Eighth not responded the way they did to the horrendous conditions endured on June 16, 1862. The Eighth Michigan easily could have been cast in an unfavorable light, considered to be cowardly, or simply been riddled with desertion after their brutal experience at Secessionville. Events like this unfortunately occurred to many regiments, such as the Sixteenth Connecticut. If, like the unlucky Sixteenth Connecticut, a regiment happened to experience its first tastes of combat at a particularly deadly engagement, the regiment’s response to the initial combat could wreak havoc on its legacy, or it could become the beginning of a celebrated collective memory shared by the regiment’s veterans. The latter occurred within the persevering Eighth, and the valiant soldiers were distinguished and shaped by their experience. The loss of so many friends, brothers, and acquaintances, along with the absolute destruction of their officer staff, forced the men to form tighter bonds with one another; their shared loss at Tower Battery created a brotherhood among them that had been forged in the blood of their fallen comrades. Thus, to better understand the men who fought in the Civil War, we must look at their initial combat experiences. Some of these first experiences are larger than Secessionville, as evidenced by the poor Sixteenth Connecticut, but some may be even smaller. By overlooking these small engagements and first combat experiences, contemporary historians are depriving themselves of the opportunity to learn more about the individual men and regiments who made up the Union and Confederate armies. Although the significance of small or early engagements may seem minor when compared to the larger narrative of the Civil War today, historians must not dismiss that these initial tastes of war were often regarded as the most important and defining experiences to the men who suffered them. The story and legacy of the Eighth Michigan have only begun to be uncovered in this paper, but many similar stories are still hidden within the surviving words of the soldiers themselves. It is the task of modern-day historians to uncover these stories of all regiments and apply them to the larger narrative of the American Civil War. By bringing these forgotten battles and unforgotten experiences back into the overarching narrative, historians will create a richer understanding of and take a fuller look into the war that shaped this nation, and, in doing so, they will be keeping some of the most important memories and experiences of these soldiers alive. Bibliography Adjutant General’s Department of Michigan. Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861–1865. Vol. 8. Kalamazoo: Ihling Bros. & Everard, 1905. Beecher, Herbert W. History of the First Light Battery Connecticut Volunteers, 1861–1865. New York: A.T. De La Mare, 1901. Brennan, Patrick. Secessionville: Assault on Charleston. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1996. Buchanan Family Collection. Michigan in the Civil War Collection. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Gordon, Lesley. A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. Hess, Earl. The Union Soldier in Battle. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. McCreery-Fenton Family Civil War Papers Collection. Michigan in the Civil War Collection. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Michigan Commandery Collection. Michigan in the Civil War Collection. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.
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