The 4th Michigan Infantry in the Civil War

The Loss Is Great, the Confusion Greater

17 c h apter 2 The Loss Is Great, the Confusion Greater The train bearing the 4th Michigan rolled into Toledo between noon and 1:00 p.m. Dr. Chamberlain said there was “a great crowd of people to receive us.” After a pause of two or three hours, the regiment boarded two eastbound trains, arriving in Cleveland that evening for “supper and some good hot coffee,” wrote a man who initialed his dispatch “W.” The soldier noted that “we were cheered at every station and bid God speed by everyone.” Sgt. Eli Starr of Company C described the trip as “one continuous ovation” with women and children throwing flowers; other accounts told of people waving flags and bringing “eatables,” pitchers of water, and bouquets to the soldiers at points where the train stopped for water and wood. The men were well fed in part because the regiment’s quartermaster, Henry A. Grannis, traveled ahead to make the arrangements.1 Orvey S. Barrett, a Lenawee County man who was then 26 and a sergeant in Company B, remembered that Cleveland was where he was first issued his “hardtack,” the infamous thick, unleavened bread or cracker that soldiers came to joke about and depend upon. “They were round,” he wrote, “and as large as an elephant’s foot, and as tough as a prohibitionist’s conscience.” Barrett said some of the men, awestruck by the seemingly indestructible crackers, stood on the platforms of the cars, seeing how far they could sail them, while others were “trying to pulverize === c h apter 2 === 18 them” with coupling pins. The musicians of the Hecker Band from Cleveland probably had a better time, since they were allowed off the train for about three hours to visit friends and family.2 The 4th Michigan transferred to another eastbound train that night and left for Erie, Pennsylvania , driving on through the early morning hours of June 26. Sgt. John Bancroft of Company I wrote that the citizens of Erie gave the men coffee and cake and other treats. The correspondent who signed his dispatches to the Detroit Free Press “Hamilton” wrote that the citizens waited all night for the regiment’s arrival, which came about 4:00 a.m. Then the train continued along the Lake Erie coast another 45 miles or so, crossing the state line into New York. “At Dunkirk stopped and went to Lake Erie to bathe,” Bancroft noted. “This was a great treat indeed.” A soldier who attracted the concern of a Dunkirk woman seems to have been John B. Warren, 40, of Company H, who had been injured in Adrian the day before when a heavy trunk fell on him as the train was being loaded, badly bruising his leg. The Dunkirk Union reported that the lady saw a limping Michigan soldier, led him to her home, and bandaged the injury. The soldier was visibly moved, the journal noted, telling her, “You done it just as my sister would.”3 The men changed trains at Dunkirk, boarding the New York & Erie Railroad that morning. It took them southeast across New York to the town of Olean, to Hornellville, and on east to Elmira near the Pennsylvania state line. Citizens continued to bring them coffee and snacks at their brief stops before they arrived for several hours rest at about three-thirty in the afternoon. Many Michigan families came from the state of New York, and the diaries and letters of some soldiers mention that they saw old friends, neighbors, and relatives along the way. The regiment left the cars and marched to the camp of the 23rd New York and “partook of a hearty supper prepared by the ladies of Elmyra,” wrote “W.” At 11:30 p.m., the 4th Michigan boarded freight cars of a train taking them south. The men thought it funny that they were loaded onto cars used for livestock; James H. Cole, the captain of Company B, remembered that the soldiers brayed, neighed, barked, mooed, crowed, oinked, cackled, and meowed as the train pulled out. Orvey Barrett wrote that some pranksters pulled a coupling pin and detached three or four cars until officers got the train backed up and reconnected them. The men tried to sleep as the train clattered through the Susquehanna Mountains. Now it was June 27, and there were two or three more stops before they reached Pennsylvania’s capital. At Williamsport the men left the freight cars for more...