A-C: Alvord through Crook

Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography

ALVORD, BENJAMIN (August 18, 1813-October 16, 1884), Union soldier, was born at Rutland, Vermont, son of William and Lucy (Claghorn) Alvord, and sixth in descent from Alexander Alvord, who came from the southwest of England to Windsor, Connecticut, about 1645 (S. M. Alvord, pp. 123, 225). Upon his graduation from West Point in 1833 he was commissioned in the 4th Infantry, and, except for brief periods of detached service and a two years' tour of duty as instructor at the Military Academy, served with it for twenty-one years. He took part in the Florida War, in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and in the guerrilla fighting of Lally's command which convoyed supplies from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico in the summer and fall of 1847. In 1854 he accepted an appointment as paymaster with the rank of major. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was chief paymaster in Oregon. Some experienced officer was needed for the command of that remote district, and to this duty Alvord was assigned, being made a brigadier-general of volunteers in 1862, and continuing in Oregon until 1865. Thus no opportunity for distinction in the field came to him, but his services, though unspectacular, were not unimportant. In the early days of the war his influence was effectively exerted to keep the people of the territory loyal to the Union arid to overcome the secessionist sympathies which were active in some places. Throughout the whole period he had the difficult task of protecting settlers from the attacks of hostile Indians, and peaceable Indians from the aggression of rascally white men. He seems to have performed it with impartial justice. The government showed its approval of his conduct of affairs by conferring three brevets. From 1872 until his retirement in 1880, he was paymaster-general of the army, at first with the rank of colonel, and after 1876 with that of brigadier-general.

Although the greater part of Alvord's life was spent in places remote from facilities for study, his attainments in several branches of science were considerable, and he wrote extensively for learned publications. His monograph on "The Tangencies of Circles and of Spheres" (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, volume VIII, 1856) and its sequel, "The Intersection of Circles and the Intersection of Spheres" (American) Journal of Mathematics, March 1882) formed original contributions to mathematical knowledge. He was the first to classify the compass plant botanically. Among other published papers are "Winter Grazing in the Rocky Mountains" (Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1883), and several on mathematical subjects and on the American Indians. A kindly, unassuming, studious man, his interests were scholarly, and his abilities of a sort little appreciated in an army whose duties lay chiefly on the frontier. He was married in 1846 to Emily Louise Mussey of Rutland, Vermont, by whom he had six children.

[G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd., 1891), I, 553-58; Official Records, volume L, parts 1, 2; Genealogy of the Descendants of Alexander Alvord, compiled by S. M. Alvord (1908); additional information from Alvord's son, Brigadier-General Benjamin Alvord, Jr.]

T. M. S.



ANDERSON, ROBERT (June 14, 1805-0ct. 26, 1871), Union soldier, was the son of Richard Clough Anderson, Sr. [q.v.] and Sarah (Marshall) Anderson, and half-brother of Richard Clough Anderson, Jr. [q.v.]. His father, a lieutenant-colonel in the Continental Army, removed from Virginia to Kentucky after the Revolution and Robert Anderson was born near Louisville. He graduated at West Point in 1825 and was commissioned in the 3rd Artillery. After a few months as private secretary to his brother, who was minister to Colombia, he served at various stations on artillery or ordnance duty; took part in the Black Hawk and Florida wars, receiving a brevet for gallantry in action; and was for three years assistant adjutant-general of the Eastern Department. He served as a captain under General Scott in the campaign of 1847 against the City of Mexico, until wounded at the battle of Molino del Rey. For his conduct here he received another brevet. From then until 1860 he was engaged in routine duties and also served on important boards relating to artillery matters. He translated certain French texts on artillery, which were used in instruction in the army. It was partly through his efforts that the Soldiers' Home was established. He was promoted major in 1857.

When secession became imminent Anderson was sent to take command of the forts in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. His selection for the post was due to both military and political considerations. He was an able officer of unquestioned loyalty. He was also a Virginian by ancestry, a Kentuckian by birth, pro-slavery in principles, and was married to a Georgian (Elizabeth, daughter of General D. L. Clinch). It was to be expected, then, that while faithful and efficient in his command, he would likewise be tactful and considerate in his dealing with the local authorities. Of the three forts designed to protect the harbor, but one (Fort Moultrie) was garrisoned. Here Anderson remained for some five weeks, meanwhile urgently calling upon the War Department to reinforce him, and representing that Fort Moultrie by itself could not be held against attack. From his government he received only vague and conflicting instructions, but no assistance in men or munitions. On December 20, South Carolina passed the ordinance of secession. Satisfied that hostile acts were imminent, he proceeded on December 26 to a "dramatic, bold and self-reliant act, one for which the country owes a debt to this upright and excellent commander" (F. E. Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, 1906, p. 211). Making his preparations with such secrecy that his own officers did not suspect his design until its execution was ordered, he spiked the guns at Fort Moultrie and shifted its garrison to Fort Sumter, which, rising from a shoal in the harbor, could not be approached by land.

Personally loyal though he was, Anderson, like many other Union men in those days, believed that separation was inevitable; the most he hoped for was that the seceding states might "at some future time be won back by conciliation and justice" (Crawford, post, p. 291). His earnest desire was to keep the peace until his government should be ready to evacuate the posts and turn them over to the seceding states. This is the key both to his boldness in occupying Sumter and to his inaction when the Star of the West entered the harbor on January 9, 1861, bearing the reinforcements for which he had pleaded. Sumter was occupied, not as an aggressive movement, but to prevent the outbreak of civil war. "Nothing will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed," wrote Anderson, "than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness and folly to attack us" (Official Records, series I, volume I, p. 75). When the Star of the West was fired upon by the South Carolina batteries, she was not supported by fire from Fort Sumter, and turned back Anderson was not wholly to blame. As he told the governor of South Carolina some days before, he "could get no information or positive orders from Washington," and was left to act upon his "own responsibility alone" (Crawford, p. 111). When confronted on April 11 with a formal demand for the surrender of his post, he showed no hesitation or weakness, but "defended Fort Sumter for thirty- four hours, until the quarters were entirely burned, the main gates destroyed by fire, the gorge walls seriously injured, the magazine surrounded by flames"; and then, accepting the terms offered, marched out "with colors flying and drums beating ... saluting my flag with fifty guns" (Official Records, series I, volume I, p. 12).

He was appointed brigadier-general in the regular army, May 15, 1861, and for a short time commanded in Kentucky, where he helped to save the state for the Union. His health giving way, he was relieved in October 1861. He never completely recovered, and performed little duty between that time and the date of his retirement from active service on October 27, 1863. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers in 1865, and was sent to raise the flag over Fort Sumter on April 14, four years from the date he lowered it. He died at Nice, October 26, 1871. He was an excellent officer, through industry and a high sense of duty, rather' than brilliancy; deeply religious; considerate and kindly in his relations with all; a just and popular commander.

[An Artillery Officer in the Mexican War 1846-47; Letters of Robert Anderson, with preface by his daughter Eba Anderson Lawton (1911); S. W. Crawford Genesis of the Civil War (1887); Official Records, series I, volume I; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891), I, 347-52.]

T. M .S.



AUGUR, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (July 16, 1821-January16, 1898), Union soldier, son of Ammon and Annis (Wellman) Augur, was sixth in descent from Robert Augur who came from England and was living at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1673. He was born at Kendall, New York, moved in 1821 with his widowed mother to Michigan, and was appointed as a cadet to the United States Military Academy in 1839. He graduated in 1843, standing sixteenth in a class of thirty-nine members, which included U. S. Grant and a dozen others who distinguished themselves on one side or the other during the Civil War. In 1844. he was married to Jane E. Arnold of Ogdensburg, New York. Assigned to the 4th Infantry, he served with credit in the Mexican War at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma under General Zachary Taylor, and as aide-de-camp for several brigade commanders. He had active service on the frontier in the new territories of Washington and Oregon, during the years 1852-56, in campaigns against the Yakima and Rogue River Indians, with engagements at Two Buttes, Big Bend of Rogue River, and Sohomy Creek. At the beginning of the Civil War, he had reached the grade of major and was serving as commandant of cadets at the West Point Military Academy, with the ex-officio rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers in November 1861, and placed in command of the advance defenses of Washington until March 1862. This was followed by active service on the Rappahannock and the first capture of Fredericksburg by his command March-July 1862.

When General Pope took command of the Army of Virginia, Augur was given Sigel's division of Banks's 5th corps on August 9, which was ordered in a few days to threaten Gordonsville on the Virginia Central Railroad. Pope brought up the remaining corps, but did not place them at supporting distance. Banks thought that he was ordered to advance and attack the enemy, and in doing so found himself in the presence of Jackson's entire force, about four times as great as his own, at Cedar Mountain. He was driven back with great loss. Augur was severely wounded late in the day and the other division commanders were wounded or captured. The rank of major-general of volunteers and of brevet-colonel in the regular army was conferred upon him for "gallant and meritorious services" on this occasion, one of the few commissions given for specific acts during the war. In the fall of 1862, when Banks organized his expedition to New Orleans, at his request Augur was assigned as second in command. He commanded the district of Baton Rouge for some months; commanded in the action at Port Hudson Plains, May 21, 1863; commanded the left wing of the army in the siege of Port Hudson until the surrender of the Confederate force under his classmate, Frank Gardner, in July. It was a long and tedious siege with much fighting. He opposed in council the disastrous assault of May 27 as premature and without proper study of the ground. He was ill and on leave of absence and president of the Warren court of inquiry and other military commissions until October 13, 1863, when he was assigned to the command of the Department of Washington and the 22nd army corps, which he maintained until the end of the war. He was brevetted brigadier-general in 1865 for gallant and meritorious service at Port Hudson and major-general for services in the field during the war. He was mustered out of volunteer service in 1866, reverted to his position as colonel of the 12th Infantry in the regular army, and was promoted to brigadier-general by General Grant to fill one of the vacancies created by his own election to the presidency in 1869.

In the years following the Civil War there were many new problems requiring solution by military commanders. The building of the Union Pacific Railroad and the migration of thousands of home seekers to the West aroused the Indian tribes to the defense of their hunting-grounds. Augur commanded various military departments during that period and directed operations against nearly every one of the hostile tribes in the years from 1867 to 1885. While in command of the Department of the Gulf during the reconstruction days of 1876, when opposing factions were on the verge of open war because of the disputed election of that year, he settled the affair without bloodshed. He retired from active service July 16, 1885, and died January 16, 1898, at Georgetown, D.C.

[Edwin P. Augur, Family History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Robert Augur (1904), pp. 83, 138-46; Association Graduates U. S. Military Academy, Annual Reunion (1898); Official Records, volumes LXXXIV, CII, CIV; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register; Papers of the Military History Society of Massachusetts, II (1895); Campaigns of the Civil War, volume IV (1881), volume VIII (1882); John Codman Ropes, Story of the Civil War, II (1898).]

E. S.



BAKER, EDWARD DICKINSON (February 24, 1811-October 22, 1861), soldier, senator, was born in London, England, the son of a school teacher, and was brought with the family to Philadelphia in 1815. He lived in the latter city until 1825. For a time he was apprenticed to a weaver. The family moved to New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825, for a year or more, and then went to Illinois, settling at Belleville, St. Clair County. As a boy Edward gave evidence of promising intellectual gifts and was an avid reader, but had little systematic education. Studying law in the office of Judge Caverly of Carrollton, he was admitted to the bar at the age of nineteen. On April 27, 1831, he was married to Mary A. Lee, a widow with two children. He was a private soldier in the brief Black Hawk War. ln 1835 he moved to Springfield for the serious practise of his profession, becoming one of a  brilliant circle who won fame both in the law and in politics, among them Lincoln, Douglas, Browning, Yates, and Trumbull. Already he was acquiring reputation as an orator, and this naturally took him into politics. From 1837 to 1840 he represented Sangamon County in the General Assembly, and was state senator from 1840 to 1844. Lincoln and Baker were rival Whig candidates for congressional nomination, but Baker won and was elected, the only Whig chosen in Illinois for the Twenty-ninth Congress. Although out of harmony with his party, he supported the policy of President Polk on the Oregon question. When the Mexican War began he promptly went to Illinois, raised a regiment of volunteers, and led them to join General Taylor. In December 1846 he was back in Washington as bearer of dispatches. Being still a member of the House and speaking in uniform, he advocated with telling effect better measures for the equipment of the soldiers. Then he resigned his seat, went to the front, and served with distinction at Cerro Gordo. The command of a brigade devolved upon him when General Shields was wounded. Soon thereafter, his regiment not reenlisting, he resigned his commission and returned to the practise of law.

In 1848 he moved into the Galena district, announced himself an Independent Whig candidate for Congress, and won a personal triumph in that Democratic district-this after a residence of only three weeks. He was also one of the unsuccessful Taylor presidential electors. Lincoln and other Whigs in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin urged his appointment to a cabinet position, and Baker was grievously disappointed in not being chosen. There was little save for certain displays of oratorical eloquence to distinguish his service in the Thirty-first Congress. In 1851 he carried out a contract to grade a section of the Panama railway, but was obliged to return home to recover from fever. In 1852 he was attracted to California, where he at once became prominent as a lawyer and public speaker. California was Democratic, but he was active as a Whig and then as a Republican in the face of discouragements. Public disfavor fell upon him when he followed his sense of duty in defending the notorious Cora, opposing the Vigilance Committee of 1856. Yet he was in demand as an orator, his most notable speech being the funeral oration on Senator Broderick, on September 18, 1859. Shortly thereafter the Republican organization of Oregon sent a committee to invite him to go to that state to give popular leadership, with the understanding that he would be the preferred candidate of the party for United States senator. He embraced the opportunity to realize a life-long ambition, moved to Oregon in February 1860, and was elected senator in October by a combination of Republicans and Douglas Democrats. This was a famous victory over the regular Democrats led by the redoubtable Joseph Lane, and contributed materially to the choice of Lincoln electors. Starting promptly for Washington, Baker was given a reception in San Francisco which was utilized for the national campaign with great and perhaps decisive effect in the close contest to win California for Lincoln. Baker entered on his duties December 5, 1860, the only Republican from the Pacific Coast sent to support the new administration. This circumstance, coupled with his reputation as an orator and his known intimacy with Lincoln, gave him immediate prominence. Lincoln invited him to Springfield for a personal conference, which was held in the latter part of December, and continued to rely greatly on his advice about check-mating secession movements in the Pacific states. The first of two remarkable replies to Senator Judah P. Benjamin was delivered on January 2, 1861 (Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 session, pp. 224-29, 238-43). Of this effort Sumner said: "That speech passed at once into the permanent literature of the country, while it gave to its author an assured position in this body" (Ibid., 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 54). In New York on April 19 Baker was one of the speakers at an enormous mass meeting in Union Square, delivering an oration of great popular effect. His famous reply to Senator Breckinridge was delivered in the Senate on August 1, 1861 (Ibid., 37 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 377- 79), when he came in uniform directly from training the troops he was commanding. On the 21st of April he had accepted an invitation to help raise and to be the colonel of a "California regiment" to be enlisted in New York and Pennsylvania. The effort was so successful that Baker was given charge of a brigade. He declined successive offers of appointments as brigadier-general and major-general, because acceptance would require resignation as senator from Oregon. He was killed in action at the unfortunate affair of Ball's Bluff on October 22, 1861.

[Jos. Wallace, Sketch of the Life and Public Services of Edward D. Baker (1870); John D. Baltz, Hon. Edward D. Baker (1888); Elijah R. Kennedy, The Contest for California in 1861 (1912); Biographical Congressional Directory (1913), p. 452; Wm. D. Fenton, " Edward Dickinson Baker," Quartley Oregon History Society, March 1908, pp. 1-23; California and Californians, ed. by R. L. Hunt (1926), II, 578, V, 143-44.]

