What the Men of the Seventeenth Michigan were Wearing in December 1863.
The Confederate advance had been temporarily stopped at Campbell's Station, a few miles from Turkey Creek, later during the afternoon of 16 November 1863. Burnside was able to retreat with most of his force intact to the fortifications of Knoxville during the next day. As soon as the Seventeenth reached the city on the morning of 18 November, the men were immediately ordered to start digging rifle pits. Edwin Bush, a soldier in Company E stated that "the enemy had already thrown skirmishers out toward their position" soon after breakfast.
The Confederate objective was to destroy
Burnside's army and take Knoxville. The siege lasted for almost a month during
which time the Confederates attacked along the entire Union front. The
Seventeenth and its brigade (Seventy-ninth New York, Second Michigan,
Twentieth Michigan and One hundredth Pennsylvania) were in the works
protection Battery Zoellner and Fort Saunders during the attack on 29
November. The men of the Seventeenth and also been involved eight days earlier
in a raid on the Confederate lines to burn a house hiding Confederate
sharpshooters. Two men were killed and three others were awarded the Medal of
Honor. (Two other Medals of Honor were awarded for bravery at the Turkey Creek
fight also.)
During the siege little, if any,
supplies made it through to Knoxville. Burnside's army was low on rations. The
men, who had seen hard campaigning for most of November, had lost much of
their equipment when the hastily built winter quarters west of Knoxville were
dismantled and many full supply wagons abandoned and burned. Men in the
Seventeenth, for example, had lost their knapsacks during the action at Turkey
Creek and were without extra uniform items and personal belongings. Even prior
to that in October, the men were "in want of clothing, many being without
shoes and on quarter rations" in East Tennessee.
The retreat of Longstreet front in front of Knoxville did not immediately solve the supply problem. It would be another month before rations were restored to full portions. Acting major, Frederic Swift commented on 1 January 1864 that:
Our boys in their shelter tents, unable to sleep from the intense cold last night, were obliged to get up and build fires to keep comfortable, and their dinner today has been a scanty one, only 4 or 5 ounces of flour to each man for bread rations.
This was about the same as what was provided at Andersonville Prison Camp in Georgia where Seventeenth soldiers captured in the Knoxville campaign and latter at Spotslvania would be imprisoned. While never getting to the extremes of Andersonville, the men were...
"...just at that unpleasant period when we begin to contemplate the mule, and to make a dessert of parched corn. I do not mean to say the we were reduced to any such straits as this."
Loaves a bread coming from a flour mill that was almost captured by the Confederates were described as having the specific gravity of "fixed ammo for Benjamin's 3D-pound Parrots."
As far as uniforms this 5 January 1864 report indicated that out of 187 men in the regiment...
92 without underclothing (52 percent)
84 without shoes (47 percent)
16 without blankets (9 percent)
128 without overcoats (72 percent)
40 without tents (22 percent)
150 without socks (84 percent)
51 without pants (29 percent)
49 without blouses [sack coats] (47 percent)
The men were not naked, but rather those "without pants" and "without blouses" had trousers and coats too ragged and soiled to be repaired. Some of the men did wrap their feet in "green" cowhide as makeshift shoes.
By February adequate supplies arrived in Knoxville. The men were also given smallpox inoculations. The regiment also participated in a review for the men of the Second Michigan, who were returning to home as their enlistments had expired.
[Source: Stonewall Regiment, by Christen, Pritchard, Curtis, Pack and Kolas; privately printed by The Seventeenth Michigan Volunteer, Infantry Regiment, Company E; Detroit; 1986]
