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.
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