The Seventh Michigan
Infantry at Antietam
By Tom Nank,
Interpretation Intern, CWI, Gettysburg College
“I would not be in Michigan this day, and if I never see it
again, be sure I fall a willing offering.” - Captain Henry Turrill, Company G
In July 1861, the defeat of the
Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run convinced many that the Civil War
would not be a quick one, and that many more soldiers would be needed for a
long fight. On August 3rd, Congress
authorized President Abraham Lincoln to call up 500,000 more volunteers from
the states to join the Union armies.
From this request would come the men that would fill several more
Michigan units in addition to the four already in the field. One of these new units would be the 7th
Michigan Infantry Regiment. It was
decided this new regiment would “muster in” in the city of Monroe, 40 miles
south of Detroit on Lake Erie. The Commercial newspaper of Monroe
sounded the call for new recruits:
There is but one feeling, one sentiment, one voice: and that
is, the administration must be sustained, the Stars and Stripes defended, and
our government preserved. However much
political opinions may have divided us, there is no difference now. Our country sounds the bugle note of alarm,
and the people respond as one.
Men enlisted in the 7th from all
over the state. Eventually, 1,020 men
from as far away as the Upper Peninsula would fill ten companies. Several state militia units joined the 7th in
Federal service, such as “The Union Guard” of Port Huron, “The Blair Guards”
from Farmington, “The Prairieville Rangers” and “The Jonesville Light Guard”,
led by Captain Henry Baxter, a miller who had returned home to Michigan after
an unsuccessful trip to California in search of gold. These militia units would become distinct
companies within the 7th. Company D,
formerly the “Monroe Light Guard” would be filled with local men from Monroe,
men like Sergeant John A. Clark, who would become an officer within 7 months,
and Private Basil Deshetler. Other men
from across the state would report to Monroe, including Captain Henry Turrill,
a lumberman from Lapeer, and Sergeant Samuel Hodgman, a 30-year old from
Kalamazoo County who left work in his father’s shoe shop to join the army.
After 4 weeks of drilling and
training in Monroe, the 7th was officially mustered into Federal service on
August 22, 1861 with 884 men assigned.
It was stationed outside Washington DC from September 1861 to March
1862, mostly on picket duty and drilling at their camp near the Potomac River
at Poolesville, Maryland. During the
winter of 1861-62, 30 men from the 7th regiment would die of disease in winter
quarters, most from the measles. The
men’s fighting spirits would not be dampened, however. Although combat so far eluded them, the men
had not lost their determination to fight and to win the war. Charles Benson from Company I wrote in his
diary on New Years Eve:
I have been five months in the service. I do not regret that I engaged in such a good
cause, a cause in which hundreds of thousands of our countrymen engaged,
leaving all the joys & comforts of home to maintain their country’s honor
& put down this monster rebellion which aims at the very heart of our great
& free government.
The 7th Michigan men that would fight at Antietam were not green, untested troops. In May 1862 the regiment participated in
General George McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, where at the Battle of Fair
Oaks, the regiment played a critical role during an attack on a Confederate
position. The regiment was posted on the
left flank of the brigade and successfully attacked the rebel flank in a dense
woodlot. A month later, they were
involved in six separate engagements during the Seven Days battles. The regiment would suffer nearly 200 total
casualties during the Peninsula Campaign, almost one quarter of the men who
left Monroe nine months earlier.
The impact of the death and
suffering clearly left a mark on the men.
They had seen their comrades shot dead on the battlefield, and each of
the men confronted their own mortality.
Five days before Fair Oaks, Captain Turrill from Lapeer in Company G,
wrote to his wife Elizabeth:
I have no fear for the result of the battle should we be in
one, and I shall do all in my power for my men and victory. Should I fall I feel that I have left a
richer legacy to my family than in any other event I could bestow. While I have been in the service, I know I
have done that which my judgement dictated was right for me to do as an
officer, and often when duty lay in an opposite direction to that which my
feelings would lead me.
Samuel Hodgman, the
First Sergeant of Company I, wrote his parents:
None of us feel fainthearted yet. The nearer the prospect of danger the less I
seem to dread it. I know not how it will
be when I come to stand face to face with it.
