These military efforts, however, did not satisfy the more restless spirits and many left the University immediately, few of whom ever returned to finish their course. Of the fifty-four who graduated with the "war class" of '61, twenty-four entered the service, in addition to eight who did not stay to finish their work, in all thirty-two out of sixty-two. The students in the two professional departments were no less eager for service, as is shown by the remarkable record of the medical class of '61, thirty of whose forty-four graduates saw active service. Among the Michigan men in the Civil War at least twelve, eight of whom held degrees, rose to the rank of brigadier-general, three of them from the class of '61. Of this number apparently only one, Elon Farnsworth, '55-'58, actually commanded a brigade in battle. He was killed while bravely leading a hopeless charge at Gettysburg.
Michigan's war records are full of stories of brave deeds, but few surpass the heroism of William Longshaw, '59_m_, an assistant surgeon in the Navy, who undertook to carry a line from his ship, the _Nahant_, to the _Lehigh_, which had run aground in the attack on Fort Moultrie. Twice he was successful but the intense fire directed on his little boat by the batteries on shore cut the line each time. By this time Longshaw found the wounded needing his attention and he gave over the task to another who made a third and successful trip. For this exploit Longshaw was cited in general orders read from every quarter-deck in the fleet. He was killed while attending a wounded marine under equally heroic circumstances during the attack on Fort Fisher.
While Michigan men entered service from every Union State, the largest number, naturally, were in the Michigan regiments, particularly the Twentieth Michigan Infantry, in which a large number of officers, including every one in the two Ann Arbor companies, were University men. In one year, November, 1863, to November, 1864, 537 of the Regiment's total enrolment of 1,157 were killed, wounded, or prisoners, while three times it lost almost fifty percent of all the men engaged, at Spottsylvania, at Petersburg, and finally at the assault on the Crater, after which there were only eighty men and four officers left for duty. In another Michigan regiment, the Seventh, was Capt. Allan H. Zacharias of the class of '60 whose last letter, written on an old envelope and clutched in his dead hand, forms an imperishable portion of Michigan's annals: