succeeded,
but the existence of any such order has ever been verified. It
is possible that Stuart was acting on his own initiative with
an idea of redeeming himself for leaving Lee blind to Union
movements during the previous week.
6. The regiment’s other lawyers included Lt. Col. David Bacon
(Niles), Adjutant Hamlet B. Adams (Coldwater), Capt.
Charles P. Lincoln (Coldwater), and Capt. Charles Thompson
(Kalamazoo).
7. Corporal George Munger noticed two women moving rapidly
away from the camp and thought they looked suspicious, so
he stopped them and ordered them to remove their cloaks.
They were Jefferson Davis and his wife, both wearing
women’s cloaks and shawls. The idea of Davis running away
in a woman’s dress (which he always denied) was irresistible
to Union newspapers and for P.T. Barnum who displayed a
wax figure of Davis, dubbed “The Belle of Richmond,” at his
American Museum.
The Volunteer Union Army
in the Civil War
At the onset of the Civil War, President Lincoln and his
advisors recognized that the small U.S. Army was
inadequate to put down the rebellion. Indeed, most of the
units of the regular army stayed at their posts on the
western frontier throughout the war. Recruitment of the
volunteer armies, known collectively as United States
Volunteers, that supplied the vast majority of Union
soldiers, was the responsibility of the states. Michigan’s
government, led by Governor Austin Blair, enlisted 85,500
men (about eleven percent of the State’s population),
almost all of them volunteers, who participated on every
front and in every important battle of the war.
The basic organization of both infantry and cavalry was
the regiment, organized with roughly 1,000 officers and
soldiers in eight to ten companies. Each regiment bore
the name of its state of origin, a number according to
date of activation, and the designation as volunteer
infantry or volunteer cavalry. Michigan contributed
thirty-six regiments of infantry and eleven of cavalry as
well as fourteen artillery batteries and various regiments
and independent companies of sharpshooters (one of
which was composed of members of the Ojibwa, Odawa,
and Potawatomi nations) and mechanics (engineers).
When it came time to organize the regiments into larger
units, state of origin became irrelevant in the Union
armies and regiments were put into brigades of four or
five regiments, two or three brigades into a division, two
or three divisions into an army corps, and anywhere from
two to eight army corps into an army. The Union army
was, in fact, several field armies that lacked an effective
centralized command for most of the war. Union field
armies were usually named for rivers, while Confederate
armies were named for states or regions. The principal
Union field army in the east was the Army of the
Potomac, while in the west the best known were the
Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Cumberland.
In practice, this relatively neat organizational structure
was more complex. For one thing, Michigan’s 36th
Infantry regiments included four pairs with the same
numbers (the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 11th). In each case,
when the original regiment’s term of service expired
enough of its members re-enlisted that they were entitled
to preserve the number in a “reorganized” regiment.
Thus, the 1st Michigan Infantry, a 90-day unit, that
marched into Washington in April 1861 was technically
not the same 1st Michigan Infantry that fought at
Gettysburg two years later. Another problem involved
name changes. For example, the 6th Michigan Infantry,
formed in August 1861, became the 6th Regiment
Page 10
Combat casualties also require some explanation.
During Civil War battles, regiments on both sides often
lost half of their troops in a day or two. Although there
are many reasons for large unit losses, the development
of the rifled musket was key. Until the middle of the
19th century, infantry was armed with smooth-bored
muskets that were usually fired in volleys at targets no
more than 100 yards away. Because the muskets were
muzzle-loaded (down the barrel), even experienced
troops could rarely get off more than three shots in a
minute and even then only if the shooter was standing
upright. Tactics developed during the Napoleonic Wars,
which the professional officers north and south had
learned at West Point and used successfully in Mexico,
called for attackers to advance towards an enemy
formation in long ranks, shoulder to shoulder, endure a
volley at 75 yards or so, and then charge with the
bayonet before the enemy could reload. During the Civil
War, most infantrymen were armed with rifled muskets
using an improved bullet that increased their effective
range to 500 yards, but because rifled muskets were still
muzzle-loaders, rapid reloading, as well as morale,
required men standing shoulder to shoulder in long
lines, and the usual attack was head-on without
stopping to fire. The result: easy targets and high
casualties from musket fire and very few from bayonets
because even if attackers did manage get close to the
enemy, the defenders usually ran. In fact, most veterans
“lost” their bayonets and relied on using their musket as
a club if close-in fighting occurred.
Michigan Volunteer Heavy Artillery in 1863; the 14th
Michigan Infantry became the 14th Michigan Mounted
Infantry; and a decision to reorganize the AfricanAmerican units of all states as federal troops
transformed the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry
into the 102nd Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. The
sharpshooters also complicated the picture because
although organized as specialized skirmishers and
snipers, they often were used as ordinary infantry, so
that the 16th Michigan Infantry included two companies
of sharpshooters.
Then there is the problem of numbers. Although new
infantry and cavalry regiments started with between 800
and 1,200 officers and men, not all states provided
reinforcements to make up for losses, finding it easier to
form new full-strength regiments. Michigan did try to
add new recruits to its existing regiments, but it was not
entirely successful, so that at the Battle of Gettysburg the
1st Michigan Infantry had only 145 officers and men on
its roster, and the average strength of the State’s seven
infantry regiments at that battle was only 266. Because
regiments usually stayed in the same brigade and
division they were first assigned to, the strengths of
Union brigades, divisions, and corps also varied widely.
Using Gettysburg as an example again, the 1st Brigade,
1st Division, 5th Corps, including the 1st Michigan
Infantry, entered battle with just 655 soldiers while that
division’s 2nd brigade, including the 4th Michigan
Infantry, mustered 1,423. In any case, units rarely had
all of their troops available to fight a battle, and at at
any given time a substantial portion of a Civil War army
was guarding supplies and railroads, was on leave, had
deserted, or, most importantly, was sick.
Finally, there is the question of brevet rank. Officers
who died in action or who survived the war with
outstanding records were often awarded a brevet
appointment to a higher rank, so that a colonel might be
awarded a brevet to brigadier general. Although highly
valued, brevet appointments were essentially honorary –
a colonel with a brevet to brigadier was still a colonel
for purposes of the chain of command and pay. A brevet
did allow a Colonel Smith to be called General Smith,
and many of them were referred to as “the general” for
the remainder of their lives. I
According to official records 14,753 soldiers in
Michigan units died in the war, but combat claimed
only 4,448 of those deaths while other causes,
principally communicable diseases, killed 10,305. Two
regiments raised later in the war show the
disproportionate effects of disease. The 29th Michigan
Infantry existed for under a year and saw no serious
combat yet reported one officer and 5 enlisted men
killed in action or mortally wounded and one officer
and 65 enlisted men who died of disease. Likewise, the
28th Michigan Infantry, which existed for only nine
months of service at the end of the war had one officer
and 5 enlisted killed or mortally wounded in enemy
action while one officer and 126 enlisted men died of
disease. Part of the problem was timing: until well into
the 20th century, losses from disease were greater than
combat deaths in most wars. In the Civil War, as in
earlier wars, most soldiers were from farms and small
towns and had not been exposed to infectious diseases,
and they and their officers lacked any correct idea of
hygiene, nutrition, or how to prevent diseases.
Page 11
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