The
regiment was recruited in southern Michigan between April and
September 1861, with the majority of the soldiers coming from St.
Joseph County. The unit formally mustered into the Union army between
August 24 and September 11. It formed independent from the state
government, as allowed for by the War Department, but fell under
Michigan’s control when the Federal authorization for
independent units was revoked. The regiment received its formal
designation as the 11th regiment on October 11. The soldiers elected
their officers, selecting William J. May, the former proprietor of
the White Pigeon Railroad Dining Hall, as colonel. U.S. district
attorney William Lewis Stoughton, a rising star in the Republican
Party, was elected lieutenant colonel.
The
11th Michigan trained at White Pigeon before deploying to Kentucky on
December 9, 1861, with 1,004 men and officers. Far from the front
lines, the unit saw little active service, but suffered dearly from
smallpox and measles at Bardstown, Kentucky that winter, losing more
than seventy men to disease. Colonel May, suffering from poor health,
resigned effective April 1, raising Stoughton to colonel in his
place. Melvin Mudge was promoted to fill the vacancy at lieutenant
colonel.
The
Michiganders went on railroad guard duty in March 1862 as the Union
army advanced into Tennessee following Ulysses S. Grant’s
captures of Forts Henry and Donelson. The regiment’s first
taste of active military operations came when Confederate cavalryman
John Hunt Morgan launched a raid through Tennessee and Kentucky in
July. The 11th regiment, in conjunction with other Federal units, was
dispatched on a wild goose chase that culminated in a narrow miss at
surrounding Morgan’s entire force at Paris, Kentucky. The
regiment, in conjunction with other units, later caught up with a
detachment of Morgan’s troopers at Gallatin, Tennessee, on
August 13, 1862, firing the first volleys in the regiment’s
history. The Michiganders claimed to have inflicted numerous
casualties on Morgan’s force, though Morgan’s subordinate
Basil Duke later denied any Confederate losses. The Michiganders and
their Federal counterparts pillaged Paris while there, embittering
Morgan and hardening his attitude toward Union civilians.
Braxton
Bragg’s Confederate invasion of Kentucky in August 1862 left
the 11th Michigan among the Federal units stranded in isolation at
Nashville under the command of James Scott Negley. The 11th was
finally brigaded at this time, joining the 19th Illinois Infantry,
the 18th Ohio Infantry, and the 69th Ohio under the command of
Colonel Timothy Robbins Stanley, former commander of the 18th Ohio.
Stanley’s brigade was part of Negley’s division of the
14th Army Corps, which came to be known as the Army of the
Cumberland. The Michiganders came under fire again on October 5,
1862, when they repelled a guerrilla ambush near Fort Riley while out
on a foraging expedition.
After
Bragg’s invasion was repulsed at Perryville, the 11th Michigan
joined the Army of the Cumberland’s advance under Major General
William Starke Rosecrans in late December, and was heavily engaged at
the Battle of Stones River. The green Michiganders fought bravely
despite absorbing severe casualties, and helped stall Bragg’s
powerful opening assault shy of Rosecrans’s supply artery, the
Nashville Pike. The unit took part in the decisive charge across
Stones River on January 2, 1863, participating in the rout of John C.
Breckinridge's division.
After
months of recuperation in Murfreesboro, Rosecrans advanced again in
the Tullahoma Campaign on June 23, 1863, turning Bragg’s army
out of Chattanooga. When Rosecrans pushed too aggressively in
pursuit, Negley’s division, the 11th Michigan included, was
nearly cut off and captured, but fought a successful delaying action
against a vastly superior Confederate force at the Battle of Davis’s
Cross Roads. The 11th was the most heavily engaged unit in the
battle, losing 3 dead, 11 wounded, and 3 missing. A week later, the
adversaries clashed again at the Battle of Chickamauga, where the
11th Michigan on September 20, 1863, helped parry a Rebel attempt to
flank George H. Thomas’s corps and cut the Union army off from
its line of retreat. The Michiganders participated in the ambush of
Brigadier General Daniel Weisiger Adams’s brigade, inflicting
severe losses on the Confederates and capturing Adams in the process.
