Alumni Memorial Hall, located across the street from the University of Michigan Union, is the most prominent of several memorials to war veterans across the University of Michigan campus. For Veterans Day, here is a look at several of the University's memorials to war, found both in physical and online forms.

Civil War: Alumni Memorial Hall

Alumni Memorial Hall was built as a memorial to the University's fallen alumni from the Civil War. More than 1,400 alumni contributed to the building's cost. The hall originally held the offices of the Alumni Association, along with an art gallery and meeting rooms. It is now the home of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

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Michigan Alumnus Magazine, 1909; a letter from the Memorial Committee exhorting alumni to contribute to the cause. To those of our alumni who have not yet taken any part in this undertaking we now make our last appeal.

Civil War: Bentley Historical Library

The Bentley Library has more than 400 collections on the participation of Michigan men and military units in the Civil War. The collections include single letters, diary fragments, folders of letters home, volumes of notebooks and diaries, and reminiscences.

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Guide to collections, Bentley Historical Library.

Topical index to collections listed in "Michigan Men in the Civil War" by Ida C. Brown. This card file contains subject indexes to the collection, and though it is incomplete and inconsistent, any researcher in the collection should consult it as a starting point. Aside from the expected subject headings on military themes, there are main entries for alligators, fleas, lice, mosquitoes, mud, rats, scurvy, smallpox and wood ticks.

Spanish American War

A memorial to the Spanish-American War can be found on the west side of the Hatcher Graduate Library.

This mortar was cast in Seville, Spain, in 1724 and later used in Cuba. It was one of four captured guns given to the State of Michigan and is believed to be from Morro Castle. It was obtained by the Class of 1899 as a gift to the university to serve as a memorial to U-M men who fought in the Spanish-American War. The inscription reads: "Erected in honor of the U of M men who fought in the war against Spain—Class of '99." The mortar originally stood at the base of the flagpole, which had been acquired in 1898. Both flagpole and mortar were moved in 1918 when the old library was demolished to make way for the current Hatcher Library.

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The text above is taken from Spanish Mortar, President's Advisory Commission on Public Art. The Commission is tasked with advising the university on its public art collection, and in this process has put together a comprehensive catalog of works throughout the campus.

The Santiago Campaign, Michigan Alumnus, 1899. An account by Victor C. Vaughn, MD, of the campaign at Santiago that led to the capture of the mortar. Vaughn writes of the care of the sick and wounded in the campaign, and notes that after the battle ended more than 1,300 wounded soldiers were evacuated.

World War I: Polar Bear Expedition

The "American Intervention in Northern Russia, 1918-1919," also known as the "Polar Bear Expedition," was a U.S. military intervention in northern Russia at the end of World War I. The Bentley Historical Library has a substantial collection of materials on this military campaign, as it included a large number of soldiers from the state of Michigan.

As with any primary source materials, research access to these collections is limited because the papers are fragile. A major effort has been underway to digitize this collection, and though the papers are not keyword searchable it is possible to view scanned images of much of the collection.

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Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections, Bentley Historical Library.

Additional resources

The University of Michigan in Times of War is an account of campus life during war time; it is a portion of The University of Michigan - A Photographic Saga by Anne Duderstadt.

Edward Vielmetti writes a daily Links column for AnnArbor.com.