When it is the will of God that I shall do so, I shall try and do my
duty like a man, let the consequences be what they may.
On June 28, before the Seven Days
campaign, Captain Allen Zacharias of Company K, a native of Washington County,
Maryland and a professor at the Michigan State Military Institute, wrote a short autobiography on a piece of paper which he kept with him. On the other side of the note he wrote:
Friend: If you find my body lifeless upon the field, bury it
decently, mark its resting place, and inform my friends in the regiment and my
father. Do this and you shall be
liberally rewarded and have the gratitude of my friends.
Captain Zacharias would survive the
Peninsula Campaign without harm, but he kept the note. Two weeks later, on July 11, while the army
regrouped and recuperated around Washington, Captain Zacharias would write
another letter, this one to the father of Private Noah Teall, one of his
soldiers in Company K who had died the previous morning of dysentery:
Dear Sir: It has
become my melancholy duty to communicate sad intelligence in regard to your
son, Noah. He lives no more. At 9 o’clock yesterday morning his eyes were
closed in that “last long sleep that knows no waking”… Clothed in the blue uniform of a Union
soldier his body was placed in a decent pine box, and with Rev. Basil L.
Deshetler and myself leading, and the company following, he was borne by his
comrades this morning to its last resting place… At the head of the grave I
will have a board erected with name etc. to mark the place.
Captain Zacharias and
Private Deshetler would both face death at Antietam with the rest of the men of the
7th Michigan.
All the men of the 7th knew the
coming battle in Maryland would be decisive: Robert E. Lee’s invading Confederate army
had to be turned back. The 7th arrived on
the east side of Antietam Creek on the evening of September 16th. Private Frederick Oesterle of Tuscola County
remembered:
We received 40 rounds of cartridges in our boxes and 20
additional rounds in our haversack. Many
goodbyes were said and letters were sent home to our loved ones. Prayer meetings were held throughout the
army…
Captain Turrill wrote
again to his wife at home in Lapeer:
I am sure I fight for a brave, generous people who will see
my family provided for if I am lost to them, and I am sure that you dear will
keep my memory fresh with my son and daughter.
For yourself, love, and for my father and mother, my brothers and
sisters, I feel that the grief of our parting will be tempted by the feeling
that the cause was worth the sacrifice.
I would not be in Michigan this day, and if I never see it [again], be
sure I fall a willing offering. Hope has
a brighter side, lets look on that hopeful side for this is where I want to
look.
Captain Henry Turrill
Around 8:00 on the morning of September 17, 1862, the
division of Major General John Sedgwick, three brigades with over 5,000 men from
General Edwin Sumner’s II Corps, crossed Antietam creek in columns. The 7th was in the brigade of Brigadier
General Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana with four other regiments, all veterans
of the Peninsula fighting. Sedgwick’s
orders were to move his division into the West Woods and strike the Confederate
left flank, which had been heavily damaged by the I and XII Corps earlier in
the morning. Arriving in the East Woods
some three hours after the battle had begun, the division shifted to a line
formation by brigade, three half-mile-long parallel lines of brigades
stretching from the southern end of the Cornfield across the Smoketown Road. Dana’s brigade was second in line, and the
7th Michigan was posted on the far left flank, just as they were at Fair Oaks.
The commanding officer of the 7th was Colonel Norman J. Hall. From Monroe
County, Hall was a 1859 graduate of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point,
graduating 13th of 22 in his class. He
was at Fort Sumter during the bombardment there in April 1861 as a Lieutenant
in the 1st US Artillery, so he had already become somewhat of a celebrity back
in Monroe. He assumed command of the
regiment two months before the battle.
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Baxter from Jonesville was the second in
command. Both of Baxter’s grandfathers
had served in the Revolutionary War.
Shortly after 9:00 am, the men moved out from
the East Woods to the west across an open field shoulder to shoulder. In front of them was the 34th New York, to
their right was the 42nd New York.
Sedgwick’s third brigade was in line behind them, and their left hung in
the air with no support. About 75 yards
separated the brigade lines. As they
cleared the trees, they immediately came under Confederate artillery fire from
the ridge beyond the woods to the west.
