When America faced its greatest internal crisis, Michigan answered the call with over ninety thousand troops. The story of that sacrifice is preserved in the state's rich collection of Civil War monuments, markers, forts, cemeteries, reenactments, museums and exhibits. Discover how General George A. Custer and the famed Michigan Cavalry Brigade "saved the Union." Visit the chair that President Lincoln was assassinated in at Ford's Theatre, and view the grave of the last African American Union veteran. With a foreword by Civil War historian Jack Dempsey, this work is the first of its kind to chronicle the many Civil War landmarks in the Wolverine State.

Guidebook identifying Michigan markers, monuments, museum exhibits, forts, buildings, landmarks and grave sites connected to the Civil War.

On the hot summer evening of July 2, 1863, at the climax of the struggle for a Pennsylvania hill called Little Round Top, four Confederate regiments charge up the western slope, attacking the smallest and most exposed of their Union foe: the 16th Michigan Infantry. Terrible fighting has raged, but what happens next will ultimately—and unfairly—stain the reputation of one of the Army of the Potomac’s veteran combat outfits, made up of men from Detroit, Saginaw, Ontonagon, Hillsdale, Lansing, Adrian, Plymouth, and Albion. In the dramatic interpretation of the struggle for Little Round Top that followed the Battle of Gettysburg, the 16th Michigan Infantry would be remembered as the one that broke during perhaps the most important turning point of the war. Their colonel, a young lawyer from Ann Arbor, would pay with his life, redeeming his own reputation, while a kind of code of silence about what happened at Little Round Top was adopted by the regiment’s survivors. From soldiers’ letters, journals, and memoirs, this book relates their experiences in camp, on the march, and in battle, including their controversial role at Gettysburg, up to the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House.