This week we began exploring online primary source material on our regiments.
Marvin Bolton served in the 1st Michigan Cavalry. One particularly useful site for this regiment was published by the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Society. The site can be found here and offers links to regimental histories and personal accounts published during or shortly after the war. Two sources I found particularly interesting were the military rosters and the records of the regiment’s service. Oddly, Bolton does not appear on any of the records contained on this site. He is not in the list of survivors or the list of members of the “cavalry brigade society” established after the war as what appears to be a kind of club for maintaining relationships forged during the war and memorializing their experiences and their lost comrades. I am not sure how to account for this absence, though it did send me back to double check my copies of his records which do, in fact, clearly show him serving in the 1st Michigan Cavalry.
I did find it especially interesting to read about the movements of the regiment and their participation in the war. It appears they were quite crucial in the battle at Gettysburg, which is where Bolton was wounded. The “Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the War” published in 1905, includes this account of the 1st’s participation in that battle:
The brigade was in command of General Custer in June, 1863 during the Pennsylvania campaign and in July the First was with the brigade at Gettysburg and made a saber charge upon Hampton’s brigade of confederate cavalry, one of the most desperate as well as brilliant charges of the war. The First drove a whole brigade in confusion from the field and turned what appeared to be a defeat of the Union forces into a complete victory. The regiment lost at Gettysburg 11 officers and 80 men killed, wounded or missing.
This was especially interesting to read as it was a saber wound that Bolton suffered from, which fits well with this account.
I would classify this source as “Official Records of War.” The book was compiled by a committee appointed through an act of the Michigan legislature at the request of Michigan veterans of the Civil War. A note in the beginning penned by Michigan Governor Bliss credits Assistant Adjutant General, Col. George H. Turner with the bulk of the work of compiling the records.
The material in this book is a part of the Public Domain, Google-digitized.
As an aside, I also quite love the recruitment poster imaged on this website, but I am having trouble identifying their source and it appears to be something protected by copyright. The “Link Policy” on the website states “Michigan.gov is for personal and non-commercial use only. You may not modify, copy, distribute, display, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, sell, or transfer information, products, or services obtained from Michigan.gov unless the law otherwise provides or the State gives you prior written permission.” Though, I wonder how difficult it would be to obtain written permission/more information about the source on that image. I definitely need to look into that a little more.
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