Sergeant Hodgman and the rest of Company I were in the center of the
line near the colors.
The troops were advancing in two lines about 10 or 12 rods
apart. The shell exploded directly in
front of the first line not more than 6 or 7 feet from the ground. The next exploded directly in the second line
about breast high. In both cases the
lines never wavered for an instant but pressed on regardless of the storm of
iron and lead which soon began to tell so fatally on their ranks.
I endeavored to rally our men around [the colors] twice and
was then wounded… I bear the marks of it in the shape of a ball hole through my
left leg about 4 or 5 inches above my knee, and a good hard rap from a piece of
shell on the inside of the calf on the right.
Private Oesterle in
Company E remembered:
It was almost impossible to advance, the ground was covered
so thick with dead and dying men of both sides, as the field had been fought
over twice previous to our advance…
As the regiment crossed the
Hagerstown Pike and went into the West Woods, the brigade commander, General
Dana, wrote in his report of the battle:
I received an order to move forward at double-quick and
enter the woods in front. The outline of
the woods was irregular, presenting a salient point where the left of my line
first entered. The first line was now
hotly engaged in front, and hardly had my left regiment entered the woods when
a tremendous musketry fire opened on my left and front, apparently
perpendicular to my line of march and flanking the first line. Almost immediately a regiment of infantry
came running in great disorder from the woods on my left, and the 7th Michigan
commenced to deliver an oblique fire to the left. There was no time to wait for orders, the
flanking force, whatever it was, was advancing its fire too rapidly on my
left. I permitted the three right
regiments to move on, but broke off the 42nd New York Volunteers, with orders
to change front to the left and meet the attack which had apparently broken
through the first line on my left and front, and was now precipitated with fury
on my left flank. The 42nd moved up
nobly to its work, but before it was formed in its new position, and whilst it
was in disorder, the enemy was close up on it, and the fire which was poured
upon it and the 7th Michigan was the most terrific I ever witnessed.
Confederates entered the West Woods
from the south just as Sedgwick’s three brigades entered it from the east. The long brigade lines proved difficult to
maneuver in the dense trees. The
flanking fire the rebels delivered into the regiments on the left was
devastating. Private Oesterle continued:
My company went into this fight with 36 men and in thirty
minutes we rallied only 15… our company lost every non-commissioned officer but
one. I had the button of my cap shot
off, one ball went through my blouse pocket and tore my dictionary to pieces,
another cut my leg just above the knee and another grazed my right arm, but not
any of them severe enough to disable me.
Sergeant Hodgman,
already wounded before the regiment went into the trees, remembered:
It was perfectly awful where we were. Infantry in front and in flank, artillery in
flank and in front, all pouring in upon us a terrible storm of iron and
lead. It seemed almost a miracle that
any escaped… I was not very ambitious to see how long I could stay amongst the
balls. They were flying all around each
side, over, in front, and behind me and like plums in a pudding. The shells were bursting in every direction…
I could not help admiring the scene terrible as it was and full of danger at
every step. [The men] had no opportunity
to distinguish themselves personally, all stood together to shoot and be
shot. We had no hand to hand
fighting. The one that could load and
fire the fastest did the Rebs the most damage.
Some of the attacking regiments drifted
off to the north and west to the far edge of the woods. The 42nd New York and
7th Michigan struggled together to hold the left of Dana’s brigade in the woods
just north of the Dunker Church. They
were joined by the 34th New York, which had become separated from the other
units in the first brigade line.
Confederate brigades from Mississippi under William Barksdale and
Georgians under George T. Anderson hammered the Michigan and New York men. General Dana, by now severely wounded in the
left leg, wrote:
I remained with these two regiments, and, although the
shattered remnants of them were forced by overwhelming numbers and a cross-fire
to retreat in disorder, I bear them witness that is was after nearly half of
the officers and men were placed hors
de combat. Having retired across the field to the woods
on the right and rear about 300 yards, I ordered them to reform.
Dana turned over command of what was
left of the brigade to Colonel Hall.
