History of Detroit, Michigan - A City Emerges - Civil War Era

Civil War Era

Prior to the American Civil War, the city's access to the Canadian border made it a key stop for runaway slaves along the underground railroad. The Michigan Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Detroit's Campus Martius Park commemorates the state's role in the American Civil War. Thousands of Detroiters formed volunteer regiments, including the 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment (part of the legendary Iron Brigade) which fought with distinction and suffered 82% casualties at Gettysburg in 1863. Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying Thank God for Michigan! Following Lincoln's assassination, General George Armstrong Custer delivered a eulogy to the thousands gathered near Campus Martius Park. Custer led the Michigan Brigade during the American Civil War and called them the Wolverines.

The Detroit Race Riot (1863) occurred on March 6, 1863 and was the city's first such incident, as Irish and German Catholics resisted the mandatory draft laws. At the time, it was reported as "the bloodiest day that ever dawned upon Detroit." The casualties of the day included at least two people dead, and many others injured, mostly African-American, 35 buildings were burned to the ground, and a number of other buildings were damaged by fire.

Read more about this topic:  History Of Detroit, Michigan, A City Emerges

Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or era:

    Colonel Shaw
    and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
    on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
    propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

    To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.
    —For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Our lives laid down in war and peace may not
    Be found acceptable in Heaven’s sight.
    And that they may be is the only prayer
    Worth praying. May my sacrifice
    Be found acceptable in Heaven’s sight.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in which medicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)