C. A. D-y.



BANKS, NATHANIEL PRENTISS (January 30, 1816-September 1, 1894), congressman, governor of Massachusetts, Union soldier, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, the eldest of the seven children of Nathaniel P. and Rebecca (Greenwood) Banks. His father was superintendent of the mill in which is said to have been woven the first cotton cloth manufactured in the United States. After only a few years in the common schools the boy had to go to work in the cotton-mill, from which fact in later years there clung to him the nickname, "the Bobbin Boy of Massachusetts." Keenly ambitious, he set to work to remedy the deficiencies in his own education. By his own efforts he obtained some command of Latin, and diligently studied Spanish, early declaring that America some day would be brought into intimate association with peoples of that tongue. He seized every opportunity for practise in public speaking, lecturing on temperance and taking an active part in a local debating society. He soon became a recognized power in town meeting. For a time he studied to become an actor, and made a successful appearance in Boston as Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, but he soon turned to the law. At twenty-three he was admitted to the bar, but he never practised in the courts. He first entered public service as an inspector in the Boston customs house. For three years he was the proprietor and editor of a local weekly newspaper, the Middlesex Reporter. In March 1847 he was married to Mary I. Palmer. Seven times he was a candidate for the lower branch of the Massachusetts legislature before he became a member of that body in 1849. By the "coalition'' in 1851 Henry Wilson as a Free-Soiler was made president of the Senate, and Banks as a Democrat was made speaker of the House, and he was reelected to that office the following year.

At thirty-seven this self-taught man was chosen president of what has been called "the ablest body that ever met in Massachusetts," the constitutional convention of 1853, over which he presided with rare tact and self-control. Entering Congress in 1853, he served-though not continuously-in ten Congresses, representing five different party alignments. In his first term, though elected as a Democrat, he showed his courage and independence by opposing the Kansas-Nebraska bill. In the Thirty-fourth Congress, to which he had been elected as the candidate of the "Americans" (Know-Nothing party), he was put forward for the speakership in the most stubborn contest in the history of that office. Backed by no caucus, he drew votes from the other Know-Nothing candidates because of his uncompromising record in his first term (H. von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, 1885, V, 204 ff.). As the struggle dragged on, he bluntly declared that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was an act of dishonor, and that under no circumstances whatever would he, if he should have the power, allow the institution of human slavery to derive benefit from the repeal. He thus came to be regarded as "the very bone and sinew of Free-soilism," and his election (February 2, 1856, on the 133rd ballot, and only after the adoption of a resolution calling for election by plurality vote), was hailed as the first defeat of slavery in a quarter of a century, and was later looked back upon as the first national victory of the Republican party. He held that the speaker's office was not political but executive and parliamentary. To the anti-slavery men he gave a bare majority on the various committees, and made several of his most decided opponents chairmen. Historians of the office rate Banks as one of the ablest and most efficient of speakers (M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1902, pp. 36, 58-59; H. B. Fuller, The Speaker of the House, 1909, pp. 102-11, 116-17). He showed consideration and consummate tact, and his decisions were prompt and impartial. Though his service was in a period of the bitterest partisanship, not one of his decisions was overruled.

In 1856 Banks declined a nomination for the presidency from the convention of "North Americans," anti-slavery seceders from the "American" convention which had nominated Fillmore. Though he had been the candidate of the "Americans" in his second campaign for Congress and though he had just received this further evidence of their favor, he had already outgrown that nativist association, and in 1857 he cast aside his promising career in Congress to accept the Republican nomination for governor of Massachusetts. To the dismay of conservatives, he adopted the innovation of stumping the state in person, and against the seemingly invincible incumbent of three terms he won the election by a large majority. He held the governorship for three successive years, 1858-60, and proved an effective and progressive executive. He was a pioneer in urging the humane and protective features of modern probation laws, and di splayed a great and intelligent interest in all movements for educational progress. His wise forethought as to the militia enabled his successor, Governor John A. Andrew, to respond at once to Lincoln's call, sending troop after troop of Massachusetts militia, well trained and fully equipped for service.

At the end of his term (January 1861) Banks removed to Chicago, to succeed George B. McClellan as president of the Illinois Central Railroad. But Sumter had hardly fallen when he tendered his services to President Lincoln, and on May 16 he was commissioned major-general of volunteers. His first service was in the Department of Annapolis, where he cooperated in measures to prevent the seemingly imminent secession of Maryland. He was next assigned to the 5th corps in the Department of the Shenandoah. Here the transference of Shields's division to McDowell left Banks isolated with a command diminished to 10,000 to cope with " Stonewall" Jackson's greatly superior force s. The Confederates' capture of Front Royal, May 23, 1862, left no course open to Banks-his force now outnumbered two to one-but precipitate retreat. A race for Winchester, a vigorous battle, in which Banks's command bore itself well, and then a hasty crossing of the Potomac at Harper's Ferry rescued his army, but with a loss of some 200 killed and wounded and more than 3,000 prisoners (J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, 1868, II, 393). In June, Banks's force was brought into the new consolidation, the Army of Virginia, placed under General Pope. From Culpeper, August 9, 1862, Pope ordered Banks, in case the enemy approached, to "attack him immediately." Acting upon this explicit order, late in the afternoon, Banks's little army, in mood to avenge the humiliations they had suffered in the Shenandoah Valley, charged the enemy with such suddenness and vehemence that the whole of Jackson's left was driven from its position before his reserves could be brought into action. But some lack of tactical skill, the wounding of two of Banks's general officers, and the weight of opposing numbers after the first shock of surprise soon turned the tide of battle, and the Federals were forced into disorderly retreat. Banks was severely blamed for making this attack at Cedar Mountain, and Pope denied that his order authorized the action which Banks took ("Report of the Joint Committee on Conduct of the War," Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session, part III, pp. 44-54). But "it will be hard to prove, if language means anything, that he at all transgressed his [Pope's] orders. Of course the order should not have been given" (William Allan, The Army of Northern Virginia, 1892, p. 171, n.). For a short time in the fall of 1862 Banks was in charge of the defenses of Washington. In the closing months of the year, at New Orleans he succeeded General B. F. Butler in command of the department. He was assigned the tasks of holding New Orleans and the other parts of the state which had been reduced to submission, and of aiding Grant to open the Mississippi. After placing his garrisons he had hardly 15,000 men left for aggressive action. In April 1863 he succeeded in regaining considerable territory for the Union, and in May he reached Alexandria. His next objective was Port Hudson. On May 25 and 27 he made costly attempts to capture the place by assault, bringing into action negro troops, who, he declared, showed the utmost daring and determination. Repulsed with heavy losses, he began siege. Though hard pressed by famine, the garrison repelled another assault, June 13, but within a week after the fall of Vicksburg it found itself forced to unconditional surrender, July 9, with loss of 6,200 prisoners, a large number of guns, and a great mass of military supplies. The thanks of Congress were tendered to Banks and his troops (January 28, 1864) "for the skill, courage, and endurance which compelled the surrender of Port Hudson, and thus removed the last obstruction to the free navigation of the Mississippi River" (United States Statutes at Large, 38 Congress, 1 Session, Resolution No. 7).

The later movements of the year proved ineffective: although with the cooperation of a naval force Banks had advanced along the coast as far as Brownsville, capturing some works of importance, he found his force inadequate to extend the movement and withdrew to New Orleans. Here in the difficult task of dealing with the civilian population he inherited the unpopularity of his predecessor, and his assassination was attempted. He opposed the admission of Confederate attorneys to practise in the courts. With no legal authority for his action, in January and February 1864, Banks issued orders prescribing the conditions of suffrage and other details as to elections, under which state officers and delegates to a constitutional convention were chosen and a constitution adopted. Although hardly one in seven of the voters of the state voted upon the question of ratifying this constitution, Banks went to Washington, where for months he pressed the recognition of the Louisiana state Government (E. L. Pierce, Memoir of Charles Sumner, 1893, IV, 215, 221).

In the opening months of 1864 preparations were made for the ill-starred Reel River Expedition. General Grant had strenuously opposed this movement, and later declared that it was "ordered from Washington," and that Banks had opposed the expedition, and was in no way responsible, except for the conduct of it (Personal Memoirs, 1886, II, 139-40). The State Department insisted that the flag must be restored to some one point in Texas, as a counter to the movements of the French in Mexico; the President was eager to establish a loyal government in Louisiana; and the agents of the Government and speculators were lured by the great stores of cotton along the river. Starting in the early spring, the only season when the Reel River was navigable, Banks advanced with a land force of 27,000 men, Admiral Porter being in command of a supporting fleet of gunboats. When within two days' march of his objective, Shreveport, Banks's army, extending for miles along a single road, encountered the main body of the enemy at Sabine Crossroads, April 8, and was routed. On the following clay at Pleasant Hill a fierce battle was fought, in which both parties claimed the victory. Failure of his supplies of ammunition, rations, and water compelled Banks to fall back. Meantime the fleet had been placed in imminent peril by the unprecedentedly early subsidence of the Red River, and was saved only by the brilliant engineering feat of Colonel Joseph Bailey in constructing a series of dams that secured enough depth of water to send the gunboats over the shallows (J. W. Draper, History of the American Civil War, 1870, III, 235-38). The army followed the naval force down the river, repelling rear attacks. Grant's peremptory recall of 10,000 men left Banks facing a serious crisis. On May 13 he evacuated Alexandria. Though left in nominal command, he was soon virtually superseded by the arrival of General E. R. S. Canby, who had been appointee to the command of all forces west of the Mississippi. A majority of the Committee on the Conduct of the War placed upon Banks a large measure of responsibility for the disasters which befell this expedition, but a minority member, D. W. Gooch, defended him on the ground that the major causes of failure, i. e. the unforeseeable difficulties of navigation, and the shortness of the time for which nearly half of the force were "lent" by Sherman, were beyond his control (Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session, part II, pp. 3-401). Although repeatedly in this humiliating expedition Banks showed a lack of military skill, in the main he had to "bear the blame of the blunders of his superiors," who for alleged reasons of state ordered a movement which had little military justification, and doomed it to failure by so organizing it that, while four forces were supposed to cooperate, the commander of no one of them had the right to give an order to another (Asa Mahan, Critical History of the Late American War, 1877, p. 407).

Honorably mustered out of military service, August 24, 1865, Banks returned to his native city, and was almost immediately elected as a Republican to fill a vacancy in the House, caused by the death of D. W. Gooch, where he continued to serve from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-second Congress. During this period he voted for the act stopping further contraction of the currency, and was a member of the committee of five to investigate the Cedit Mobilier charges. He was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs at the time Maximilian was in Mexico and war with France seemed likely to follow. He advised a bold policy in regard to the Alabama Claims, advocated our acquisition of Alaska, and reported a bill asserting the right of every naturalized American citizen to renounce all allegiance to his native land, and authorizing the President, if such right should be denied, in reprisal to suspend trade relations with such a Government, and to arrest and detain any of its citizens. In the campaign of 1872, because of a personal quarrel with President Grant; he supported Greeley's candidacy, and as a consequence was himself defeated for reelection. At the beginning of the short session, the month following this defeat, he tendered his resignation from the Committee on Military Affairs in order that the House might be "represented by some member more unequivocally committed to its policy," but the House by a substantial vote refused to excuse him from such service (December 2, 1872, Congressional Globe, p. 10). During the two-year interruption of his congressional career he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate for the session of 1874, but in the following November he was returned to Congress as a Democrat. Two years later he was reelected as a Republican. At the expiration of this term, he was appointed by President Hayes to the position of United States marshal for Massachusetts, and served from March II, 1879, to April 23, 1888. In that year he was reelected to Congress as a Republican, defeating Colonel Thomas W. Higginson. Before the end of the term his health became seriously impaired; he retired to his home in Waltham, where he died, September 1, 1894. He was survived by a son and two daughters, one of whom, Maude Banks, attained some distinction as an actress. By resolution of the Massachusetts General Court provision was made for the erection of a bronze statue of General Banks upon the grounds of the State House. This statue, by Henry H. Kitson, was unveiled September 16, 1908.

[No general biography of Banks has been published. The story of his early career is told by William M. Thayer in The Bobbin Boy (1860). The main features of his military career are presented in the books and reports above cited; see also Official Records. Certain phases are discussed by G. F. R. Henderson, in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1898), I, 388 ff., and by Geo. C. Eggleston, in History of the Confederate War (1910), I, 208. Frank M. Flynn's Campaigning with Banks in Louisiana (1887) contains little of value.]

G. H. H.



BARNARD, JOHN GROSS (May 19, 1815- May 14, 1882), Union soldier, son of Robert Foster Barnard and Augusta (Porter) Barnard, and younger brother of Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard [q.v.], was born at Sheffield, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Hills. From one of his relatives, Peter Buel Porter, secretary of war under President John Quincy Adams, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and entered that institution on July 1, 1829; four years later he graduated second in a class of forty-three. He was assigned as second-lieutenant to the corps of engineers of the army, which was charged with the construction of coast defenses, the improvement of rivers and harbors, and the supervision of the Military Academy. In this corps he served through the various grades to that of colonel, and on his retirement for age in 1881 was president of the Permanent Board of Engineers for Fortifications and River and Harbor Improvements. He was nominated by President Lincoln as chief of his corps in 1864 but at his own request his name was withdrawn, probably to allow an officer of longer service to enjoy that honor. He also served as superintendent of the Military Academy 1855-56.

When he joined the corps of engineers its officers were engaged in the construction of a system of defenses on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts to supplement the few old works constructed immediately after the Revolutionary War. In this work he served as superintending engineer of the fortifications of some of our important ports-Portland and New York on the Atlantic coast, Mobile and the mouth of the Mississippi River on the Gulf coast, and San Francisco on the Pacific coast. All of these works were designed to meet the attacks of wooden vessels armed with muzzle-loading cannon. With the introduction of rifled guns and armored vessels, about the time of the Civil War, the coast defenses had to be modified, and after that war Barnard was charged with the study of this problem. On this work he was sent abroad in 1870 to ascertain the progress made in Europe in the development of iron for defensive purposes. In connection with his work on seacoast defenses he wrote the following: Dangers and Defences of New York (1859); "Memoir on National Defences" (in Proceedings of the Military Association of the State of New York, 1860, pp. 55-71); Notes on Seacoast Defence (1861); Report on the Fabrication of Iron for Defensive Purposes and its Uses in Modern Fortification especially in Coast Defence, in collaboration with Lieutenant-Colonel Wright and Captain Michie of the Corps of Engineers (1871- 72).

In the field of river and harbor improvement, Barnard served as superintending engineer on the construction of the Delaware breakwater, the improvement of the Hudson River and New Jersey harbors, and as chairman of boards considering numerous projects. An important service was that in connection with the improvement of the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1852 Congress appropriated $75,000 for this improvement and a board, of which Barnard was a member, was appointed to recommend the best method of utilizing this sum. In 1871 Congress directed that plans and estimates for further improvement should be prepared by an engineer officer. These plans were completed early in 1873 and a board was convened to report on them. After prolonged controversy, Congress finally accepted Barnard's recommendation that the South Pass be improved by the construction of parallel jetties, and directed that a contract be made with James B. Eads and his associates to carry out this improvement, payment to be conditional on success. Mr. Eads, who had said of Barnard, "His reputation among both civil and military engineers is acknowledged in Europe and America to be equal to that of any other living," appointed him chairman of his board of advisory engineers. Time has confirmed Barnard's views in the matter of improving the mouth of the Mississippi River and the jetty method has since been applied to the wider Southwest Pass. His published works on waterways were: Outlets and Levees of the Mississippi River (1859); Report on the North Sea Canal of Holland (1872).