Now the temporary brigade commander, Hall, slightly wounded himself,
attempted to rally the survivors of the five regiments:
At this time, the 7th Michigan was the only regiment in my
sight. The 42nd New York, after making
an attempt to rally, was broken completely… I determined to attempt to hold the
woods, a quarter mile in rear of the position of the line when the attack
commenced. I caused Captain Hunt,
Lieutenant-Colonel Baxter having been disabled by wounds, to establish the 7th
Michigan near the edge of the woods…
Hunt and a few surviving junior officers
attempted to rally the Michigan men near a fence at the edge of a tree line in
the field they had just crossed.
Lieutenant Clark of Company D attempted to organize a stand there but
was shot down with a bullet through the head.
Captain Zacharias of Company K was also shot during the fight. As he lay on the ground, he struggled to
write another note on an envelope:
Dear Parents, Brothers and Sisters: I am wounded, mortally I think. The fight rages around me. I have done my duty, this is my consolation. I hope to meet you all again. I left not the line until nearly all had
fallen and the colors gone. I am getting
weak, my arms are free, but my chest is all numb. The enemy trotting over me, the numbness up
to my heart. Goodbye all. Your son, Allen.
By 10:00 am the fighting in the West
Woods was over. Surviving elements of
the 7th had fallen back all the way to the East Woods from where they began the
attack, and into the North Woods on the other side of the Cornfield. The unit regrouped that evening north of the
battlefield but their fight here at Antietam was over.
What became of the
Michigan men that were engaged here?
Colonel Norman Hall remained in
command of the brigade through the Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and
Gettysburg campaigns, but was never promoted to Brigadier General, largely due
to recurring health issues. He received
a medical discharge in 1864 but returned to Fort Sumter in April 1865 to
celebrate the re-raising of the national flag there.
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Baxter,
wounded in the right leg, took over the regiment when Colonel Hall was elevated
to brigade command. Baxter led the 7th
Michigan at the Battle of Fredericksburg three months after Antietam. He heroically led his men across the
Rappahannock River in small boats to clear out rebel sharpshooters harassing
the construction of pontoon bridges needed by the army to cross the river. Baxter was wounded again while crossing in
one of the boats. He was promoted to
Brigadier General in 1863 and would command a brigade at Gettysburg. He would survive the war and go on to become
President Grant’s Minister to Honduras.
Sergeant Samuel Hodgman from Company
I, commissioned as a Second Lieutenant two weeks before the battle, would
survive his wounds. He spent three
months recuperating in an army hospital in Philadelphia and would return to the
regiment in time for the Gettysburg campaign.
He received a medical discharge in March 1864.
Private Frederick Oesterle would
survive the battle here, but would be wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness
in 1864. He was mustered out with the 87
surviving members of the regiment at the end of the war in July 1865.
Private Charles Benson, who wrote
the hopeful note for 1862 in his diary on New Year’s Eve, also survived the
battle. He was killed at the Wilderness
on May 6, 1864.
Captain Henry Turrill of Company G,
who wondered if he would ever see Michigan again, would not. He was killed here and buried on the
battlefield by his comrades. His father
James came to Sharpsburg in October to claim his son’s body, and wrote:
I had to traverse the battlefield to discover amidst the multitude
of graves the one dear to me. After I
found where he was laid it was quite difficult to make the necessary
preparations to remove it. There were so
many on the same sad errand from every part of the country. I think I met twenty bodies being reclaimed
in going eight miles, and this was everyday business. It was sad, oh how sad, to meet father and
brother and sometimes mothers in search of remains of their dear ones.
Private Basil Deshetler, who helped
Lieutenant Zacharias bury Private Teall two months earlier, was severely
wounded. As he lay on the battlefield,
like Zacharias, he wrote one last entry in his diary:
17 September: Arise at 2 AM, at sunrise in battle 7 AM at
which I am wounded. This is written on
the spot wherein I lay. May God bless me
and forgive all my sins, through Jesus Christ .
He died in a nearby
hospital on October 9th and is buried in the Antietam National Cemetery.
