During the first week of July 1863, as attention in the North and South centered on Gettysburg and Vicksburg, five companies of the Twenty-fifth Michigan Volunteer Infantry defended the bridge across the Green River at Tebbs Bend. Organized at Kalamazoo and mustered into service in September 1862 under Colonel Orlando H. Moore, the regiment's companies that fought here were Company D, recruited at Three Rivers; Company E, recruited at Galesburg; Company F, recruited at Niles; Company I, recruited at Holland; and Company K, recruited at Buchanan. On the morning of July 4, 1863, Confederate cavalry under General John H. Morgan attacked the 260 well-entrenched Michigan volunteers, and when Morgan ordered them to surrender, Moore replied, "This being the Fourth of July, I cannot entertain the proposition of surrender." After the Michigan troops repelled eight attacks, Morgan retreated from Tebbs Bend, though his men continued raiding through Kentucky and Indiana before the last remnants were captured in Ohio. The Twenty-fifth Infantry suffered six killed and twenty-four wounded, while eighty-one Confederate troops fell, including twenty-two commissioned officers.