In the Mexican War he was assigned the construction of the defenses of the base at Tampico, and later to the survey of the battlefields about the City of Mexico. This last duty probably led to his selection by the Tehuantepec Railroad Company of New Orleans in 1850 as chief engineer to make a preliminary survey for a railway across that isthmus. Such was Barnard's reputation as a military engineer that at the outbreak of the Civil War he was charged with the construction of the defenses of the National Capital. He served as chief engineer of McDowell's army in 1861 and on his reconnaissance the fir st battle of Bull Run was planned. Of this battle Sherman, who took part in it, says, "It is now generally admitted that it was one of the best planned battles of the war but one of the worst fought." Barnard was chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac in McClellan's Peninsular campaign in which he conducted the siege of Yorktown and directed the engineering operations on the front of Richmond. From the Peninsular campaign until Grant took command of the armies in Virginia he remained in charge of the defenses of Washington and was a member of various defense boards. In June 1864 he was made chief engineer of the armies in the field on the staff of General Grant. Wishing to withdraw one of the corps serving under General Butler south of the James River to reinforce his troops north of the James, Grant sent Barnard to examine Butler's position to see if this could be safely done and on his report the corps was brought across the river. When Sherman's army reached Savannah, Grant sent Barnard there to explain the situation in Virginia and North Carolina so that Sherman could decide on a plan for cooperation. For his military services in time of war Barnard received the brevets of major in the regular army in the Mexican War and of colonel, brigadier-general, and major-general in the Civil War. He was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers in the Civil War and received the brevet of major-general of volunteers. His contributions to the history of the Civil War were: The Confederate States of America and the Battle of Bull Run (1862); The Peninsular Campaign and its Antecedents ... as Developed by the Report of Major General George B. McClellan and other Published Documents (1864); Report of the Engineer and Artillery Operations of the Army of the Potomac from its Organization to the Close of the Peninsular Campaign, in collaboration with General William F. Barry (1863); A Report on the Defenses of Washington (1871).

Notwithstanding his professional occupations Barnard still found time to indulge his love for mathematical and scientific investigation. He was one of the fifty incorporators of the National Academy of Sciences and his published scientific writings indicate a wide field of research: The Phenomena of the Gyroscope Analytically Examined (1858); Problems of Rotary Motion Presented by, the Gyroscope, the Precession of the Equinoxes and the Pendulum (1873); On the Internal Structure of the Earth Considered as Affecting the Phenomena of Precession and Nutation (1877); An Alleged Error in Laplace' s Theory of the Tides (1877); Some Remarks on the Use and Interpretation of Particular Integrals which "Satisfy" General Differential Equations Expressive of Dynamic Problems in Cases where General Integration is Impossible (1877). He also wrote for Johnson' s Universal Cyclopedia (1874-77) some seventy articles on engineering, mathematical, and scientific subjects.

For his personality we have the following from the pen of General Henry L. Abbot of the corps of engineers: " In his personal characteristics General Barnard was a thoughtful, self-contained, and earnest soldier. Under fire he seemed to have no sense of exposure, and in his frequent reconnaissances he was wont to push aside advanced pickets attempting to advise him as to the position of the enemy's sharpshooters, apparently trusting more to his own intuitions than to their local knowledge. His inherited deafness rendered social intercourse somewhat difficult, and to those who did not know him intimately this circumstance perhaps conveyed the idea of coldness and formality; but such was far from his nature. As an aide-de-camp during the Peninsular campaign, I often saw evidences of the warm interest he took in the success of many young officers serving under his orders, and of cordial appreciation of good work done by them . . . . He had a keen sense of humor and a passionate love of music. Indeed he composed many pieces-among others a Te Deum that still survives" (Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, V, 89).

While stationed in New Orleans, Barnard married Jane Elizabeth Brand, daughter of William Brand and sister of Reveren1 William F. Brand of Maryland, one of the noted clergy men of that state. She died in 1853, and in 1860 he married Mrs. Anna E. (Hall) Boyd, daughter of Major Henry Ball of Harford County, Maryland.

[H. P. Andrews, Descendants of John Porter of Windsor, Connecticut (1882); James B. Eads, Mouth of the Mississippi (1874); J. J. Williams, Isthmus of Tehuantepec (1852); Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1874, App. R. 15.]

G. J. F.



BARRY, WILLIAM FARQUHAR (August 18, 1818-July 18, 1879), Union soldier, was born in New York City. His father died while his son was still very young. Under his mother's tutelage the boy grew up, attended the New York High School, from 1826 to 1831 and thereafter received from a tutor an unusual knowledge of the classics (Old Files, Adjutant-General's Office). Admitted to the United States Military Academy, he graduated in 1838. His assignment to the 2nd Artillery took him to the Canadian border to enforce our neutrality during the "Patriot War," then in progress in Canada. The headquarters of the regiment were at Buffalo. Here Barry met Kate McNight and married her in 1840 (Records, Fort Monroe, Virginia). During the Mexican War in 1847, he accompanied his regiment to Tampico, where he became seriously ill. After his recovery he was designated acting assistant adjutant-general of Patterson's division at Vera Cruz and later, on reaching the City of Mexico, aide-de-camp to General Worth, which position he filled until the termination of hostilities (G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register). Thereafter, until the beginning of the Civil War, he followed the routine of army duties. Promoted to captain in 1852, he fought the Seminole Indians in Florida; in 1857-58 he was in Kansas attempting, during its troublous antebellum days, to maintain a difficult peace. His outstanding qualifications as an artilleryman were recognized by his detail in 1858-59 on a board to revise the "System of Light Artillery Tactics" (F. F. Rodenbaugh, The Army of the United States, 1896).

His services in the Civil War began with the defense of Fort Pickens, Florida, April 19, 1861. On May 14 he was promoted major and, in July, assigned as chief of artillery of the army commanded by his classmate McDowell (Official Records, series I, volume V, p. 575). With this army he participated in the battle of Bull Run. Subsequently assigned as chief of artillery of McClellan's Army of the Potomac, he labored tirelessly to increase and improve the artillery, a task which, with the aid of the Ordnance Department, he accomplished. When he took up this work most of the ore for the guns was underground, the lumber for the carriages still growing in the forests, the leather for the harness yet covering the animals, the artillerists a mob of militia. By prodigious exertions the thirty guns on hand in July 1861 had been increased to 520 when McClellan moved in March 1862, the 400 horses to 11,000, the 650 men to 12,500 drilled artillerists, and the whole molded into an artillery organization (Ibid., p. 68). The man who wrought these changes was at this time in the fulness of his powers. Tall, athletic, well-built, with keen eyes, aquiline nose, and rather marked features, he was a noticeable personage. Much of his success may be ascribed to his unusual ability as an organizer, with which he combined a genial, kindly manner and buoyant spirits. By hard work he had accomplished much, yet much remained to be done when the Army of the Potomac took the field, March 14, 1862.

In the Peninsular campaign which followed; Barry, now a brigadier-general of volunteers; took an active part in all the battles and movements of this unfortunate expedition. After the evacuation of the Peninsula he was, at his own request, relieved as chief of artillery, Army of the Potomac, and transferred to Washington as inspector of artillery of the Armies of the United States and chief of artillery of the defenses of Washington. In addition, he served as a member of numerous armament, fortification, and defense boards. In March 1864 he was relieved and appointed chief of artillery, first on the staff of General Grant (Ibid., volume XXXIII, p. 617) and then, upon the latter's promotion, on the staff of General William T. Sherman, commanding the Military Division of the Mississippi (Ibid., volume XXXVIII, part 4, p. 23), containing the three armies, of the Cumberland, of the Tennessee, and of Ohio. As Sherman's chief of artillery he engaged in most of the battles of the four-months' advance, which terminated in the capture of Atlanta; in the two-months' operation which had for its object the expulsion of Hood's army from Georgia and northeastern Alabama; in the three-months' campaign from Savannah through the two Carolinas, which terminated in the surrender of Johnston's army at Durham, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. He received the brevet rank of major-general of volunteers and colonel in the United States Army, September 1, 1864, for his admirable conduct during the Atlanta campaign, and the brevets of brigadier and major-general in the United States Army, March 13, 1865, for service in the campaign which embraced Sherman's "March to the Sea," and for "gallant and meritorious services in the field throughout the Rebellion" (Old Records Section, Adjutant-General's Office). On December 11, 1865, he was promoted colonel of the 2nd Artillery. Mustered out of the volunteer service in January 1866, Barry was given a special command on the northern frontier during the Fenian troubles of that year. In the fall of 1867 he was selected to organize and conduct the Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he labored assiduously and successfully for ten years. In 1877, his health then much impaired, he was assigned to the command of Fort McHenry, where he died.

[In addition to the references above, see Association of Graduates U. S. Military Academy Annual Reunion, 1880, and Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1879.]

C.A.B.



volunteers expiring, a new regiment was formed from the old through consolidation and reenlistments; and within a few days after August 17, 1861, due to his energy and leadership, the regimental commander was able to parade a new 23rd Regiment through the streets of Washington, its soldiers sworn in for three years' service. Then began a long period of drill and training, and such was the favorable impression created by Birney's capacity for command and proper ideas of discipline, that early in 1862 he was appointed a brigadier-general of volunteers. His first assignment was to a brigade of General Kearny's division. As a brigade commander, he participated in the early operations of the Army of the Potomac, including Centreville and Manassas, and later in 1862 engaged with his brigade in the sanguinary battles of the Peninsular campaign-Yorktown, Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Malvern Hill. At Fair Oaks, he was unjustly charged with having "halted his command a mile from the enemy," and was brought before a court martial. After careful consideration of the evidence, the court, composed in the main of regular officers, honorably acquitted him. Transported back to Alexandria, Virginia, Birney's brigade was pushed forward to the support of troops engaged in Pope's campaign, and on August 31, 1862, took an active part in the Union victory at Chantilly, Virginia, where Birney's warm friend and military superior, General Phil Kearny, lost his life. He succeeded Kearny as division commander, and led his division through the battles of the Army of the Potomac, until the middle of July 1864. At Fredericksburg, his -division was in support of Meade; and although it was charged that Birney failed to comply with urgent instructions, careful investigation at the time failed to substantiate such charges, and General Stoneman reported that Birney's division "probably saved the entire left wing from disaster." For his able leadership at Chancellorsville, Birney was promoted, May 5, 1863, to be major-general of volunteers. At Gettysburg, he commanded the 3rd Army Corps after General Sickles was wounded, and was struck twice by enemy's bullets, but was only slightly injured (New York Herald, July 6, 1863). Thereafter, Birney's division followed Grant through his first campaign against Richmond until July 23, 1864, when Grant selected Birney to command the 10th Army Corps. After these major operations in which for months his system had been weakened by exposure and fatigue, Birney became seriously ill with malarial fever of an especially virulent type; and against his wishes to remain in the field, was ordered home for recuperation. He reached Philadelphia on October 11, 1864, where, after acute suffering, he died on October 18, in the thirty-ninth year of his age. His last words in delirium were, "Boys ! Keep your eyes on that flag!" Resolutions of the Philadelphia Board of Trade characterized him as "an honest citizen, a gallant soldier, and a pure, chivalric, self-sacrificing patriot." So great was the esteem in which Birney's life and services were held, that during the fall of 1864 and the spring of 1865 a group of Philadelphia friends raised a trust fund of nearly thirty thousand dollars by popular subscription, which was wisely invested by trustees for the benefit of Birney's widow and six small children.

[Oliver W. Davis, Life of David Bell Birney (pub. anonymously, 1867) is the principal source; see also Official Records, Army and Navy Journal, October 22, 29, November 19, 1864, and "Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War," Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session. The honorable acquittal of Birney by court martial is in General Order No. 135, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, June 19, 1862 (War Department files).]

C.D.R.



BIRNEY, JAMES (June 7, 1817-May 8, 1888), lawyer and diplomatist, the eldest son of James G. Birney [q.v.] and brother of David Bell Birney [q.v.] and of William Birney [q.v.], was born at Danville, Kentucky. His academic education was obtained at Centre College, Danville, and at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, from which latter institution he graduated in 1836. In 1837-38 he taught in the Grammar School of Miami University; then he studied law at Yale for two years and began to practise at Cincinnati. He became a trustee of the Saginaw Bay Company, and in 1857 removed to Lower Saginaw (now Bay City), Michigan, where he made his home until his death. In 1859 he was elected to the state Senate as a Republican, and successfully opposed the transfer to the state school fund of the proceeds of the sales of swamp lands given to the state by the federal government in aid of the construction of roads. From January 1 to April 3, 1861, he was lieutenant-governor, resigning that office to accept an appointment as judge of the eighteenth judicial circuit to fill a vacancy. Although his standing as a lawyer was high, he appears to have been somewhat wanting in judicial temperament, and at the end of four years, notwithstanding that he had been nominated to succeed himself, he failed of election. In the state constitutional convention of 1867, of which he was a member, he was made chairman of a select committee on procedure, and of a committee which reported the provisions for the executive department. In 1871 he established the Bay City Chronicle, changing the paper from a weekly to a daily in 1873. In 1876 he was a commissioner from Michigan to the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. Toward the end of that year he was appointed by President Grant minister resident at The Hague, a post which he retained until 1882, when he resigned. At the time of his death he was president of the Bay City board of education. He married, June 1, 1841, Amanda S. daughter of John and Sophia Moulton of New Haven, Connecticut, and cousin of Commodore Isaac Hull.

[There is a summary sketch of Birney's life in Michigan Biographies. (1924), I, 84; and there is a brief account by A. C. Maxwell in the Michigan Pioneer and History Colls., XXII, 227-30 (1893). See also the Journal of the Michigan Constitutional Convention of 1867.]

W.M.



BIRNEY, WILLIAM (May 28, 1819-August 14, 1907), Union soldier, author, was born in Madison County Alabama, the son of James G. Birney [q.v.] and Agatha McDowell. At some time prior to 1845 he was practising law in Cincinnati, Ohio. In February 1848, being a member of a Republican student organization in Paris, he commanded at a barricade in the Rue St. Jacques during the revolutionary outbreak. In the same year he won in a competitive examination an appointment as professor of English literature at the Lycée at Bourges, where he remained for two years. During his five years' residence abroad he wrote for English and American papers, among other things reporting the first World's Fair at London (1851). He appears also to have paid some attention to the history of art and current activities in art education (see his Art and Education, a lecture before the Washington Art Club, February 6, 1878). Upon his return to the United States he established the daily Register at Philadelphia (1853) and edited it for two years. At the outbreak of the Civil War he raised a volunteer company in New Jersey, and became in succession captain of the 1st New Jersey Infantry and major and colonel of the 4th New Jersey Infantry. In 1863 he was, appointed one of the superintendents of the enlistment of colored troops, in which capacity he organized seven regiments. On May 22, 1863, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. While in command of colored troops he freed the inmates of the slave prisons at Baltimore. He took part in a number of important engagements, and after the battle of Olustee, Florida (February 20, 1864), aided in recovering the state from the Confederates. During the last two years of the war he commanded a division. On March 13, 1865, he was made brevet major-general of volunteers "for gallant and meritorious service during the war," and on August 24 was mustered out. After a residence of four years in Florida he removed to Washington, where he practised law, wrote fortnightly letters to the New York Examiner, and served for a time as United States attorney for the District of Columbia. His best-known writing, James G. Birney and His Times, appeared in 1890. In his later years he interested himself in religious controversy, publishing Functions of the Church and State Distinguished: A Plea for Civil and Religious Liberty (1897); Revelation and the Plan of Salvation (1903); Creeds not for Secularists (1906); Hell and Hades (Truth Seeker Tracts, New Series, No. 51; New York, n. d.), and How Christianity Began (Ibid., No. 54, n. d.). He was twice married: in 1845 to Catherine Hoffman, and in 1891 to Mattie Ashby.

[Who's Who in America, 1899-1907; F. B. Heitman, History Register (1903); Official Records, see Index; Washington Post, and Evening Star, August 15, 1907.]

W.M.