Captain Allen Zacharias’s body was
found in the West Woods by a soldier from Maine. He was severely wounded. In his hand was the last note he had
scribbled for his family. The soldier
dutifully mailed the envelope to Zacharias’s father back in Monroe, and
included the note Zacharias had written after Fair Oaks. He was taken to a hospital in Hagerstown where
he would die on December 31st. There
were several family members from Maryland there with him, Captain Allen
Zacharias would die in the same county in which he was born.
1st Lieutenant John Clark from
Monroe died on the field at the fence line attempting to rally the men. He was buried by the regiment that evening or
the next day. On the 19th, Alexander
Gardner, a photographer from Washington DC, came to Antietam to photograph the
battlefield. He took over 80 images, one
of which was a photo of Lieutenant Clark’s grave where he fell. A dead Confederate soldier lay nearby. Clark’s childhood friend from Monroe came to
Antietam several days later to claim the body and take him back home. He was 20 years old.
The grave of Lieutenant John Clark, with an unburied and unknown Confederate lying next to him.
At Antietam, the casualties incurred
by Sumner’s Second Corps were double that of any other Union corps engaged on
the field that day. Just in Sedgwick’s
division attack here into the West Woods alone, in the span of about twenty
minutes, the official report listed 369 killed, 1,572 wounded and 224
missing. Sedgwick himself was wounded
three times in the leg, wrist and shoulder.
Of 40 Union infantry brigades
engaged on September 17th at Antietam, Dana’s ranked first in total number of
casualties.
The 7th Michigan went into the West
Woods with 402 men. 39 men were killed,
178 were wounded and four men were reported missing, a total of 221, a 55%
casualty rate. Twenty of 23 officers
were killed or wounded. The casualties
in Companies I and K were so high that they were disbanded and the survivors
transferred to other companies. In terms
of aggregate losses at Antietam, the 7th Michigan ranked seventh of all 235
Union infantry regiments present. If
compared to Confederate regimental losses at Antietam, the 7th Michigan would
rank second on the list of total casualties.
Of all Michigan infantry regiments in the Union armies during the war,
the 7th ranked the highest with 15% killed in action.
When he wrote his official report
after the battle, General Howard, writing for the wounded Sedgwick, wrote of
the division that: “they have poured out their blood like water, and we must
look to God and our country for a just reward.”
Five days after the Union victory here, Abraham Lincoln would issue the
preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, forever changing the meaning of the war
and the nature of our country. The
country could not reward the men of the 7th Michigan and the others who fought
and died in the West Woods, but rather all future generations of free Americans
will forever be in their debt.
Sources:
Richard H. Benson, The Civil War Diaries of Charles E. Benson
(Decorah IA: Anundsen Publishing Co, 1991)
George H. Brown, Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in
the Civil War, 1861-1865.
David D. Finney, Jr.,
Colonel Norman Jonathan Hall of the 7th
Michigan Infantry 1837-1867: A Biographical Sketch (Howell MI: NaBeDa
Press, 2001)
William F. Fox, Regimental Losses in the American Civil War,
1861-1865.
William J.
Frassanito, Antietam: The Photographic
Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day (Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1978)
Chris Howland, “Wrecked in the West Woods,” America’s Civil
War, September 2003, Vol 26, Issue 4.
Charles Lanman, The Red Book of Michigan; A Civil, Military
and Biographical History.
Personal Papers of John Morton, Institute Manuscript Archive, U. S. Army Heritage &
Education Center (USAHEC), Carlisle PA.
Personal Memoir of Private Frederick W. Oesterle, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, U. S. Army Heritage
& Education Center (USAHEC), Carlisle PA.
Roger L. Rosentreter,
“Samuel Hodgman’s Civil War,” Michigan
History, November/December 1980, Vol 64, 34-38.
Seventh Michigan Infantry: Miscellaneous Letters and
Documents, on file, Antietam
National Battlefield Library and Research Center, Sharpsburg MD.
David G. Townshend, The Seventh Michigan Volunteer Infantry (Southeast
Publications, 1993)
Jeffrey D. Wert, “Disaster in the West Woods,” Civil War
Times, October 2002, Vol 41, Issue 5.
