One hundred fifty years ago today, morning dawned out East on the James Peninsula in Tidewater Virginia. Overnight, a severe storm had turned the roads into mud and raised the Chickahominy River to flood stage. Two great armies confronted each other. One wore blue, like the field on our State’s flag. So near were their camps that Michigan soldiers in the Union Army of the Potomac could hear the church bells ringing in Richmond, the Confederate capital. The next several days might result in its capitulation.
On that same morning of May 27, 1862, Captain Russell Alger – one day to become Governor of Michigan -- arrived at headquarters for the Union’s great Western army deep in its Southern incursion. He delivered this telegram to a supply officer: “Captain Philip H. Sheridan, U.S. Army, is hereby appointed Captain of the Second Regiment Michigan Cavalry”. That evening, Sheridan made his first appearance at the camp of the Michigan troopers near Farmington, Mississippi.
Back in Farmington, Michigan – and in Plymouth, my home town – and here in Monroe – day dawned this May 27th on an uncertain but hopeful future. Many friends and neighbors in communities all across these two pleasant peninsulas had left for the front line. Were they all nearing the triumphant end of what in a single year had become the bloodiest conflict in the young history of the American nation?
Much had been required so far of Michigan’s men in blue … and much more would be needed.
Despite the hopeful Spring, a long summer of battles and campaigns in the East and the West would ensue. The war would stretch on into the Fall, and then into another Spring. The 27th of May 1863 would mark an Army of the Potomac that had suffered its most inglorious defeat, at Chancellorsville.
The calendar would roll over into the Spring of 1864, and of 1865. And the war would still be raging.
From initial command of that Michigan regiment, Phil Sheridan would rise to the top echelon of leadership in the United States military by the Spring of ‘65. His fame would rank with other immortals of the Union command – Grant, Sherman, Farragut. Sheridan’s horse Rienzi – Grand Rapids born and bred – veteran of many a battle – would come to enjoy a legacy perhaps even more revered than his rider.
What of others from Michigan? I fear the passing years have not always been kind to their memory. They deserve much more.
Take John A. Clark, born in 1841, who enlisted in the 7th Michigan Infantry regiment in June 1861, from Monroe. Promoted to lieutenant within a year, he saw action in the 1862 Peninsula campaign and led his company into action that September. In the West Woods north of the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, at the onset of the single bloodiest day in American history, Lieutenant Clark was shot down. He had yet to reach his 22nd birthday.
On that same field at Antietam, Captain Allen Zacharias of Monroe would suffer a mortal wound. Born in April 1833, several years before Michigan became a State, he would not see his 30th birthday.
Under the war’s first storm of shot and shell at Fort Sumter, on the Peninsula, at Antietam and Fredericksburg, and then against Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, Colonel Norman Hall of Monroe defended the Stars and Stripes. Born in March 1837, he would – unlike Clark and Zacharias – survive the war. But not for long. He, too, would be gone far too soon, in May 1867, no doubt a casualty like his brother officers.
How may we make sense of such sacrifice?
One hundred fifty years later, we are still making sense out of this great civil war, where Americans fought other Americans, and where upwards of three-quarters of a million soldiers never came back alive to their homes, their families, their friends, and their communities, like this one of Monroe.
We can say a few appropriate things about Michigan’s own.
We can recount how they rallied in defense of a cherished banner colored in familiar red, white -- and blue. We can talk of the values for which they laid their lives on the line. How they fought to save our great American Union. How they served in the cause of preserving the American democratic experiment. How they engaged in the struggle on behalf of liberty, freedom, liberation. How from the free soil tradition of this State they ushered in a new birth of freedom for all of their fellow Americans.
We can say, like Detroit poet Dudley Randall, that American earth is richer for their bones. We can say, like Benzonia’s Bruce Catton, that they wrote a pledge in blood so that freedom could be reborn in every generation.
One hundred fifty years later, we can say it is never too late to venerate such patriotism.
I am deeply honored to speak today, seeking in some way -- inadequate but heartfelt – to represent a grateful State, and a people whose indomitable character has led them time and time again to triumph despite great adversity.
May we hallow the memory of these heroic Michiganders. May we embrace for ourselves and our posterity the great causes for which they sacrificed and died. And in all the days yet to come, may we heed the echo of their voices whispering, “remember us,” “remember us,” “remember us.”
