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 documents to [email protected] or m.ellen.dennis@gmailcom. 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

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

QUESTIONNAIRE

Annual membership dues:

We would like to know about your interests and skills. Please fill in this questionnaire and mail it with your membership fee.

(Complimentary to Federal Bar Association members)

 Professional/Member  Sustaining/Patron

$ 25.00 $100.00 or more

Legal practice area (if applicable): __________________________________________________

Please make checks payable to:

Special interests in the field of legal history:

Historical Society – U. S. District Court – E.D. Michigan

__________________________________________________

Mail to Historical Society, c/o David A. Gardey, U. S. Attorney’s Office, 211 West Fort Street, Floor 25, Detroit, MI 48226 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (313) 226-9591; Fax: (313) 226-3265

__________________________________________________

Membership contributions to the Society are tax deductible within the limits of the law. Name: ____________________________________________ Address: __________________________________________ City: _____________________________________________ State/Zip Code: ____________________________________ Phone: ____________________________________________ DAY

EVENING

This membership is a gift from: ________________________

Yes, I would like to assist and/or actively participate in the following of the Society’s activities (Check as many as may apply):  Writing articles for the Society newsletter  Conference planning  Oral history  Research in special topics in legal history  Fund development for the Society  Membership recruitment  Archival preservation  Exhibit preparation  Educational programs  Other (please describe): ____________________________ _______________________________________________ Suggestions for programs or projects: __________________________________________________

THIS FORM MAY BE DUPLICATED AND SUBMITTED WITH YOUR MEMBERSHIP FEE

The Historical Society U. S. District Court Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse Detroit, Michigan 48226

U.S. POSTAGE PAID NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION Permit #153 Wyandotte, MI