BLAIR, FRANCIS PRESTON (February 19, 1821-July 9, 1875), Union soldier, statesman, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, the third and youngest son of Francis Preston Blair [q.v.]. While a child he was taken to Washington, D. C., by his father and there he attended a select school. As a young man he contributed to the editorial columns of the Globe, edited by his father, who took great pride in educating his son for a political career. Blair graduated at Princeton (1841) and then entered the law school at Transylvania University. After graduating there, and upon admission to the bar at Lexington, Kentucky, he went to practise with his brother, Montgomery [q.v.] in St. Louis (1842). Three years of intense study and practise of law injured his health. While he was seeking rest and recreation in the Rocky Mountains the Mexican War broke out; consequently, he joined a company of Americans which was commanded by George Bent. When General Kearny took New Mexico Blair was appointed attorney-general for the territory.

Upon returning from the West Blair was married on September 8, 1847, to Appoline Alexander of Woodford County, Kentucky, and resumed his law practise in St. Louis. Having pronounced views on the extension of slavery he established a Free-Soil paper, the Barnburner, to further the interests of the cause in Missouri. He organized and led the Free-Soil party in that state and voted for Van Buren in 1848. Henry Clay found supporters in him, his father, and Montgomery, for his Compromise of 1850. Though a slave owner, Blair denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a violation of the Missouri Compromise, and his views on slavery, so clearly and forcefully expressed, marked him as a character dangerous to slave interests. Two terms in the Missouri legislature (1852-56) gave him opportunity to express his Free-Soilism and prepare himself for Congress. He was like Thomas Hart Benton in his methods, although in 1856 he refused Benton's request to retract some of his public statements on slavery. Benton was defeated for governor of Missouri in that year, while Blair, who voted for Fremont, was the only Free-Soiler elected to Congress from a slave state. In his first speech in Congress he warned the South that slavery was bound to die. He urged the South to adopt the policy of gradual emancipation by deportation and colonization. He was defeated for reelection to Congress (1858). In 1859 he published an argumentative "address" on colonization, entitled, The Destiny of the Races on This Continent.

The years 1858 to 1861 were eventful years for Blair. He opposed the extension of slavery on the basis that it was an economic hindrance to the development of the West, as well as socially and morally wrong. His family connections, his brilliance, his ability as an extemporaneous speaker, and his courageous frank manner, made him one of the popular orators of the day. As a speaker he was in demand in Minnesota and Vermont where he campaigned for the Republicans, in Illinois where he hoped to ruin the political fortunes of Douglas, and in Missouri where he battled against the "Nullificationists" and Benton's old enemies, especially the "Fayette Clique." He organized the Union party in Missouri and largely transformed it into the Republican party; in the latter he became the "leading spirit and chief adviser" in his own state. Like his father, he was a constitutionalist and an unyielding unionist. He was a Democrat-Republican who used parties merely as a means to an end.

The speeches and letters of Blair indicate that he feared a coming catastrophe long before the Civil War. The spectre of "Nullification" haunted him. He tried in vain to convert Northern men to his scheme of colonization. He supported Edward Bates for the presidential nomination through fear of secession early in the campaign of 1860, but he turned to Lincoln on the third ballot in the Chicago convention. After the convention few men labored as faithfully as he in the campaign. Consequently, he was ready to act quickly and decisively when civil war loomed. He organized the "Wide Awakes" in St. Louis, had men secretly drilled, secured ammunition and arms, kept himself informed of movements at Washington, and as a friend and supporter stood well in Lincoln's favor.

Blair was elected to Congress in 1860. In the spring of 1861 he determined to save Missouri for the Union. After much political maneuvering and "Home Guards" organizing, he and General Lyon marshalled their forces sufficiently to compel the surrender of Camp Jackson, a camp of state militia sympathetic with the Confederacy. It was a play of Blair and his Unconditional Unionists against Governor Jackson and his confederates, who desired to carry Missouri into the Confederacy. The capture of Camp Jackson drove thousands of Missourians into the Confederate cause, but the issue was now sharply drawn in the state; the United States arsenal at St. Louis was saved, and the state remained Unionist. Blair was offered a brigadier-generalship but refused in order to avoid political complications in Missouri.

In the Thirty-seventh Congress, as chairman of the Committee on Military Defense, Blair's policy was to crush the rebellion as quickly as men and money could do it. His policy included the acceptance of all volunteer troops for service, government control of railroads and telegraph lines, and the construction of a ship canal from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River for commercial and military purposes. He caused Fremont to be sent to Missouri to command the forces in that region but soon became disgusted with Fremont's policy, criticized him, and was, in turn, arrested and imprisoned by him. Blair's father and brother attempted unsuccessfully to stop the quarrel. For this and other reasons Lincoln removed Fremont. Blair's enemies in Missouri increased in number, particularly while he was in the army. In 1862, when the Union cause looked dark, an appeal was made to Blair to raise troops and lead them to the front. He immediately raised seven regiments, received the appointment of brigadier-general, and saw his first hard fighting at Vicksburg where he showed bravery and leadership. He was in many engagements, was raised to the rank of major-general, and completed his military career with Sherman on the march through the South. As commander of the 15th and 17th Corps, respectively, he received the praises of Generals Sherman and Grant. Blair was considerate of his officers and men and was popular among them. While in the army he made his own opinions and the wishes of General Sherman known to his brother, the Postmaster General, who in turn communicated the information to the President. In 1864 Blair was recalled from the battlefield to help organize Congress and to defend Lincoln's plan of reconstruction. On February S and 27, 1864, he made two provocative speeches: one defending the President's policy; the other, against Secretary Chase and the Radicals whom he derisively called Jacobins. A storm of condemnation from the Radicals fell on his head. Chase threatened to resign, and Blair returned to his command.

When the war closed Blair was financially ruined as he had spent much of his private means in support of the Union. His attempt to retrieve his lost fortune on a cotton plantation in Mississippi failed. He then turned his attention to politics in Missouri where a set of Radical Republicans had gained control within the party. He opposed the registry laws, test oaths, the policy of sending carpet-baggers to the South, and the disfranchisement of the whites and the enfranchisement of the negroes. He wished to allow the states to return to the Union to work out their own problems if they recognized abolition as an accomplished fact and swore allegiance to the Constitution. President Johnson nominated Blair for collector of internal revenue at St. Louis, and then to the Austrian mission, only to see the Senate refuse to confirm his appointment in each case. Blair was then appointed as commissioner on the Pacific Railroad but Grant removed him as soon as he became president. The Radicals in Missouri caused Blair to defend the conservatives and ex-Confederates. He began his work of reorganization of the Democratic party in 1865, supported Johnson in 1866, and received the nomination for vice-president with Seymour in 1868. In the latter year his public utterances and his notorious "Broadhead Letter," addressed to J. O. Broadhead, declaring that it would be the duty of the Democratic candidate if elected to abolish the Reconstruction governments, gave the opposition an opportunity to distort Blair's meaning when he advanced his plan of reconstruction. He maintained that the Constitution had been perverted. To restore it, he would have the people, by their mandate expressed at the polls, declare the acts of the Radical Congress "null and void"; compel the army to undo its usurpations of power in the South; disperse the carpet-bag governments; allow the whites to reorganize their own governments and elect senators and representatives. After the Democratic defeat in 1868 he cooperated with the Liberal Republicans, secured election as representative to the Missouri legislature; and was, by that body, chosen United States senator. He helped to secure the nomination of Horace Greeley for president (1872), and through cooperation with the Liberal Republicans saw the Radicals ousted from power in Missouri. He was defeated for reelection to the United States Senate in 1873. During the same year Blair was stricken with paralysis, never to recover. He was generous to a fault, cordial, and seldom held a personal grudge against a political enemy. His scathing denunciations of his political opponents antagonized them but his faculty for remembering names and his sociability endeared him to many people. He was nominally state superintendent of insurance when he died. His friends erected a fitting monument to his memory in Forrest Park (St. Louis) and Missouri placed his statue in the United States Capitol.

[The chief sources are the Blair Papers (unpublished). Two biographies of a political and biased nature are: Jas. Dabney McCabe (Edward Martin), The Life and Public Services of Horatio Seymour Together with a Complete and Authentic Life of Francis P. Blair, Jr. (1868); David Goodman Croly, Seymour and Blair: Their Lives and Services (1868). A manuscript copy of a sketch of the life of Blair, presumably written by Montgomery Blair, is in the Blair Papers. Short sketches exist by Wm. Van Ness Bay, in Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri (1878); Augustus C. Rogers, Sketches of Representative Men North and South (1874); Chas. P. Johnson, "Personal Recollections of Missouri's Statesmen" in Proc. Missouri History Society, January 22, 1903; and John Fiske, The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War (1900). The best account of Blair's services in Missouri during the early part of the Civil War is found in General Nathaniel Lyon and Missouri in 1861 (1866) by Jas. Peckham.]

W.E.S.



BUELL, DON CARLOS (March 23, 1818- November 19, 1898), Union soldier, descended from William Buell, a Welshman who settled in Windsor, Connecticut, about 1639, was born near Marietta, Ohio, the son of Salmon D. and Eliza (Buell) Buell. When he was five years old his father died, and the boy was taken to his uncle, George P. Buell of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where he remained-barring five years passed with his stepfather in Marietta-until 1837 (M. R. Martin, History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio, 1902, pp. 697 ff.). In the latter year he was appointed cadet at West Point, and four years later he graduated as second lieutenant, 3rd Infantry. He participated in the Seminole War. In 1846 he joined Taylor's army in Texas. Promoted first lieutenant, he was brevetted captain for gallant and meritorious conduct at Monterey on September 23, 1846. Transferred to Scott's army, he was again brevetted in the following year for gallant conduct at the battles of Contreras and Churubusco. After the Mexican War he became an adjutant-general, and at the commencement of the Civil War was a lieutenant-colonel in the Adjutant-General's Department.

He was appointed brigadier-general United States Volunteers, on May 17, 1861, and aided in organizing the Army of the Potomac. Selected by General McClellan to organize and train the Federal forces in Kentucky, he arrived at Louisville early in November, assuming command of the Army of the Ohio. The mission assigned this army was to invade and liberate east Tennessee, largely Union in sentiment. Buell foresaw the difficulties of moving from Louisville toward Knoxville, in a country lacking roads and railroads, especially in view of the presence of large Confederate forces then at Bowling Green, and on November 27, profiting by the suggestion of an engineering officer, he recommended to McClellan an advance by the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers toward Nashville, as auxiliary to the desired advance toward east Tennessee. Both McClellan and President Lincoln strongly disapproved of this plan, but Buell stuck to his recommendation, and urged the abandonment of the East Tennessee project. On February 6, 1862, he was authorized to march on Bowling Green, in support of an advance under Grant up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.

With 50,000 men, Buell started out. Due to Grant's victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, he met no opposition, and reached Nashville on February 24. On March 11, President Lincoln placed Buell under the orders of General Halleck, and the latter ordered him to advance on Savannah, twenty-two miles north of Corinth on the Tennessee River. Nothing being said about haste, Buell marched very leisurely. As late as April 4, he was advised by Grant that there was no need to hurry. By good luck, the leading division of Buell's army arrived on the Tennessee River on April 6, the first day of the Confederate attack at Shiloh. Ferried across the river, this division by its presence restored the sinking fortunes of the Federal troops. During that night two more divisions came up and crossed the river. On April 7, Buell attacked the Confederates. He had fresh troops and superior numbers, and forced the enemy back until they abandoned the field. No effort was made to pursue them.

Buell had been promoted on March 21 to be a major-general, United States Volunteers. He accompanied Halleck's army to Corinth, but on June 10 was detached with four divisions, and ordered to proceed to Chattanooga following the railroad to that place. He was directed to repair this railroad as he advanced, an order which caused the failure of his expedition. The work was interrupted by raiding parties, and constant repairing so delayed Buell that he never arrived at his destination. On July 28, Morgan's cavalry completely stopped his advance by destroying railroad communications, and on August 6 Buell knew that Bragg's Confederate army had reached Chattanooga. Buell then concentrated his forces near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. On September 2, Buell learned that the Confederate general, Kirby Smith, advancing by Cumberland Gap, had defeated the Federal forces at Richmond, Kentucky. Knowing also that Bragg had started north from Chattanooga, he suspected that the latter was en route to join Kirby Smith. Buell therefore decided to leave a small force to cover Nashville, and to march at once with the greater part of his forces into Kentucky. Arriving at Bowling Green on September 14, he found Bragg ahead of him at Glasgow, and between him and his base at Louisville. He decided not to attack on a field chosen by his antagonist, and soon Bragg moved away and left the road to Louisville open. Buell arrived at that city on September 25.

On October 1, Buell marched out to seek battle, and on October 8, three divisions of his army found Bragg's forces at Perryville. A severe battle was fought, with indecisive results. Bragg however withdrew, leaving the battlefield in Buell's possession. The latter followed slowly for four days, when he discontinued the pursuit. Disappointed in the escape of Bragg's army, the Federal government relieved Buell on October 24, and on October 30, he surrendered the command of his army to Rosecrans. The army did not regret the change. It was the general opinion that Bragg should have been forced to a decisive battle, and relentlessly pursued thereafter. Buell's explanation that his failure to pursue was due to his inability to live off the country has been questioned, as Bragg subsisted his army in that way, and the Federal forces were better supplied than the Confederates. A military commission was convened in November 1862 to investigate Buell's conduct. On April 15, 1863, the commission reported the facts without recommendation. The government, however, after keeping him for a year in waiting orders, discharged Buell as a major-general of volunteers, and he thereupon immediately resigned his regular commission on June 1, 1864. Grant later recommended his restoration to duty, but no action was taken. After the war Buell settled in Kentucky and engaged in mining; for a time he was a pension agent. He died at Rockport, Kentucky.

Buell was an excellent organizer and disciplinarian. He utterly disregarded politics. A friend of McClellan, to whom he owed his first important assignment, he was charged with being opposed to the administration. His reserved and studious character emphasized this belief, and led to the difficulties of the Kentucky campaign not being rightly estimated. His campaigns showed no military genius, but they were as good as those of other generals in the West. The early departure of Buell from military life prevented the development of what might have been a good general. Grant evidently thought so, and he was probably correct. Buell was of medium stature, wore a full beard, and had a stern, determined appearance. His wife was Margaret (Hunter) Mason of Mobile (Courier-Journal, Louisville, September 4, November 20, 1898).

[Official Records (Army), 1 series, X, XVI, XX, XXIII; Jas. B. Fry, Operations of the Army under Buell … and the "Buell Commission" (1884); J.C. Ropes, The Story of the Civil War (1894-1913); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887-88); Thirtieth Annual Reunion Association of Graduates Military Academy (1899), pp. 105-18; Jas. B. Hudnut, Commanders of the Army of the Cumberland (1884).]

C.H.L.



