I am researching a Michigan Battery and I thought the below may have an interest to your board, if you can add anything to the story it would be welcomed.

The battery received new recruits in the first week of August. Five of them were from Arkansas and the surrounding area, and were mustered in at New Madrid. If they had known their future, they may have had second thoughts. Of the five who enlisted, one served out the war, one died of disease, one was taken prisoner (later returning to the battery) and one was declared absent without leave—an eighty percent loss rate.
It is a rather interesting story of the path these men traveled to join the battery. They were Union men in a hostile territory doing what they could to support the United States government. The war tore apart many families in the North and the South.
James Porterfield was one of them. He came from a family who did not support slavery, but did support the state of Mississippi when the war broke out. James’s stated his trade was that of a gin-wright, more likely he manufactured grain-whisky which much more common in the United States at time, had taken him to Arkansas for his livelihood. He left behind his family and five brothers, who did enlist in the Confederate Army. His father, who had been in the Mississippi State Militia before the war, was a recruiting officer in Holly Spring, Mississippi enrolling soldiers for the Confederate cause.:

Early in 1861, at the outbreak of the rebellion, when strong resolutions of secession were passed: when the descendants of 70s [1770s] in the their farcical madness were using every means within their power to extinguish the increasing light of American liberty, whose blighting influence upon tyranny had already began to be powerfully felt, it was strange to observe the hatred and deadly malice entertained against those who remained steadfast in their answering fidelity to the old Government.
Having, for a number of years studied and compared the effects of the institutions of the free and slave. States I believed that I was able to discern the development of those antagonistic principles which so inevitable proceeds the outburst of misdirected passion. These predictions I soon sensibly realized. To forsake the old government I could not; to openly avow Union sentiment would be death, to remain inactive was equally impossible. There were three courses, one of which every man in the rebel States must pursue; to operate in behalf of the Union with disguise sentiments at home, to go into the rebel army or to remain neutral and take the consequences of the suspicion inevitable settled upon those who pursued that course. I decided upon the former. Accordingly after consultation with my Union friends whose members were inconsiderable even in those early days of the rebellion, I am proud to say that so far as my acquaintance extended they were the most zealous and self-sacrificing Union men I ever saw. I formed a determination to raise accompany of men within the limits of my county. I had no difficulty in caring out this determination every Union man in the county, obedient to my summons, repaired to the designated place of rendezvous. Being without rations, every man from necessity foraged for himself. There were plenty of arms in the hands of the citizens, while we were wholly unequipped. To seize and appropriate these arms was comparatively an easy task to accomplish, for as yet we were supposed to be a company eventually designed for the rebel service.
For this purpose I obtained an interview with the rebel General (Thomas C.) Hindman. Stated to him that I had collected a company of one Hundred and twenty men and that I wished to have them armed at the earliest possible moment suggesting to him the priority of seizing and appropriating the arms which were in the hands of citizens. My plan was received with favor from the General, who gave me a written order to seize all the arms necessary for the equipment of my company. I parted with the General, receiving his “success to you” and “God speed.” Having achieved this success I went on my way rejoicing, for I now had all the requisite power and authority for arming every rebel in the county, which in due time I accomplished, Hardly had the work of disarming been accomplished when it was intimated that we were Union men, and were assisting the Yankees; this idea soon became very open in consequence of which the company disbanded, most of them escape in unhindered from the wrath of the rugged General Hindman. Having organized this state of things, I became the object of the vigilance committees special favor.