Gage, Marcus A

Marcus Gage

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Battery A, 1st Michigan Light Artillery

Place of Birth:

Coldwater, Branch County, Michigan

Date of Birth:

November 16, 1841

Place of Death:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Date of Death:

January 13, 1863

Place of Burial:

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Cemetery Name:

Stones River National Cemetery

Marcus A. Gage was born on November 16, 1941, in Coldwater, Branch County, Michigan. One of five children, Marcus was the second eldest and the first son of Elias and Eliza Gage. Marcus and his younger brother, Orson, enlisted in the United States Army during the Civil War. Marcus served as 1st Corporal in Battery A, 1st Michigan Light Artillery.

At the Battle of Stones River, Battery A supported the infantrymen of Rousseau’s division of the U.S. Army of the Cumberland’s Center Wing. In the late morning hours of December 31, 1862, Battery A took position on a slope between the Nashville Pike and the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. There, they joined the guns from the 5th U.S. Artillery and the 8th Indiana Artillery to form an imposing line of eighteen cannons near what is now Stones River National Cemetery. From noon until nightfall, Battery A helped beat back waves of Confederate soldiers, protecting the Army’s vital lifeline back to its headquarters in Nashville.

It was likely during the fighting along Nashville Pike that Corporal Gage was wounded, although the specifics are unknown. He spent thirteen days in a hospital before succumbing to blood poisoning. He was only twenty-one years old at the time of his death.

A friend and comrade, William J. Culp, wrote to Gage’s mother on January 24, 1863, reporting the news. Culp stated that Marcus died “a brave and true soldier,” that he was loved by the men of his company, and that they “mourn his loss very much.”

In one of his final letters to his mother, written December 8, 1862, Gage said:

“....I wish that the war was over So that I and All the rest of the Soldiers that are in the field of battl could return to their friends at home for I think that it would make many A glad heart butt it would not heal the hearts that mourn the loss of friends that have fallen in the field of Strife butt those are gone from this to A btter world.”  

Marcus Gage is interred at Stones River National Cemetery, Plot G-2690. 

Tags: stones river national battlefield, stones river national cemetery, american civil war