BUFORD, JOHN (March 4, 1826-December 16, 1863), Union soldier, was eighth in descent from Richard Beauford, who came from England in 1635, at the age of eighteen, and settled in Lancaster County, Virginia. Members of the family became extensive landowners, devoted themselves to horse raising and the cultivation of tobacco, and furnished many soldiers in the early Indian wars and in the Revolution. A change was made in the spelling of the name as a result of the troubles with the mother country. John was the son of John and Anne (Bannister) Watson Buford, widow of John Watson. He was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, was appointed to the West Point Military Academy from Illinois, and graduated in 1848, standing sixteenth in a class of thirty-eight members. On May 9, 1854 he married Martha McDonald Duke. After a year as brevet second lieutenant he was promoted to second lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoons, and to first lieutenant on July 9, 1853. He saw frontier service in Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas and was appointed regimental quartermaster in 1855 at the time when the Sioux expedition was organized to punish the Indians who had massacred Lieutenant Grattan's party. In the winter campaign which followed, ending with the defeat of Little Thunder's band, near Ash Hollow, Nebraska, on September 3, he won the approval of Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, the commanding officer. The expedition was broken up in July 1856, and the troops hastened to a new field of action in the Kansas troubles of that year. Just then the danger point shifted to the difficulties with the Mormons in Utah. The 2nd Dragoons were recalled in haste from duty in Kansas, on three or four days' notice, and ordered to make a march of 1,100 miles in the dead of winter through an uninhabited wilderness, under the conditions of war. During this march the quartermaster was the hardest-worked man in the command, and Colonel Cooke reported Buford as a "most efficient officer." Next came the troublous times of 1861. The regiment marched overland for sixty days to Fort Leavenworth, and made its camp in Washington in October 1861. More than a year after the war began; General Pope came to Washington to take a high command. He was surprised to find Buford there in an unimportant position, and at once asked for his advancement. Buford was accordingly promoted brigadier-general on July 7, 1862. Two days later he took command of the reserve brigade of cavalry and within less than ten days was in action at Madison Court House. Pope's movement had been delayed too long and Lee's Manassas Campaign had begun. Finding the enemy on his front, flank, and rear, Buford extricated his command and retreated toward Sperryville. When Jackson appeared in Pope's rear on August 28, McDowell sent Buford beyond Thoroughfare Gap for observation. Buford captured fifty of Jackson's stragglers, struck the head of Longstreet's column, delayed him for several hours, and counted seventeen regiments of infantry, five hundred cavalry, and a battery of artillery. He then made his report, retreated, and acted as rear guard for Ricketts's Division. When Pope's army retreated to Centerville on the 30th, Buford's brigade covered the withdrawal across Bull Run at Lewis Ford, on the extreme left. The pursuing cavalry attacked, and Buford was so severely wounded that he was at first reported to be dead. The Confederate commander claimed a victory.

Buford was disabled by his wound and on sick leave until September 10, 1862, when he was announced as chief of cavalry of the Army of the Potomac. The position had only nominal importance on the staff of the commanding general. Buford seems to have still been suffering from his wound, as he served in this minor capacity under McClellan and Burnside at the battles of South Mountain, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. When General Hooker in February 1863 consolidated the cavalry into an army corps, Buford resumed command of the reserve brigade, and rendered effective service both in Stoneman's raid toward Richmond and in covering the retreat of Hooker's army after Chancellorsville. When Lee began his second invasion of the North, well covered by Stuart's cavalry on his right, the efforts of the Federal cavalry to penetrate the screen brought on daily combats and considerable actions at Aldie Gap, Upperville, Middleburg, and Ashby's Gap. Buford, now in command of a division, crossed the Potomac on June 27, reached Gettysburg on June 30, and drove back the advance of Hill's corps which was approaching from Cashtown. On July 1 the Confederate advance on the Cashtown road was opposed by a single brigade of Buford's cavalry, dismounted at about one man to a yard of front, with one battery against two of the enemy. Hill was delayed for about two hours, at the end of which time Buford was relieved by the arrival of Reynolds's corps. Later in the afternoon the cavalry was withdrawn to Seminary Ridge where it was opposed to McGowan's South Carolina brigade. Meanwhile Buford's other brigade was doing equally good work on the other roads which entered Gettysburg further to the north and east; it reported the advance of Ewell's corps, and held its ground until relieved by Howard's corps. On July 3 Buford was sent to Westminster ostensibly to guard the trains but more probably to relieve the fears of Washington concerning an enemy raid. His absence from the battlefield gave Longstreet the opportunity to surprise and defeat Sickles's corps on the 3rd. From Westminster Buford was sent to Williamsport on the Potomac to capture Lee's retreating trains, but when he arrived on July 6 he found the Confederates there, with cavalry, infantry, and artillery, trains parked and intrenched. Cavalry actions were fought at Westminster, Boonsboro, Beaver Creek, and Funkstown. When the opposing armies got back into Virginia a season of maneuvering began and lasted for months. Buford's division was heavily engaged at Manassas Gap, Chester Gap, Morton's Ford, and Rixeyville. Toward the latter part of November, Buford received leave of absence owing to failing health. He went for treatment to Washington where he died on December 16. His commission as major-general was put in his hands just before his death. He was buried at West Point.

[Official Records (Army); G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891); J. C. Ropes, The Army under Pope (1881) and The Story of the Civil War (1894-1913); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887-88); obituary in the Washington Evening Star, December 17, 1863; M. B. Buford, Genealogy of the Buford Family in America (1903).]

E.S.



BUFORD, NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (January 13, 1807-March 28, 1883), Union soldier, half-brother of John Buford [q.v.], was born on a plantation in Woodford County, Kentucky, the second child of John Buford by his first wife, Nancy Hickman. He was a grandson of Simeon Buford, who migrated from Virginia to Kentucky in 1790 and settled in what was to become Woodford County. Napoleon Buford graduated sixth in his class in the United States Military Academy, July 1, 1827, and was commissioned a lieutenant of artillery. He attended the artillery school at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, 1827-28; was on topographical duty along the Kentucky River and at the Rock Island and Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi, 1828-29; was in garrison at Fort Sullivan, Maine, 1830-31 and 1832-34; studied on leave of absence at the Harvard University Law School during 1831; was assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy at West Point 1834-35; and resigned from the Army, December 31, 1835. For the next seven years he was in the service of his native state as engineer in charge of the Licking River improvement. He then followed his family to Rock Island, Illinois, where he was successively a merchant, iron founder, railroad promoter, and banker. In 1850 he was a member and secretary of the board of visitors of the Military Academy. The outbreak of the Civil War ruined him financially, for his bank had invested heavily in the bonds of Southern states. Making over his entire property to his creditors, he helped raise the 27th Illinois Volunteers, was commissioned its colonel, August 10, 1861, and was presently in action.

At Belmont, Missouri, November 7, 1861, the 27th Illinois was left behind in the retreat and might easily have fallen into the hands of the enemy; Buford, with a cool head and accurate information about the terrain, took his men down a byroad to the river and got them aboard a gunboat without mishap. In a subsequent parley over the exchange of prisoners he met his classmate, Leonidas Polk [q.v.], who wrote of him to Mrs. Polk: "He is as good a fellow as ever lived, and most devotedly my friend; a true Christian, a true soldier, and a gentleman, every inch of him." Buford took p art in the demonstration on Columbus, Kentucky, February 23, 1862, and was in command of the town, March 4-14, after its evacuation by the Confederates. He was in the siege of Island No. 10 March 14-April 7, and commanded the garrison after its capitulation. During the siege he took a small detachment and fell on Union City, Tennessee, early in the morning of March 31, taking the town by surprise and capturing a number of prisoners, one hundred horses, and a quantity of munitions and stores. For this exploit he was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers, April 15, 1862. He participated in the expedition to Fort Pillow, Tennessee, April 10-20, and served in the Mississippi campaign of the following summer. During the pursuit after the second day's fighting at Corinth, Mississippi, October 4, 1862, he suffered a sunstroke. While recuperating he was sent to Washington on court-martial duty and was a member of the court that convicted General Fitz-John Porter [q.v.]. On his return to the West he was in command of Cairo, Illinois, March-September, 1863, and of the District of East Arkansas, with headquarters at Helena, September 12, 1863-March9, 1865. There he did his most notable work. He coped successfully with smugglers, guerrilla parties, and lessees of plantations (some of whom, he declared, were as bad as the enemy) organized a freedmen's department of 5,000 men, established an orphan asylum and an industrial school for liberated slaves, and prosecuted dishonesty among his own subordinates. In spite of an inadequate force of men and much illness, he gave an excellent account of himself. The state of his health finally compelled him to ask for a change of duties. He was relieved of his command by an order of March 6, 1865, was brevetted major-general of volunteers, March 13, "for gallant and meritorious service during the Rebellion," and was on leave of absence from March 9 until August 24, 1865, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service.

He was superintendent of the Federal Union Mining Company in Colorado June 1-December 1, 1866, special United States commissioner of Indian affairs, February 7-September 1, 1867, and special United States commissioner to inspect the completed Union Pacific Railroad, September 1, 1867- March 10, 1869. The latter years of his life were spent in Chicago, where he was one of the founders of the Chicago Society of the Sons of Virginia and was a social favorite. He was twice married: first, to Sarah Childs of Cazenovia, New York; and second, to Mrs. Mary Anne (Greenwood) Pierce. He died in Chicago and was buried at Rock Island.

[Official Records, series I, II, III; G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register, I, 389--go (3rd ed., 1891); T. M. Eddy, The Patriotism of Illinois, II, 53-57 (1866); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1884-88); W. M. Polk, Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General (1893); M. B. Buford, Genealogy of the Buford Family in America (San Francisco, 1903; rev. ed. by G. W. Buford and M. B. Minter, LaBelle, Missouri, 1924); Biographical Encyclopedia of Illinois (1875); Quinquennial Cat. Harvard University Law School 1817-1924 (1925); Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean, March 29, 31, 1883.]

G. H. G.



BURNSIDE, AMBROSE EVERETT (May 23, 1824-September 13, 1881), Union soldier, was born at Liberty, Ind., the son of Edghill and Pamelia (Brown) Burnside. His great-grandfather, Robert Burnside, came from Scotland to South Carolina about 1750; some of the later generations settled in Kentucky but his branch went to Indiana. Until the age of eighteen he was educated in the seminary at Liberty whose principal was a ripe scholar and born teacher, where he received an education that prepared him well for college work. At this time, however, his father was unable to give him further assistance as he was in moderate circumstances with a large family. Young Burnside was therefore apprenticed to a tailor and a year later with a partner opened a shop in Liberty. Shortly thereafter his father became a member of the state Senate of Indiana and through friends secured for his son an appointment to the United States Military Academy, which he entered July 1, 1843, and from which he graduated four years later, entering the army as a lieutenant of artillery. He joined his battery in Mexico but was too late to see much active service. On April 27, 1852, he was married to Mary Richmond Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island. Before he resigned his commission in October 1853 he had served on the frontier and in garrison.

While in the army he invented a breech-loading rifle and he resigned to engage in its manufacture. His last post was Fort Adams, Rhode Island, and at Bristol, Rhode Island, he formed a company to manufacture his new arm. He had counted on the support of the government in his new venture, but in this he was disappointed, and in 1857 he was obliged to turn over his works to his creditors and begin life anew. During these years, however, due to his pleasing personality, genial manners, and the interest he showed in local military organizations, he made many friends, was appointed major-general of the state militia, and was nominated for Congress on the Democratic ticket. General McClellan, who was then connected with the Illinois Central Railroad, secured for him a position in its land department, and he was later made treasurer of the company.

In April 1861, at the request of the governor, he organized the 1st Rhode Island Regiment and became its colonel; it was among the first regiments to reach Washington. The promptness with which Burnside had responded to the call, his imposing person, pleasing manners, and the fine condition of his regiment made for him a strong friend in President Lincoln who often visited his camp. In the Bull Run campaign he commanded the brigade which opened that battle. On August 6, 1861, he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, and that autumn was engaged in organizing at Annapolis, Maryland, a division of New England troops for coastal operations. In January 1862 this force, with a fleet under the command of Flag Officer Goldsborough, sailed from Hampton Roads to Hatteras Inlet on the coast of North Carolina to secure a base of operations and destroy a small Confederate fleet in Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. The expedition was eminently successful. Roanoke Island, which had been fortified to prevent entrance into Albemarle Sound, was captured in February with 2,600 prisoners and thirty-two guns. In March the Confederates were driven from their lines covering New Bern and that town occupied. Beaufort was next seized and Fort Macon, a permanent fortress on the coast, was besieged and taken in April. In the meantime the Confederate fleet was captured and destroyed by the naval vessels. This completed the program of the expedition. Although one of the minor operations of the war, it excited great interest at the time. Burnside was commissioned major-general on March 18, and received a sword from Rhode Island and the thanks of the legislatures of Massachusetts and Ohio.

In July it was decided to withdraw some troops from both North and South Carolina and send them under Burnside to reinforce the Army of the Potomac. At this time he was offered the command of that army and declined. When it was decided to withdraw the army from the vicinity of Richmond, Burnside's troops were sent to Pope, but as Burnside ranked Pope they went under the command of Reno. Before the opening of the Antietam campaign Burnside was again offered the command of the Army of the Potomac but again declined.

In the Antietam campaign he was assigned to the command of the right wing, consisting of the 1st Corps under Hooker and his own 9th Corps. His command was in advance and was charged with the attack on the Confederate position on South Mountain where Lee planned to check the advance of the main Union column. This position was carried by the 1st and 9th Corps on September 14, 1862, and the Confederates retired across Antietam Creek. In the advance from South Mountain, Hooker's corps was temporarily detached from Burnside's command and at Antietam was engaged on the extreme right while the 9th Corps was on the extreme left. Burnside accompanied the latter but refused to assume command as he still considered himself the commander of a unit composed of two corps. This militated against proper preparation for the coming battle. The 9th Corps reached its position in the line on the night of September 15, and the following day should have been employed in making a careful reconnaissance of the creek in its front and in the preparation of a plan of attack. This was not done as Burnside did not consider himself in command, the corps staff was ab se nt attending the funeral of General Reno, killed on the preceding day, and the senior division commander remained with his division as he considered Burnside the commander of the corps. McClellan visited Burnside in person that day and assigned the duties to the various divisions, but he relied on Burnside to make the necessary reconnaissances. The consequence was that on the 17th, the day of the battle, much time was lost in attacking the strongest position of the enemy's defense at the Burn side bridge, which might easily have been turned by crossing the stream at a lightly guarded ford a mile below. After the stream was crossed, about 1.00 P. M., the 9th Corps made a spirited attack, but it was too late to have the influence on the course of the battle that McClellan had expected.

After the Confederate Army recrossed the Potomac there was a period of inaction during which the two armies were reorganized and reequipped. Toward the end of October the Army of the Potomac crossed the river and advanced on Warrenton, Virginia. En route, Burnside received the President's order assigning him to the command of the Army. It was a responsibility which he did not seek, for which he felt himself incompetent, but which he now felt it his duty to accept. When McClellan left the Army on November 10 the situation was as follows: the main body of the Army of the Potomac was in the vicinity of Warrenton with a cavalry screen some ten miles in advance; one corps and part of another were guarding the Potomac against operations from the Shenandoah Valley; the two Confederate corps were widely separated, Longstreet at Culpeper and Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester with one division in the mountain pass on the road connecting the two towns. Burnside was not long in deciding on his plan of operations and on November 9 sent it to General Halleck for the consideration of the President. It was to march the army to Fredericksburg where supplies were to meet him, cross the river on ponton bridges, and make a rapid march on Richmond. It was not the plan the President desired; he wanted Burnside to pursue the Confederate army. On November 12 he sent Halleck to Burnside to confer with him. Burnside adhered to his plan and gave practically the same reasons that induced Grant to move on a parallel line from Culpeper in 1864. On the Fredericksburg-Richmond line it would be easier to supply the army, the lines of supply would be more easily protected, and it was a shorter line. Had the Army of the Potomac been equipped with mobile bridge trains as in 1864, the first phase of the operation, the concentration south of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, would have been effected without difficulty, but unfortunately in 1862 the Army was not equipped with such trains. The bridge equipment of the Army was in charge of an engineer brigade with a depot in Washington, and at this time the available boats were in the two bridges over which the army had crossed the Potomac below Harper's Ferry. Burnside knew that McClellan had issued an order on November 6 to have these bridges dismantled and the material taken to Washington where a mobile train was to be organized. On this order he based his plan, but he did not know that the order was delayed in transmission and was not delivered until November 12.

On November 14 Burnside received the following message from Halleck: "The President has just assented to your plan. He thinks it will succeed if you move rapidly, otherwise not." Burnside immediately gave the order to start the movement on the following day, and at the same time had inquiries made of the commander of the engineer brigade as to the status of the ponton train. On November 15 he learned that the last of the boats would reach Washington that day but that it would be several days before the train could start.

