civil war

Get a letter from your great-great (etc) Grandpa: New, online MSU Civil War archive

Kate Wells — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 11:00:00 +0000

This story includes historically racist language that some readers may find offensive.

We're in the midst of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

So your great uncle, the war re-enactor, is probably having the time of his life.

But for those who have trouble sitting through all nine episodes of the Ken Burns “Civil War” documentary, now there’s something for us, a new online archive is bringing Michigan’s Civil War letters into the Google Age.

Great and Bloody Sacrifice

Jack Lessenberry — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:27:01 +0000

Many of us have been so consumed with our modern economic struggles that we’ve barely paused to note that we faced a much greater crisis one hundred and fifty years ago his month.

South Carolina, the first state to secede from the union, fired on federal troops at Fort Sumter that April, and the Civil War was on.

When it ended four years later, more Americans had been killed than in any war before or since, and the country was a different place. We don’t often think of Michigan in connection with the Civil War. We were then a small, pretty new, and not very major state.

Our entire population was only three-quarters of a million people - far less than the population of Macomb County today. Yet Michigan answered the call enthusiastically.

We overfilled our quota of volunteers. Abraham Lincoln had some anxious moments those first weeks of the war.

Would the states really respond by sending the troops necessary to put down the rebellion? Michigan did. From Detroit, Adrian, Marshall, Ypsilanti and Grand Rapids they came.

Washington asked Michigan for a single regiment. Governor Austin Blair protested. No. We could furnish more. Much more.

The first Michigan troops arrived in the capitol in May, lifting the President’s spirits. “Thank God for Michigan!”Abraham Lincoln said when they arrived.

Michigan prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War

Steve Carmody — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:49:55 +0000

There are numerous observances planned across Michigan beginning this week marking the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. More than 90 thousand Michiganders served in Union army during the Civil War. Nearly 15 thousand died.