The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War

The Sight Was Horrible and One I Hope I Never See Again

103 c h apter 7 The Sight Was Horrible and One I Hope I Never See Again The 4th Michigan remained on Minor’s Hill for three days, at times on guard for a Confederate attack. But this threat turned out to be a reconnaissance by Rebel cavalry. On September 6 the men marched to nearby Upton Hill near Fall’s Church, where they and other elements of their corps alternately went on picket and stood ready for battle. That week Capt. Charles Doolittle from Hillsdale resigned his commission to become colonel of the 18th Michigan Infantry. But the important development for the troops was that the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was on the march. In the wake of Pope’s defeat at Bull Run, Lee decided it was an opportune moment to invade the North. By September 4, McClellan and the War Department were aware the Rebels were coming. Over the next several days and by different routes, the Union army moved out to meet Lee. The men of the regiment, who remained on picket outside of Washington, heard rumors about this and read developments in the papers. “The report is the rebels are in Maryland,” George Millens of Company B wrote on September 8. The men had been without their knapsacks since they left Harrison’s Landing in August, but the next day these important carry-all packs finally caught up with them. At last on the morning of September 12 they began to march. The regiment initially headed back into Washington and got on the road to Rockville, Maryland, on === c h apter 7 === 104 another terribly hot day. Sgt. John Bancroft of Company I thought it was beautiful country, but Irvin Miner of Company F observed that the heat during the 20-mile march was dangerous. “Very warm,” he noted in his diary. “Several men fell dead with sunstroke on the march.”1 The next morning the men moved out on the road to Frederick and got to within a day’s march of the town. On the way they could hear the sound of gunfire ahead to the northwest. Residents of the towns of Rockville and Leesburg lined the streets as the soldiers tramped through, offering them milk, bread, coffee, and cold ham, Henry Seage noted. They reached Frederick on the 14th, but serious fighting was already taking place as Union forces attacked Confederate positions ahead on South Mountain, a broad ridge running north and south, where Rebels held key passes. The Southerners managed to hold on through the day but suffered high casualties, and they pulled back that night to the west. Lee formed his forces, about 40,000 men, on the high ground near Antietam Creek, near the small town of Sharpsburg. As the Rebels took their positions the Union army moved forward. The 4th Michigan, with its brigade and division, drew rations and marched from Frederick on September 15 to join the rest of the Union army converging on Sharpsburg. They reached the village of Middletown, covering about 15 miles and approaching South Mountain, where they saw dead and captured Confederates from the prior battle and Union wagon trains rolling up into the hills. Much of the army, ahead of the Fifth Corps, was just a day’s march or less away from Sharpsburg. By the 16th, the first Union troops began to arrive there. At the bivouac of the 4th Michigan near Middletown, Henry Seage noted that it was his 18th birthday. As the regiment passed through Turner’s Gap on South Mountain, they again heard cannon fire to the west when Confederates opened up on Union infantry at Antietam Creek. The 4th Michigan’s brigade reached the town of Keedysville and marched through that evening, joining elements of two other corps. Now they were on the doorstep of the coming battle, a mile or so from the ground where it would be fought. “Fair prospects for a fight tomorrow as they are surrounded,” wrote Miner in his diary that night.2 Antietam The next day, September 17, began the bloodiest single day’s battle in American history. Miner’s assessment was very nearly correct—Lee’s Confederates were in a dangerous position, though not completely surrounded. Henry Seage noted it started at daylight with the opening of the big guns, but for the 4th Michigan, posted with the rest of their corps as a reserve near the centerleft of the Union lines, there was...