Burnside was now confronted with the choice of adhering to his original plan and waiting for the pontons or of crossing the river above Fredericksburg by fords as Halleck had recommended to him. On November 17 Sumner's grand division of two corps reached the north bank of the Rappahannock and finding no pontons but the river above still fordable, requested permission to cross over, but Burnside would not consent. Hooker's grand division arrived shortly after, and on November 19 he informed the Secretary of War that the fords were available and also requested permission to cross. Lee was early informed of the movement, and as the Union troops did not cross the river, Longstreet was started for Fredericksburg on November 18, and several days before the pontons arrived, he was in possession of the heights of Fredericksburg. Toward the end of the month Jackson joined him and the armies faced each other across the river.

From this situation there resulted the battle of Fredericksburg in which the Army of the Potomac crossed the river under the protection of its artillery, and on December 13 made a frontal attack on the Confederates in their well-chosen position, and was repulsed with heavy loss. On December 15 the Army was withdrawn across the river. To silence the rumors that he had been directed from Washington to make this attack, Burnside on December 17 in a manly letter to Halleck assumed the entire responsibility: "The fact that I decided to move from Warrenton on this line, rather against the opinion of the President, Secretary of War, and yourself, and that you left the whole movement in my hands, without giving me orders, makes me responsible."

In the latter part of the month Burnside decided to make an attempt to cross the river at the fords above Fredericksburg, but in a letter to the President said that none of his grand division commanders approved his plan. In his discouragement he wrote, "It is my belief that I ought to retire to private life." After an interview with the President he wrote him that he had decided to carry out the plan, and inclosed the resignation of his commission to relieve the President of embarrassment should he not approve. The President approved the plan and wrote that he could not yet see any advantage in a change of commanders of the army and in any case would not accept his resignation. The movement was begun in the latter part of January but had to be abandoned because of unfavorable weather. Burnside was opposed in his plans by General Hooker and others. He decided that he must have a clear field if he retained the command so he prepared General Order No. 8, January 23, 1863, in which he dismissed from the United States Army General Hooker, General Brooks and General Newton, while two other major-generals, two brigadier- generals and a lieutenant-colonel were relieved from their duties and ordered to report to the adjutant-general at Washington. Burnside went to Washington and asked Lincoln either to sanction the order or to relieve him of the command. Lincoln relieved him and gave the command to General Hooker. Order No. 8 was never officially issued (Official Records (Army), 1 series, XXI,998).

In March 1863 Burnside was assigned to the command of the Department of the Ohio which included the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky. It was Lincoln's great desire to send military protection to the loyal inhabitants of East Tennessee and he now proposed to reinforce the troops in Kentucky by the 9th Corps so that Burnside could advance on Knoxville when Rosecrans moved on Chattanooga. On taking command of his department, Burnside learned that military operations had been greatly hampered by disloyal persons within the lines who gave information and aid to the enemy. To break up these practises he issued his General Order No. 38 in which after giving a list of the acts considered treasonable, he said, "The habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will no longer be tolerated in this department. Persons committing such offenses will be at once arrested with a view to being tried as above stated or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends." The most noted case that came under this order was that of Clement L. Vallandigham who had been a member of Congress from Ohio from May 1858 to March 1863 and had made himself conspicuous in that body by his attacks on the government from the beginning of the war. On May 1, 1863, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, he made a speech in which he characterized Lincoln as a tyrant and reminded his hearers that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." This speech the loyalty of Burnside for the President could not tolerate: Vallandigham was promptly arrested and when his appeal to the United States courts for a writ of habeas corpus was denied, he was tried by a military commission for "declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions with the object and purpose of weakening the power of the government in its efforts to suppress unlawful rebellion." The commission found him guilty and sentenced him to be imprisoned until the close of the war, but the sentence was commuted by the President who directed that Vallandigham be sent to General Rosecrans to be passed through the lines to the Confederate Army in his front. Under this same General Order No. 38, on June 1, 1863, by Order No. 84, Burnside suppressed the Chicago Times and forbade the circulation of the New York World in his department. By the President's direction this Order No. 84 was soon revoked.

The advance into East Tennessee was delayed by various causes until the middle of August when Rosecrans maneuvered Bragg out of Chattanooga and Burnside advanced on Knoxville, which he entered on September 2; at Cumberland Gap on September 9 he received the surrender of the main Confederate force left in East Tennessee. On the following day he was informed by Rosecrans that Bragg was in full retreat, and he immediately wrote the President that as the rebellion seemed pretty well checked he would like to resign his commission. The President, however, did not think it advisable to permit his resignation at that time.

After the battle of Chickamauga, September 19-20, Bragg invested Chattanooga, held by Rosecrans, and early in November when Union reinforcements had reached there and Bragg gave up hope of capturing it, he decided to send Longstreet's veteran corps of the Army of Northern Virginia reinforced by a large body of cavalry to capture Burnside. Such a movement had been expected by the latter and he called up all his available forces from Kentucky and fortified Knoxville to withstand a siege. When Longstreet made his appearance in his front about the middle of November, Burnside had the option of abandoning the Tennessee Valley or of retreating to Knoxville. He decided on the latter as he would thus, by drawing Longstreet so far north that he would be unable to return to take part in the battle, assist General Grant who was preparing to attack Bragg as soon as sufficient troops had arrived. Burnside withdrew his troops to Knoxville in what Longstreet called a very cleverly conducted retreat, and there awaited the assault. The position was so strong that for ten days Longstreet could not make up his mind where to attack. In the meantime Grant had defeated Bragg in the battle of Chattanooga, November 24-25, and the latter was retreating. Immediately after the battle Sherman was directed to march to the relief of Knoxville and was en route when Longstreet made his assault on November 29 and was repulsed. On December 4, on the approach of Sherman, Longstreet raised the siege and moved eastward. Shortly thereafter Burnside turned over his command to his successor who had been appointed November 16 but was unable to reach Knoxville until after the siege.

In preparation for the operations of 1864 it was decided to bring the 9th Corps back to the East and recruit it to full strength. This was work which it was felt could be best done by Burnside, and in January he was assigned to its command and the corps was reorganized at Annapolis, Maryland. It now consisted of four divisions, one of which was composed wholly of colored troops. The 9th Corps reinforced the Army of the Potomac as an independent unit under the command of Grant, and as such took part in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. After the latter battle, as Burnside consented to serve under his junior, General Meade, it was made a corps of the Army of the Potomac and as such took part in the battle of Cold Harbor and in the operations leading up to the investment of Petersburg. While Burnside was intrenched before Petersburg a mine was driven under the Confederate works in his front, and Grant determined to take advantage of the favorable opportunity to make a strong assault on the enemy's position. The 9th Corps was to take the lead and to be supported by the corps on either side. The task assigned to the 9th Corps was one requiring fresh troops and able leadership. Unfortunately, with the exception of the colored division which had not hitherto been engaged, the corps had no fresh troops, and the commander of the division selected by lot to lead the attack proved hopelessly inefficient. Burnside wanted to employ the colored division to lead but was overruled. The mine was blown up early on the morning of July 30 and produced a crater 150 feet long, 60 wide, and 25 deep, the Confederates abandoning the trenches for a considerable distance on either side. The leading division of the 9th Corps, which was to seize a ridge some 500 yards beyond the crater, got no farther than the crater itself and before other troops arrived the Confederates had recovered from their surprise. The result was that the 9th Corps lost 4,000 in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Meade held Burnside largely responsible and asked Grant for a court martial for him, which the latter refused. Meade then ordered a court of inquiry, which blamed Burnside for the failure. Shortly thereafter Burnside left the army on leave and was not recalled. Toward the close of the war he resigned his commission.

In the years following his active service in the war, because of his experience as a leader and his reputation for integrity, Burnside was elected to important positions in railroad and other corporations. In 1864 he became a director of the Illinois Central Railroad Company; in 1865, president of the Cincinnati & Martinsville Railroad Company; in 1866, president of the Rhode Island Locomotive Works; in 1867, president of the Indianapolis & Vincennes Railroad Company and director of the Narragansett Steamship Company. Although he held some of these offices for years, he was nevertheless elected governor of Rhode Island in 1866 and was reelected in 1867 and 1868. In 1870 he was abroad on business connected with one of his corporations and while there became a voluntary and trusted medium of communication in the interests of conciliation between the French and Germans then at war. In 1874 he was elected United States senator from Rhode Island and served as such from March 1875 until his death which occurred at Bristol, Rhode Island, September 13, 1881.

[B. P. Poore, The Life and Public Services of Ambrose E. Burnside (1882); Augustus Woodbury, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps (1867); G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891); Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (1885-86); Jas. Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox (1896); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887-88); Senate Report No. 108, 37 Congress, 3 Session and Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session (covering congressional investigations of the battles of Fredericksburg and Petersburg).]

G.J.F.



BUTLER, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (November 5, 1818-January11, 1893), Union soldier, congressman, governor of Massachusetts, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire. His family was largely of Scotch-Irish stock, settled on the New England frontier before the Revolution. His father, John, was captain of dragoons under Jackson at New Orleans, traded in the West Indies, and held a privateer's commission from Bolivar. His mother was Charlotte Ellison, of the Londonderry (N. H.) Cilleys, or Seelyes. After Captain Butler's death she ultimately settled, in 1828, at Lowell, Massachusetts, running one of the famous factory boarding houses there.

Benjamin was sent to Waterbury (now Colby) College in Maine to continue the family Baptist Calvinism; but he rejected Calvinism altogether. He graduated in 1838, and returned to Lowell where he taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and began a successful practise which continued until his death. At first he was chiefly occupied with criminal cases in which he built up a reputation for remarkable quickness of wit, resourcefulness, and mastery of all the defensive devices of the law. His practise gradually extended so that he maintained offices in both Boston and Lowell. He was shrewd in investment, and in spite of rather lavish expenditures built up a fortune. On May 16, 1844, he married Sarah Hildreth, an actress. Their daughter Blanche married Adelbert Ames, who during the period of Reconstruction was senator from Mississippi, and governor of that state. After the Civil War, Butler maintained residences at Lowell, Washington, and on the New England coast. He was interested in yachting, and at one time owned the famous cup-winner America.

Butler early entered politics, as a Democrat, being elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1853, and the Senate in 1859. He was an effective public speaker. His method, which seems to have been instinctive with him, was to draw attack upon himself, and then confute his assailants. He made friends of labor and of the Roman Catholic element in his home di strict, whose support he always retained. In the legislature he stood for a ten-hour day, and for compensation for the burning of the Ursuline Convent. He took great pains to be in the intimate councils of his party, but was seldom trusted by the party leaders. His talent for biting epigrams, and his picturesque controversies made him one of the most widely known men in politics from 1860 till his death. In the national Democratic convention of 1860 he advocated a renewal of the Cincinnati platform, opposed Douglas, and voted to nominate Jefferson Davis. With Caleb Cushing and other seceders from the adjourned Baltimore meeting he joined in putting forward Breckinridge and Lane. It was characteristic ot him that in thus supporting the Southern candidate, he advanced as his reason for leaving the Douglas convention the fact that the reopening of the slave-trade had there been discussed. As was the case with so many Northern supporters of Breckinridge, Butler was a strong Andrew Jackson Unionist. He had always been interested in military affairs, and to the confusion of the Republican majority in Massachusetts had been elected brigadier-general of militia. At the news of the firing on Fort Sumter he was promptly and dramatically ready, with men and money, and left Boston for Washington with his regiment on April 17, 1861.

Thereupon began one of the most astounding careers of the war. Butler was, until Grant took control, as much a news item as any man except Lincoln. He did many things so clever, as to be almost brilliant. He moved in a continual atmosphere of controversy which gradually widened from local quarrels with Governor Andrew of Massachusetts until it included most of the governments of the world; in which controversies he was sometimes right. He expected the war to advance his political fortunes and the financial fortunes of his family and friends. His belief in the Union and in his own ability were both strong and sincere. He had hopes of the Unionist presidential nomination in 1864. A thorn in the side of those in authority, his position as a Democrat fighting for the Union and his prominence in the public eye, made it impossible to ignore or effectively to discipline him.

At the beginning of the war, his relief of blockaded Washington by landing at Annapolis with the 8th Massachusetts, and by repairing the railroad from that point, was splendidly accomplished. Probably because of his Southern connections, he was chosen to occupy Baltimore, which he did on May 13, 1861, peacefully, with but 900 troops. On May 16 he was nominated major-general of volunteers. His next command was at Fortress Monroe. Here he admirably administered the extraordinary provisions necessary for increased numbers. The problem of how to deal with slaves fleeing from Confederate owners to the Union lines he solved by declaring these slaves contraband; and the term "Contraband" clung to them throughout the war. He undertook a military expedition which ended disastrously in the battle of Big Bethel. On August 8, 1861, he was replaced by the venerable General Wool. He was then given command of the military forces in a joint military and naval attack on the forts at Hatteras Inlet, and took possession of them on August 27 and 28. He then returned to Massachusetts with authority to enlist troops; which led to a conflict with the state authorities. His plan was to use his independent command to reduce the peninsula of eastern Virginia, but he was attached instead to the expedition against New Orleans, again commanding the land forces. On May 1, 1862, he entered the city, which lay under the guns of the fleet. He was assigned the difficult task of the military government of this hostile population.

Butler's administration of New Orleans is the most controversial portion of his career. It is at least evident that he preserved the peace and effectively governed the city, improving sanitation, and doing other useful things. It is equally evident that his conduct of affairs was high-handed. Ignoring the United States government, he assumed full financial control, collecting taxes, and expending monies. He hung William Mumford for hauling down the United States flag. He seized $800,000 in bullion belonging to Southern owners, which had been left in charge of the French consul; thereby bringing upon the United States government protests from practically all the governments of Europe. A portion of the bullion was not turned over to the United States government until the whole country had become excited over its fate. Still more sensational was his Order No. 28. It certainly was true that the women of New Orleans had rendered themselves unpleasant to the occupying troops. To meet this situation Butler ordered that  "When any female shall, by word, or gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." To the international storm of indignation which this aroused, it could only be replied that no violence was intended. In addition to these overt acts, there hangs about Butler's administration a cloud of suspicion of financial irregularity, popularly characterized in the tradition that he stole the spoons from the house he occupied. That corruption was rampant there can be no doubt. It seems that his brother was implicated. In so far as General Butler is concerned the historian must be content to recognize that if he were guilty, he was certainly too clever to leave proofs behind; a cleverness somewhat unfortunate for him, if he were indeed not guilty. On December 16, 1862, he was removed.

In 1863 he was given command of the districts of eastern Virginia and North Carolina, and was put in command of the Army of the James, consisting of two corps. In this position Grant, the next year, used him as commissioner for the exchange of prisoners, perhaps hoping (it being contrary to Grant's policy to exchange) that the Confederate commander would refuse to recognize him, as President Davis had issued a proclamation declaring that his conduct at New Orleans had placed him outside the rules of war. Butler, however, conducted some exchanges, and forced the Confederacy to recognize the military status of the United States negro troops. He encouraged trade in his districts, almost violating the orders of the government. Having made an independent advance, this resulted in the bottling of his army at Bermuda Hundred, where they remained blocked by a greatly inferior number of Confederates. In November 1864 he was sent to New York to preserve order during the election, riots being anticipated. His adroitness and his popularity with the Democrats prevented all disorders; if any were indeed brewing. On January 7, 1865, he was ordered by Grant to return to Lowell.

