Monuments and machine guns

Tour explores Capitol building’s connection to Civil War

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THURSDAY, APRIL 23 — In the wake of the Civil War, one particular tour of Michigan’s brand new state Capitol building got a little too lively.

Chicago historian Matt VanAcker can show you an obscure entry off the west lawn — the only one with double doors — that opened into the an armory, a military storehouse containing small arms, gun carriages and a Gatling gun.

VanAcker will lead a Civil War-focused tour of the Capitol grounds, from grand monuments to hidden hints of history, at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow.

Here's something that probably won’t happen at the tour. In the 1880s, live ammunition was still stored in the Capitol. Somehow, a round found its way into the Gatling, a tripod-mounted machine gun.

While showing visitors how the gun worked, the armorer grandly spun the handle that turned the barrels and “discharged the weapon,” as VanAcker delicately put it.

Lead slugs sprayed through a plate glass window toward Walnut Street into the surrounding residential area. Messengers were dispatched to the surrounding area to see if there were any casualties. No one was hurt, but after that incident live ammo was no longer stored at the Capitol.

The Capitol is steeped in Civil War lore, from the front-and-center statue of wartime governor Austin Blair, a national abolitionist leader, to nearby monuments to the First Michigan Sharpshooters, the Women’s Relief Corps and the Grand Army of the Republic.

Even its cast iron dome design, modeled after the nation's capitol, embodied the national struggle for unity.

One of VanAcker’s favorite Civil War monuments on the grounds is a tribute to Army engineers, among the unsung heroes of the war. VanAcker has hair-raising stories about engineers intrepidly building things or blowing things up, often under heavy fire.

“Sawyers could go into a forest, with portable sawmills, and cut the lumber for a trestle bridge or a corduroy road,” VanAcker said.

At a Tennessee battle in 1863, Army engineers fended off seven attacks from a Confederate force ten times bigger than theirs.

From the bottom to the top of the hierarchy, the first denizens of the Capitol building were mostly Civil War veterans. Michigan sent over 90,000 men to fight for the Union.

The Capitol’s first porter, John Broad, lost his eye in the war. One of the state’s first treasurers, Benjamin Pritchard, helped capture Jefferson Davis while serving as a colonel in the 4th Michigan Cavalry regiment. The adjutant general of the Army, who oversaw veterans’ affairs, had the biggest office suite in the Capitol.

One of VanAcker’s best stories centers on the man who painted the Capitol dome white, Allan Shattuck. Despite losing his right arm in the Battle of the Wilderness, Shattuck climbed to the top of the dome — with half of the city watching — and hooked a safety harness to the ball on top, to prove to his mutinous crew that it could be done.

“He did it to guilt his crew,” VanAcker said. “If a one-armed old veteran could do it, they could do it.”

Capitol Grounds Civil War Monument Tour

6:30 p.m. Friday, April 24

FREE

Michigan State Capitol

Capitol Avenue at Michigan Avenue, Lansing

Lansinghistory.org



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