Fallen Leaders: Introduction
This week of the 2021 ECW Symposium we’re starting a new series on the blog and taking inspiration from the event’s theme: Fallen Leaders of the Civil War.
Over the next weeks we’ll be sharing accounts of leaders who fell in battle, in public opinion, in military investigation. These upcoming posts will highlight individuals who are not the focus of symposium presentations, expanding the topic and concepts here on the blog.
Is there a “fallen leader” that particularly stands out to you?
Tune in tomorrow for the one that catches my eye!
Although Nathaniel Lyon, Albert Sidney Johnston and William H. L. Wallace spring to mind, it is John Trout Greble whose death at age 27 in 1861 strikes me as having cut short the career of an extremely promising Future Leader.
ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON – This should be an ECW Symposium bonus talk Sunday afternoon, after lunch… given by NPS legend Greg Mertz & ECW author of “Attack at Daylight and Whip Them!: The Battle of Shiloh”).
To me, the biggest Fallen Hero by far has to be George McClellan. He went from savior of the Union to being sacked by Lincoln to failed Presidential candidate.
Major Luther Cowan and Lieutenant colonel Melancthon Smith of the Forty-fifth Illinois Infantry who died during the siege of Vicksburg. Cowan died leading the regiment in its attack on the 3rd Louisiana Redan on May 22, 1863. Smith died 3 days after the June 25 attack of the Forty-fifth after the mine they help dig/load detonated at 3:30 PM. The regiment had volunteered to be the first regiment to attack through the crater caused by the mine’s detonation, to breakthrough the Confederate defenses, end the siege, and capture Vicksburg. Three Confederate bullets hit Smith with the one lodged in his brain a mortal wound. Smith lived for three days relatively pain-free, where he expressed his willingness to die for the Union, prior to dying.
how about the six general officers who fell at Franklin, TN in Nov 1864: Patrick Cleburne, John Carter, John Adams, Hiram Granbury, States Rights Gist, and Otto Strahl … the most Confederate GOs KIA in any engagement … another seven were wounded and one captured