He had by this time become identified with the Radical element among the Republicans. In the elections of 1866 he was elected to Congress, as a Republican, serving until 1875. He lived at Washington lavishly, the Radicals were the dominant element, and he became prominent among them. In the management of the Johnson impeachment for the House of Representatives he was, owing to the feebleness of Thaddeus Stevens, the most impressive figure. After Stevens's death in 1868 he seems to have aspired to succeed him as Radical chief, taking a drastic stand on all questions of reconstruction as they came up during the Grant administration. At this stage, his influence with Grant seems to have been strong. In the Democratic wave of 1875 he lost his seat

In. the meantime he h ad been having difficulties with the ruling element in the Republican party in his own state. He was hardly more hated in Louisiana than by the conservative elements of both parties in Massachusetts, because of his radical proposals, his unconventionality, and their questioning of his honesty. This hostility he took as a challenge, and determined to become governor of the Bay State. In 1871 he ran for the Republican nomination for governor, and was defeated. In 1872 he ran again, and was again defeated. After his defeat for Congress in 1875 he actively took up the cause of the Greenbacks, which indeed he had supported from the beginning. In 1878 he was again elected to Congress, as an independent Greenbacker. In the same year he ran for the governorship, with the support of the Greenbackers and a portion of the Democrats. Defeated, he ran again in 1879, as Democratic candidate, but there was a split in the party, and again he was defeated. In 1880 he attended the national Democratic convention and supported General Hancock, who received the nomination. In 1882 he at length succeeded in obtaining the undivided support of the Democratic party of his state, and had the advantage of the general reaction against the Republicans. His persistency, also, appealed to many, who felt that he was unduly attacked and should have a chance. He was elected, alone of his ticket, by a majority of 14,000. His position gave him no power, as in Massachusetts no executive steps could be taken without the assent of the council, which was controlled, as were both Houses of the legislature, by his opponents. He attacked the administration of the charitable institutions of the state, especially the Tewkesbury State Almshouse; but the investigation which he instigated led to no results. He characteristically attended with full military escort the Commencement at Harvard, after that institution had decided to break its tradition and not award a degree to the governor of the commonwealth. His drastic Thanksgiving proclamation created a scandal, until he pointed out that it was copied complete from that of Christopher Gore in 1810, with the addition of an admonition to the clergy to abstain from political discussion. In 1883 he was defeated for reelection. In 1884 he was an avowed candidate for the presidency. He was nominated on May 14, by a new party called Anti-Monopoly, demanding national control of interstate commerce and the eight-hour day. On May 28 he was nominated by the National [Greenback] party. He was a delegate to the Democratic convention, where he sought to control the platform and secure the nomination; but was defeated. In the election he received 175,370 votes, scattered in all but nine states, and most numerous in Michigan, where he received 42,243. This was his last political activity. He died at Washington, January 11, 1893.

[Butler's autobiography, Butler's Book, 2 volumes (1892), is entertaining and valuable as a reflection of the man.

The Private and Official Correspondence of General Benj. F. Butler, during the Period of the Civil War, 5 volumes (1917), is a fascinating collection of all varieties of material, but not complete with respect to any. His speeches and public letters outside of Congress have not been collected, and exist scattered in newspapers and pamphlets. He is constantly referred to in the letters and reminiscences of the men of his time. There is no standard life. Among the sketches are :

Blanche B. Ames, The Butler Ancestry of General Benj. Franklin Butler (1895);

Jas. Parton, General Butler in New Orleans (1864);

Edward Pierrepont, Review of Defence of General Butler Before the House of Representatives, in Relation to the New Orleans Gold (1865);

Life and Public Services of Major-General Butler (1864);

J. F. McLaughlin, The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and the Spoiler of Silver Spoons, Dubbed LL.D. by Pasquino (1868);

M. M. Pomeroy, Life and Public Services of Benj. F. Butler (1879);

T. A. Bland, Life of Benj. F. Butler (1879);

Record of Benj. F. Butler Compiled from the Original Sources (1883).

For Butler's military career see also the Official Records (Army).]

C.R.F.



BUTTERFIELD, DANIEL (October 3r, 1831- July 17, 1901), Union soldier, the third son of John [q.v.] and Malinda Harriet (Baker) Butterfield, was born in Utica, New York. He inherited from his father, a genius for organization, an indomitable will, and a natural ability for promoting large enterprises. After preparatory work in private schools and the Utica Academy, he entered Union College, where he made a fair scholastic record and from which he graduated in 1849 at the age of eighteen, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He then studied law, but finding himself too young for admittance to the bar, traveled extensively through the South, and incidentally became convinced of the certainty of conflict between the states over slavery. Soon after, he established himself in New York City as superintendent of the eastern division of the American Express Company. Having in mind, however, the inevitability of civil war, he entered the New York militia as a captain in the 71st Regiment, and after rising through intermediate grades, became colonel of the 12th Regiment, an organization in which he had a peculiar interest during his entire life. On April 14, 1861, Fort Sumter was evacuated, and official records show that within two days, Butterfield was appointed first sergeant of the Clay Guards, a battalion of three hundred prominent citizens of Washington, hastily recruited to defend the city from expected attack. Butterfield's 12th New York Regiment was mustered into the Federal service on May 2, 1861, and on May 24 crossed the historic Long Bridge, the first Union regiment to enter Virginia. The regiment was soon ordered to reinforce General Patterson's command at Martinsburg, W. Virginia, and participated in many early operations in that vicinity, with Butterfield temporarily in command of a brigade of New York regiments. The coming of army reorganization brought to him appointment as a brigadier-general of volunteers, September 7, 1861, and assignment to command of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division (Morrell), 5th Army Corps (Fitz-John Porter).

As a brigade commander, Butterfield participated most creditably in McClellan's Peninsular campaign, and was wounded at the battle of Gaines's Mill, June 21, 1862. Thirty years later, Congress awarded Butterfield a medal of honor for distinguished gallantry on this occasion, the citation reading, "where he seized the colors of the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry Volunteers at a critical moment, and under galling fire of the enemy led the command." His brigade covered the important withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac to Harrison's Landing, when it changed base to join Pope, and at the end of October, Butterfield assumed command of Morrell's division, succeeding by virtue of seniority to command of the 5th Army Corps, November 16, 1862. On November 29, he received his appointment as major-general, and on December 13, commanded the 5th Corps in the Central Grand Division at the battle of Fredericksburg. On December 16, his corps covered Burnside's withdrawal.

When General Hooker succeeded Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac, January 26, 1863, Butterfield became Hooker's chief of staff, and served as such during the battle of Chancellorsville. At about this time he devised a system of corps badges, which gained immediate popularity with officers and men. He remained as chief of staff of the army after assumption of command by General Meade, and was severely wounded at the battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, by the Confederate shell fire which preceded Pickett's charge. Following this decisive battle, both General Meade and General Butterfield were parties to a controversy which lasted long after the Civil War as to Meade's real intentions on the critical morning of July 2,1863, Meade contending that a preparatory order covering the withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac from the field of Gettysburg was merely tentative and precautionary; while Butterfield and certain other generals regarded the order as positive and mandatory on Meade's part to surrender the field without further battle (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, III, 243-97, 410-11).

The following October, Butterfield joined the Army of the Cumberland as Hooker's chief of staff, in time to act as such at the battle of Lookout Mountain. In Sherman's march to the sea he commanded the 3rd Division, 20th Army Corps, under Generals Thomas and Hooker, and was engaged at Buzzard's Roost, at Resaca (where his troops captured the first guns lost by Johnston in the Atlanta campaign), at Dallas, New Hope Church, and at Lost and Kenesaw Mountains. Before the Atlanta campaign ended, he was seriously stricken with fever and was never able to rejoin his old command. When convalescent, he was ordered on special duty at Vicksburg, and later went to New York City, where on August 24, 1865, he was mustered out of the volunteer service, but was retained as superintendent of the general recruiting service, by virtue of his appointment, July 1, 1863, as colonel of the 5th Infantry, Regular Army. On March 13, 1865, he was honored with brevet appointment as brigadier-general, United States Army, for gallant and meritorious services during the war; and on the same date with the brevet of major-general, United States Army, for similar services in the field during the war.

In January 1866, at the suggestion of Alexander T. Stewart of New York, Butterfield became the prime mover in raising a testimonial fund amounting to $105,000 from patriotic citizens of New York, which was presented to General Grant, February 15, 1866.

On March 14, 1870, Butterfield's resignation from the army was accepted, that he might become assistant United States treasurer at New York City, under President Grant. Various considerations induced Butterfield's resignation from the military service, chief among which was the death of his father and the constant attention required in the administration of a large estate. After retirement to private life, Butterfield became associated with many important business enterprises, and exhibited the same tireless energy and sound judgment in these affairs which had marked his army career. He constructed a railroad in the republic of Guatemala; was president of the Albany & Troy Steamboat Company; and was financially interested in the Apartment Hotel Company, the Butterfield Real Estate Company, and the National Bank of Cold Spring, New York. He was also owner of the Brooklyn Annex steamships, connecting with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and was a director of the Mechanics & Traders Bank of New York. In 1870, he visited Europe, where he made an exhaustive study of the London and Paris post office systems, the subject of a report to the Postmaster-General of the United States. On June 4, 1877, he lost his wife to whom he was married on February 12, 1857; and on September 21, 1886, he was married in London, to Mrs. Julia Lorillard (Safford) James, of New York City and Cold Spring. On two subsequent trips to Europe, he visited Russia with a view to securing concessions to build a Siberian railroad, in which his efforts were unsuccessful. During these visits, he received many social attentions and honors from the Emperor of Russia. At the Washington Centennial Celebration in New York City, in May 1889, he acted as grand marshal of the parade, where over 100,000 men pas sed in review. In the year 1892, he established a course of thirty lectures at Union College, on popular topics of the day. He was during this period of his career at one time or another, president of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and chancellor of the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion. On July 2, 1893, at Gettysburg, he acted as grand marshal of the dedication exercises of the New York State Memorial Monument, attended by over 10,000 veterans. As a testimonial to his war service, he was, at various times, made the recipient of a sword of superb workmanship, set with emeralds; a 5th Corps Badge, set with diamonds; and badges of the 20th Corps and of the Army of the Potomac, set with precious stones,-all presented by former comrades of the Civil War. In politics, he was a Republican, and in 1892, rather against his will, consented to become a candidate for Congress, but was defeated. He was actively interested in military preparedness, and in 1900 framed legislation for submission to Congress which contemplated uniform organization and training for the militia of the country, and for the organization of army reserves. In this connection Governor Roosevelt appointed him a delegate to a conference called by the Governor of Florida, to consider plans for the rapid mobilization of troops in time of war.

Early in April 1901, Butterfield suffered a stroke of paralysis, and two months later was taken from his home in New York City to "Cragside," his country residence at Cold Spring. Here he passed away, in the seventieth year of his age. By special authority of the War Department, the interment took place at West Point, where his remains received the major-general's salute of thirteen guns and where the escort of honor included his old regiment, the 12th New York. Over his grave a magnificent white marble monument has been erected, thirty-five feet in height, consisting in the main of sixteen slender columns upon which rests an ornate superstructure. Butterfield died, honored and mourned by a host of friends in both military and civil life.

[A very complete account of Butterfield's life and services is to be found in Julia Lorillard Butterfield, A Biographical Memorial of General Daniel Butterfield (1904). See also Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (volumes II, III, IV), and the Official Records (Army).]

C.D.R.



CHAMBERLAIN, JOSHUA LAWRENCE (September 8, 1828-February 24, 1914), Union soldier, governor of Maine, educator, was born at Brewer, Maine, the son of Joshua Chamberlain and Sarah D. Brastow. On his father's side he traced his descent from William Chamberlain, who migrated from England about 1648 and settled at Woburn, Massachusetts; his first maternal ancestor in this country was Jean Dupuis, a Huguenot who came to Boston from La Rochelle about 1685. His great-grandfather served in the colonial and Revolutionary wars, his grandfather was a colonel in the War of 1812, and his father acted as second in command on the American side in the so-called Aroostook War in 1839. He was educated at a military academy at Ellsworth, Maine, graduated from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, in 1852, and in 1855 completed a course at the Bangor Theological Seminary. On December 7, 1855, he was married to Frances Caroline, daughter of Ashur Adams of Boston and Emily (Wyllis) Adams of Hartford. In the same year he was appointed instructor in natural and revealed religion at Bowdoin; from 1856 to 1862 he was professor of rhetoric; from 1857 to 1861 instructor in modern languages; from 1861 to 1865 professor of modern languages. In 1862 he was granted leave of absence for study abroad, but, abandoning the plan in spite of the protest of the college faculty, he enlisted as lieutenant-colonel of the 20th Maine Infantry, becoming colonel in May 1863, and continuing in active service until the end of the Civil War. He took part in twenty-four engagements (among them Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Five Forks) and was six times wounded. For his gallant defense of Little Round Top in the battle of Gettysburg he received the Congressional Medal of Honor "for daring heroism and great tenacity." On June 18, 1864, in the operations before Petersburg, where he was wounded, he was made a brigadier-general on the field by Grant, the promotion being later confirmed by the Senate. His distinguished conduct on March 29, 1865, in an assault on Lee's right, caused him to be brevetted major-general of volunteers, and in the operations which ended with Lee's surrender he commanded two brigades of the 1st Division of the 5th Army Corps, and was designated to receive the surrender of the Confederate army. On June 16, 1866, he was mustered out, having declined, on account of his health, an offer of a colonelcy in the regular army and a command on the Rio Grande. In the fall of that year he was elected governor of Maine, and served in that office by reelection for four successive annual terms. From 1871 to 1883 he was president of Bowdoin, and in addition, from 1874 to 1879, professor of mental and moral philosophy and lecturer on political science and public law, continuing to lecture on the latter subjects until 1885. During the winter of 1878-79, when the Democratic and Greenback parties, under the lead of Governor Alonzo Garcelon, had combined to get possession of the state legislature, and the Republicans had organized a rival body, Chamberlain, acting as major-general of the state militia, kept the peace until the supreme court of the state affirmed the legality of the Republican organization. He was one of the American commissioners to the Universal Exposition at Paris in 1878, and made a valuable report on the educational exhibit. From 1884 to 1889 he was occupied with railway and industrial enterprises in Florida. In 1900 he was appointed survey of the port of Portland, Maine, and held that office until his death. His best known and most important writings are Maine: Her Place in History (1877), originally prepared as an address at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, November 4, 1876, and The Passing of the Armies (1915), a book of reminiscence dealing with the final campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. Of a number of occasional addresses or papers which were printed the be st known is an address at Philadelphia on February 12, 1909, before the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, Pennsylvania Commandery, on the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln's birth (published in the Magazine of American History, 1914, Extra No. 32). To Universities and their Sons (6 vols., 1898-1923), of which he was for a time editor-in-chief, he contributed a history of New York University.

[N. Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College (1882), ed. by A. S. Packard; Louis C. Hatch, History of Bowdoin College (1927); General Cat. of Bowdoin College, 1794-1912 (1912); a biographical note signed G. H. P. (George Haven Putnam) prefixed to The Passing of the Armies (1915); an excellent brief account of the fighting at Little Round Top in W. H. Powell, History of the Fifth Army Corps (1896), pp. 526-31; Official Records (Army); obituary in Portland Eastern Argus, February 25, 1914.]

W.M.  



CLAY, CASSIUS MARCELLUS (October 19, 1810--July 22, 1903), abolitionist, the youngest son of Green Clay [q.v.], and Sally (Lewis) Clay, was born on his father's estate, "White Hall," in Madison County, Kentucky. His ancestry was Scotch, English, and Welsh; and in him was so strange a mixture of manly vigor, unfaltering honesty, indiscreet pugnacity, and the wild spirit of the crusader, as to make him one of the most remarkable of the lesser figures in American history. When very young he fought his mother, his schoolmaster, and a slave companion; the day before his wedding he caned a rival in the streets of Louisville; and when ninety-three years old, suffering under the hallucination that people were plotting against his life, he converted his ancestral mansion into a fortified castle, protected by a cannon. His career was turbulent in politics, in the army, within the circle of his family, and in all his social and diplomatic relations. In 1841 he fought a duel in Louisville with Robert Wickliffe, Jr.; four years later he so mutilated with a bowie knife Sam M. Brown as to be indicted for mayhem; in 1850 he stabbed to death Cyrus Turner; and in his old age he shot and killed a negro. In all his early political campaigns he carried a bowie knife and two pistols.

