More than 90,000 Michigan men served in the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War. The 17th Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered at the Detroit Barracks in August 1862 under the command of Colonel William H. Withington. The regiment consisted of raw recruits from field, workshop and schoolroom, and one company was composed almost entirely of students from Ypsilanti Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University. With less than a month of military training, the 17th left for Washington DC on August 27, 1862, then was sent to the Maryland campaign. On September 14, just three days before the Battle of Antietam, the regiment fought here as part of General Ambrose E. Burnside's 9th army corps. The fight began around 9:00 A.M. just south of this site. Around noon a Confederate battery opened fire on the regiment while it supported Cook's Massachusetts Battery, and the 17th held its position for several hours. At 4:00 P.M. the order came for an assault along the entire Union line. Confederates came out of the woods to meet the charge at a fence line in the middle of the field, then fell back to stone walls along the crest of the hill, which the 17th advanced and captured. Of the 500 men of the Stonewall Regiment engaged here, 27 were killed and 114 wounded, many mortally.
