The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War

The Regiment Is in a Bad Situation at Present

223 c h apter 14 The Regiment Is in a Bad Situation at Present In the wake of the failed attack at Cold Harbor, General Grant decided to quietly move his army in order to launch a new offensive from south of the James River. Less than two weeks following the terrible losses of June 3, the first of several Union army corps began a march down the York-James Peninsula. Some of the soldiers were sent to board transports to make their way to the region’s rivers to reach the James, but most trudged in the dust and heat to points where they could be ferried across or march over a new pontoon bridge built by engineers. Grant intended to surprise the Confederates by coming up from the southeast, striking the town of Petersburg and cutting off Richmond. The Fifth Corps, of which the 4th Michigan was part, acted as a rear guard for the Army of the Potomac. The soldiers of the regiment marched away from the Bethesda Church–Cold Harbor area through the night of June 5 on into the next day, halted, and moved again for a few early morning hours on the seventh, reaching the vicinity of Bottom’s Bridge on the Chickahominy River. The Second Brigade dug entrenchments and went on picket, but only once during these few days did Confederate gunners open fire on their division. The weather was hot. The quartermasters issued clothing before the wagon trains pulled out, so the men replaced those articles worn out over the course of the grinding Overland Campaign. Sgt. Henry Seage remarked on being back in familiar territory. “This is the first time I have been === c hapter 14 === 224 on Picket on the Chickahominy River or have seen it since a year ago,” he noted, referring to the summer of 1862. “The mosquitoes I find are so thick and trouble as then.” But the Confederate pickets were sociable, so the men of both sides were able to wash, fish, or “lounge listlessly on the banks in the shade,” he wrote. In his later history, Seage said they traded coffee for tobacco with the Rebels. Lt. John Bancroft, acting regimental adjutant, continued working on the muster-out papers for those whose enlistments were soon expiring, though he continued to be bothered by diarrhea. One soldier wrote a short letter to a Detroit newspaper after he read a May 16 news report that said the 4th Michigan had gone into the spring campaign with 270 men, and lost all but 17 men in the fighting in the Wilderness. “There is a mistake in the report,” wrote the soldier, who signed his letter “SERGT.” “We went into action with 247. We lost seven killed and 27 wounded, including Col. Lombard [sic], who subsequently died.” Another man had been killed on May 6, he noted. For some reason the soldier said nothing about the casualties the regiment suffered after that. But he explained that with the addition of Captain Van Valer’s company, the 4th Michigan now had 205 soldiers and noncommissioned officers and 12 officers. All told, he wrote, this meant an effective regimental strength of 158 rifles.1 A soldier from one of the regiments that fought alongside of the 4th Michigan, Robert Carter of the 22nd Massachusetts, wrote in his own history that the men enjoyed rest, washed, and looked over newspaper reports on the battles they’d been in—“much to our amusement, sometimes to our indignation.” The accuracy of the correspondents was lacking, he complained. “Were the true history of the War of the Rebellion to be compiled from such as mass of hospital reports, and bird’s-eye views of newspaper correspondents and straggling bummers ten miles to the rear, some of our veterans would feel like turning over in their graves.”2 Now the Fifth Corps’s march to the south and east for Grant’s new operation began as night fell on June 12, continuing into the next day. Some if not all of the 4th Michigan’s men made an important side trip as their comrades withdrew. Sergeant Seage was with a force of soldiers from their division who were sent across the Chickahominy at Long Bridge, moving west on a reconnaissance or patrol, but had no run-ins with the Rebels. Here the 22nd Massachusetts and the 4th Michigan may truly have been the rear guard of the Fifth Corps...