Clay was given the best opportunities of his day for an education, first receiving instruction from Joshua Fry in Garrard County, and later under the same master at Danville. He was then sent to the Jesuit College of St. Joseph in Nelson County. He attended Transylvania University for a time, and in 1831 with letters of introduction to President Jackson and to the principal men of note in the East he entered the junior class in Yale College, where he was graduated the next year. He returned to Kentucky and studied law at Transylvania but never took out license to practise. Wealthy and. ambitious for a political career, he was elected to the state legislature from Madison County in 1835 and in 1837, being defeated in 1836 on his advocacy of internal improvements. He now moved to Lexington and in 1840 was elected to the legislature to represent Fayette County. The following year he again ran, contrary to the advice of his distant kinsman, Henry Clay, and was defeated on the question of slavery. Though his father had been a large slaveholder, Clay had early developed a bitter hatred toward the institution, and, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison whom he had heard at Yale College, this hatred became a crusading passion. In his defeat for the legislature he saw the blatant tyranny and implacable opposition of the slaveholders, and he resolved to rid Kentucky of the evil. In June 1845 he set up in Lexington a newspaper which he called the True American and began his campaign. Foreseeing trouble he fortified his office with two four-pounder cannon, Mexican lances, and rifles, and strategically placed a keg of powder to be set off against any attackers. In August a committee of sixty prominent Lexingtonians visited his establishment while he was absent, boxed up his equipment, and sent it to Cincinnati. He continued to publish his paper from this new location, and later, changing its name to the Examiner, he moved it to Louisville.

Although Clay had opposed the annexation of Texas, in 1846 he volunteered among the first of those who were to invade Mexico, believing that since his country was at war it was his duty to fight, and feeling that a military record would help him politically. He fought with bravery in a number of engagements and was taken prisoner at Encarnacion in January 1847. After many harrowing experiences he was set free, returning to Kentucky to share in a resolution of commendation by the legislature and to receive a sword presented by his fellow citizens. In politics he began a strong follower of Henry Clay, but, during the campaign of 1844, became estranged from him on the issue of abolitionism. In the next presidential campaign he supported Taylor from the beginning, and in 1849 he made a determined effort to build up an emancipation party in Kentucky by holding a convention in Frankfort and running for governor. In the election he received 3,621 votes, enough to defeat the Whig candidate. On the birth of the Republican party he joined it, voting for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860. In this latter year he had a considerable following for the vice-presidency. He was on terms of close friendship with Lincoln, and, having been led to understand that he might have the secretaryship of war, was greatly chagrined when he did not receive it. To pacify him Lincoln offered him the diplomatic post at Madrid, which he refused. Later he accepted the Russian post. On his way east he reached Washington in April, at the time when it was cut off and undefended. He quickly grasped the situation and raised 300 men for the protection of the city and government, for which service he might have received appointment as major-general in the Federal army had he not preferred to continue to Russia. In 1862 he was recalled and made a major-general, but he refused to fight until the government should abolish slavery in the seceded states. He returned to Kentucky in the fall of 1862 on a mission to the legislature, did some fighting, and left for Russia again in 1863, where he remained until 1869. He fell out with President Grant and joining the Liberal Republicans supported Greeley in 1872. Disagreeing with the policy of reconstruction, he supported Tilden in 1876, but in 1884 he was for Blaine. After returning from Russia he retired to his estate in Madison County and in his old age, a few weeks before his death, the Richmond court adjudged him a lunatic. He was married to Mary Jane Warfield of Lexington in 1832, but was divorced from her in 1878. On his final return from Russia he brought to his home a Russian boy, whom he named Launey Clay, refusing to disclose his parentage. Shortly before his death he married a young girl from whom he soon secured a divorce.

[A vivid account of Clay' s career is set forth in his Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay; Memoirs, Writings and Speeches (1886), volume I. A second volume was projected but never published. Biographical Memoranda Class of 1832 Yale Coll. (1880) contains sketch "communicated by himself." In 1848 his speeches were brought out by Horace Greeley under the title of Speeches and Writings of C. M. Clay. All of Clay's papers prior to the Civil War were burned during the conflict. Incomplete sketches of him may be found in R. H. and L. R. Collins, History of Kentucky (1874), and Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky (1877). A short sketch is in Who's Who in America, 1901-02. An account of the last days of his life and an obituary appear in Lexington (Kentucky) Leader, July 6-8, 23, 1903. Files of his True American are preserved in the Lexington Public Library]

E. M. C.



COX, JACOB DOLSON (October 27, 1828-August 8, 1900), Union general, governor of Ohio, secretary of the interior, author, was descended from one Michael Koch, who came from Hanover and settled in New York City in 1705. Jacob Dolson Cox, Sr., received his middle name from his mother, a member of a Dutch family of New York: his wife, Thedia R. Kenyon, was descended from Elder William Brewster and from the Allyns and Kenyons of Connecticut. To them was born, at Montreal, Jacob Dolson Cox, Jr., while the father, a building contractor, was engaged in the construction of the roof of the Church of Notre Dame. Returning to New York City soon after this event, the family suffered business reverses during the crisis of 1837. The boy's hope of obtaining a college education was impaired by the misfortune, and, under the state law, the alternative path to a lawyer's career, to which he aspired, was a seven years' clerkship in a law office. Entering upon such an apprenticeship in 1842, he changed his mind two years later, and went into the office of a banker and broker, where the shorter hours permitted him, with the aid of a friend, to pursue the study of mathematics and the classical languages. After two years more, through the influence of Reverend Charles G. Finney [q.v.], then professor of theology at Oberlin College, he was led to enter the preparatory department of that institution. Three years later (1849), while still an undergraduate, he married Helen, the daughter of Finney who was now president of the college. Graduating in 1851, Cox served for two years at Warren, Ohio, as superintendent of schools and principal of the high school, reading law at the same time, and beginning to practise in 1853.

Cox was at this time a Whig, but his Oberlin associations, his marriage, and other influences, combined to make him strongly anti-slavery in principle. He voted for Scott in 1852, but took a prominent part in bringing about the fusion of 'Whigs and Free-Soilers, and in 1855 was a delegate to the convention at Columbus which organized the Republican party in the state. A few years later his party friends, against his protest, nominated and elected him to the state Senate. Entering the Senate in 1859, he found there his friend James A. Garfield, and Governor-Elect Dennison, with whom he soon became intimate, this trio, together with Salmon P. Chase, then governor, forming a radical anti-slavery group.

With the outbreak of war in 1861, Cox's activity in organizing volunteers brought him a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers. During the summer he had a part in the Kanawha Valley campaign under McClellan, and a year later, in the Army of the Potomac, he participated in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, commanding the 9th Corps at the former after the fall of General Reno. He was advanced to the rank of major-general on October 6, 1862, but the following April was reduced to his former rank because the number of major-generals permitted by law had been inadvertently exceeded. This bungling, which resulted in the promotion of less deserving officers, was a discouraging episode in his military career; but after repeated urging on the part of his superiors he was at length recommissioned in December 1864. During the winter of 1862- 63 he commanded the forces in West Virginia, and from April to December 1863 was in charge of the Ohio military district. During the Atlanta campaign he led a division of the 23rd Army Corps, and after the fall of Atlanta for a time commanded the entire corps. He took part in the battle of Nashville, and early in 1865 was sent into North Carolina to open communications along the coast with Sherman, who was nearing the end of the march to the sea. On this expedition Cox defeated Bragg's troops and effected a junction with Sherman at Goldsboro.

After the war, while engaged in superintending the mustering out of the troops in Ohio, Cox was elected governor of the state. During the campaign in response to the inquiries of friends at Oberlin, he expressed himself as opposed to negro suffrage. He could not assume as they did, he wrote, that the suffrage, while whites and blacks dwelt in the same community, would cure all of the ills of the freedmen. Carrying these ideas further, he declared while governor, that the large groups of whites and blacks in the Southern states could never share political power, and that insistence upon it on the part of the colored people would bring about their ruin. As a remedy, he advocated the forcible segregation of the negroes, a plan which found little or no support. By such views, and by his indorsement of President Johnson's reconstruction policy, became conspicuously identified with the Liberal Republican movement, and was much talked of as its probable nominee for the presidency in 1872. At the Cincinnati convention, however, he was defeated by the more available Greeley. Meantime he had resumed the practise of law, at Cincinnati; but in 1873 he removed to Toledo to become president of the Wabash Railway. This position he gave up in turn upon being elected to Congress in 1876, from the 6th Ohio District, by an unprecedented majority.

He served but one term in Congress. He seems to have hoped to be able to do something to support President Hayes in his reform efforts, and his helplessness under existing political conditions probably discouraged him. At any rate he abandoned politics, even refraining thereafter from comment on political events, with the exception of a single speech during the Garfield campaign. Resuming his residence at Cincinnati, he became dean of the Cincinnati Law School (1881), a position which he held for the next sixteen years. During part of this time (1885-89) he also served as president of the University of Cincinnati. In addition to high repute as a lawyer, his reputation as a business man was enviable, and brought him in the middle nineties the tender of the post of railroad commissioner in New York City. This offer he declined, preferring to continue his connection with the Law School. In 1897 he declined President McKinley's offer of the Spanish mission, but in the same year he presented his library to Oberlin College and retired thither to write his Military Reminiscences. This work was barely completed and still unpublished when his death occurred, after a brief illness, while he was enjoying his customary summer outing along the coast of Maine, in company with a son.

Cox was tall, graceful, and well-proportioned, with erect, military bearing, and a frame denoting great physical strength. A man of many interests, he devoted much time in his later years to the study of microscopy, in which field he won international distinction. He was also a student of European cathedrals. His wide information, conversational gifts, and courteous manners made him an agreeable companion. The artistic genius of a son, Kenyon Cox [q.v.], doubtless bears witness to undeveloped talents of the father.

No small part of Cox's reputation rests upon his work as a writer. From 1874 until his death he was the Nation's military book critic. In addition to contributions to this and other journals, he wrote several books on military topics, the most important of which are: Atlanta, and The March to the Sea; Franklin and Nashville (volumes IX and X in the Campaigns of the Civil War series, 1882); The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, November 30, 1864 (1897); and Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (2 volumes, 1900). He also contributed four chapters to M. F. Force's Life of General Sherman (1899). A work of less consequence is The Second Battle of Bull Run as Connected with the. Fitz-John Porter Case (1882). Some critics of these books regard his attitude toward Rosecrans as unjust and not well informed, and his judgment in the Fitz-John Porter case is open to question. In general, however, he is recognized as an elegant and forceful writer, of fine critical ability and impartial judgment, one of the foremost military historians of the country.

[The autobiographical nature of the Military Reminiscences makes it the chief source of information for Cox's life as a soldier. It contains a portrait. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1901, pp. 436-68. J. R. Ewing, Public Services of Jacob Dolson Cox (1902), is a slight sketch of about twenty pages which contains some data not found elsewhere. Jas. Ford Rhodes touches the high points of Cox's civil career and appraises his personality in "Jacob D. Cox" (History Essays, 1909, pp. 183- 88). He tells the story of the cabinet controversy in History of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, VII (1910), 3-7. See also L.A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (1917); Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (1898); Nation, August 9, 1901, p. 107. Estimates of Cox's writings may be found in the American History Review, III (1898), 578-80, and VI (1901), 602-06.]

H.C.H.

J.D.W.



CROOK, GEORGE (September 23, 1829-March21, 1890), soldier, son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Mathers) Crook, was born near Dayton, Ohio. His ancestry was Scotch and German. From the public schools he entered West Point on July 1, 1848, and on graduation four years later was commissioned lieutenant of infantry. Until the Civil War he served in the Northwest where he was engaged in explorations and in protecting the settlers from periodic Indian raids. In September 186J he was commissioned colonel of the 36th Ohio Infantry and with his regiment served in West Virginia, where in May 1862 he received the brevet of major in the regular army for his defeat of a Confederate force under General Heth at Lewisburg. The following August he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and commanded a brigade in the Kanawha Division which was attached to the 9th Corps in the Antietam campaign. He was engaged in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam and for his conduct in the latter received the brevet of lieutenant- colonel. In 1863 he commanded a cavalry division in the Army of the Cumberland and took part in the Chickamauga campaign. Shortly thereafter he undertook the pursuit of General Wheeler's cavalry corps which he engaged successfully at Farmington, Tennessee, on October 7. For this he received the brevet of colonel.

In February 1864 he was again in West Virginia, where in the spring of that year, under the orders of General Grant, he undertook to interrupt railway communication between Lynchburg and East Tennessee. In this operation he defeated the Confederates at Cloyd Farm on Walker Mountain, captured the station of Dublin, and destroyed the New River bridge and the railway in its vicinity. For this operation he later received the brevet of brigadier-general. In August of the same year he was placed in command of West Virginia and in personal command of one of the corps of Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah. He was engaged in the three important battles of that army-Winchester, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek-and in addition to receiving his promotion to the grade of major-general of volunteers he later received the brevet of major-general in the regular army for his conduct in the battle of Fisher's Hill. He now returned to the command of his department. When in March 1865 Sheridan joined Grant in front of Petersburg, he requested that Crook be assigned to the command of one of his cavalry divisions, and in consequence the latter took part in the final battles of the war, being engaged at Dinwiddie Court House, Sailor's Creek, Farmville, and Appomattox.

In the reorganization of the regular army after the war Crook became lieutenant-colonel of the 23rd Infantry and was assigned to the command of the district of Boise, Idaho, where for three years he was engaged in bringing to an end the Indian war which had been raging for several years in southern Oregon, Idaho, and northern California. For this he received the thanks of the legislature of Oregon and the commendation of his superiors. In 1871 he was sent by President Grant to end the war with the Apaches and other hostile tribes in northern Arizona, and this he did with such success that he received the thanks of the legislature of the territory, and in 1873 was promoted from lieutenant-colonel to brigadier-general in the regular army, an unusual advancement at that time. In 1875 he was placed in command of the Department of the Platte, where trouble was expected with the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes of Indians on account of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota. Here he took a prominent part in the great Sioux War of 1876, remaining in the field the entire year, and with his troops enduring incredible hardships. In 1882 he was sent back to Arizona where the Apaches were again on the warpath. He had no difficulty in pacifying the tribes with whom he had dealt before. His problem now was the Chiricahua tribe of Apaches whom he had never encountered and who had taken refuge in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico, from which, under their chief Geronimo [q.v.], they raided settlements both north and south of the boundary. In 1883 Crook led an expedition into these mountains where no American or Mexican force had ever penetrated, and induced the tribe, some five hundred persons, to return to their reservation. In 1885 Geronimo with a quarter of the tribe again fled to the mountains and was there pursued until he had only twenty-four followers left. These later surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles [q.v.]. In the spring of 1886 Crook returned to the command of the Department of the Platte where he remained until April 1888 when he was promoted to the grade of major-general and assigned to the command of the Division of the Missouri with headquarters at Chicago. Here he died on March 21, 1890. He was survived by his wife, Mary Dailey of Oakland, Maryland.  

As a soldier Crook was fearless both morally and physically, shunning neither responsibility nor personal danger. By nature he was modest and retiring, chary of speech but a good listener. Of a kindly and sympathetic disposition and easy of approach, he made friends in all classes of society. Although he spent most of his life on the frontier he was never profane, indulged in no intoxicating liquors, and was clean of speech. He thoroughly understood the Indian character. Realizing their hopeless struggle to hold their lands against encroachment, he was more prone to pardon than to punish. In his recommendations on the subject of the Indians he was far in advance of his times. He advocated the division of reservations into individual plots, so that the Indians might become self-supporting. He also believed that they should be granted equal rights with the whites in courts of law and all the privileges of citizenship.

[War Department records; Official Records (Army); G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register (3rd ed., 1891); Reports of the Secretary of War; John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook (1891); personal recollections of the author, who served on Crook's staff in the Geronimo campaign.]

G. J. F.



Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-II, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.