Later that day—with Stanley wounded, Stoughton raised to
brigade command, and Mudge leading the regiment—the 11th
Michigan participated in the legendary defense of Snodgrass Hill,
inflicting catastrophic casualties on the Confederate brigade of
Archibald Gracie. Confederate general Joseph Kershaw, witnessing the
attack, declared it “one of the heaviest assaults of the war on
a single point.” Michigan sergeant William G. Whitney earned
the Medal of Honor for gathering desperately needed ammunition from
downed Rebels between the lines—while under fire from Rebel
sharpshooters—during a brief lull in the assault. Overall
casualties for the 11th Michigan at Chickamauga amounted to 66 men,
with Mudge among the wounded.
The
Union defeat at Chickamauga left the Army of the Cumberland virtually
under siege in Chattanooga, but the arrival of reinforcements under
Ulysses S. Grant turned the tables several weeks later, and the 11th
Michigan joined in the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25,
1863. Stoughton was again in command of the brigade, and Major
Benjamin G. Bennett led the regiment with Mudge still recovering from
his Chickamauga wound. The Michiganders, despite having Bennett and
Color Bearer John Day killed, successfully charged uphill against the
entrenched Rebels of Otho F. Strahl’s brigade, with lead
elements of the Michigan regiment penetrating a gap between Strahl’s
troops and the neighboring brigade of Randall Gibson. Quartermaster
Sergeant James Wood King, who entered the battle outside his line of
duty, was among the first soldiers to reach the summit and fight to
pry open the breach in the Rebel line. King was later nominated for
the Medal of Honor. Bragg’s siege was broken by the Federal
assault, and the Confederates were hurtled into a precipitous
retreat. Stoughton’s troops participated in the pursuit of
Bragg’s army the next day, launching a night assault in pitch
darkness near Graysville, Georgia, and capturing the Confederate
artillery battery of Thomas B. Ferguson without the loss of a single
soldier.
After
wintering at Rossville and Graysville, Georgia, the 11th Michigan
joined in William Tecumseh Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. The
Michiganders were present, but only lightly engaged, at Buzzard Roost
Gap and the Battle of Resaca. At the Battle of Pickett’s Mill,
the unit came under artillery fire, followed by its first taste of
prolonged trench warfare. With the resumption of Sherman’s
advance, the Michiganders again dug in, at Kennesaw Mountain, where
they traded constant sniping with the Rebels but were mercifully
excluded from the bloody Battle of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27. In
pursuit of the subsequent Confederate retreat, the Michiganders were
engaged at Battle of Ruff’s Station, where Colonel Stoughton
suffered a severe shell wound that necessitated the amputation of his
leg. Five companies from the 11th Michigan participated in a
successful but costly assault against Rebel entrenchments near the
railroad, losing three dead and ten wounded.
The
11th Michigan was again lightly engaged at Peachtree Creek on July
20, where the unit rushed the length of the Union line under
artillery fire to plug a gap with John Newton’s 4th Corps
division. In the ensuing actions against Atlanta, the regiment was
again called upon to charge entrenched Rebels, this time at the
Battle of Utoy Creek on August 7. The Michiganders seized the first
line of Confederate trenches at the cost of fifteen dead and fifteen
wounded. With the regiment’s three-year enlistment period about
to expire, the soldiers nearly mutinied when ordered to charge across
the open field, but a timely speech by Mudge convinced the bluecoats
to do their duty under fire one last time.
With
the soldiers' three year enlistments expiring, the regiment was
finally relieved from front line duty on August 27, but a Rebel
cavalry raid by Joseph Wheeler necessitated their involvement in
another infantry-cavalry chase. After helping to drive Wheeler off,
the unit finally embarked for home via railroad on September 19.
Stopping at Sidney, Ohio, on the 24th, the Michiganders stumbled
across Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham and democratic vice
presidential candidate George H. Pendleton, both of whom were reviled
by the soldiers for their antiwar stances. Mudge narrowly restrained
his soldiers from killing the politicians, who were chased off but
still delivered speeches in town later that day. Upon departing
Sidney, Mudge’s troops made off with a cannon used by
Vallandhigham’s supporters to fire off salutes in his honor.
The 11th Michigan returned home safely, and was mustered out on
October 11, 1864.
The
11th Michigan Volunteer Infantry, initially known as Colonel May’s
Independent Regiment, was a unit in the Union army during the
American Civil War. The regiment fought with the Army of the
Cumberland in numerous battles, including Stones River, Chickamauga,
and Missionary Ridge.