Question of the Week: Who is your favorite Civil War-era figure that most people have never heard of?
Who is your favorite person from the Civil War era that people have generally never heard of? What makes them stand out to you?
Who is your favorite person from the Civil War era that people have generally never heard of? What makes them stand out to you?
Charles Pomeroy Stone: savior of the District of Columbia and congressional scapegoat of the Union disaster at Ball’s Bluff. Stone spent six months in prison without any charges being levied. After he was released, General Stone’s tarnished reputation prevented him from holding a command again. Later he would serve as the senior military advisor to the Khedive (Viceroy) of Egypt and chief engineer for the construction of the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.
Many Civil War students recall Robert Anderson’s decision to move his command from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter under the cover of darkness on December 26, 1860. A little-known but remarkably similar maneuver occurred a few weeks later on January 10, 1861. Lt. Adam Slemmer commanded Fort Barrancas on land at Pensacola Navy Yard, Florida. He moved his garrison to the empty Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, which commanded the opening to the harbor. He refused Florida militia demands to surrender. Union reinforcements and supplies eventually arrived, denying the Confederates use of the Pensacola harbor during the Civil War. Slemmer was initially hailed as a hero in the North but has since faded into obscurity.
Ellen Barnes McGinnis, and John Henry Jones were captured with President Jefferson Davis at Irwinsville and remained loyal to him. Ellen husband Frederick McGinnis also cared for Davis at Ft Monroe.
William Y. Slack was a Chillicothe, Mo. lawyer who appears to have been considered one of the better commanders of the Missouri State Guard’s “division”s by his contemporaries. He was badly wounded at Wilson’s Creek and then mortally wounded at Pea Ridge once returning to the army, so he never got much of a chance to live up to his potential.
BG John Turchin, born in Russia, served as a brigade leader in the Army of the Cumberland in northern Alabama and Tennessee
David Ireland who defended the right flank of the AOP at Culps Hill but died a year later of dysentery.
History is written by the survivors.
Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter, who like Stone, became a victim of politics. Despite valuable service both before and after the shooting started, he was made a scapegoat for Second Manassas (Bull Run), court martialled, and dismissed from the army. It took many years before he was able to win a new hearing and clear his name, although he never fully recovered from the ordeal.
Jedediah Hotchkiss, Stonewall Jackson’s mapmaker of the Shenandoah Valley, was the Civil War equivalent of modern day GPS navigation systems to direct “Little Sorrel” and Stonewall on whatever pathway was required to outflank the Yankees.
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Didier Dreux of Dreux’s Battalion who may have been the first Confederate officer killed in the Civil War. He had been the district attorney for New Orleans prior to the war. He was mortally wounded at Young’s Mill on the Peninsula in Virginia during the Skirmish at Smith’s Farm on July 5th, 1861, which I think was an ambuscade or assault an aggressive Dreux set up, but in which he was shot and mortally wounded. His funeral in New Orleans was apparently one of the largest ever in New Orleans up to that time, with thousands attending.
Conversely, there is also André Cailloux who was a well know free man of color from New Orleans who had been born a slave, but was later manumitted as a young adult. He had a cigar-making business prior to the war. Early in the war he became an officer in the Native Guard of free blacks that organized in the defense of New Orleans for the Confederacy. However, after the fall of New Orleans and Butler’s and others call to enlist black soldiers Cailloux was commissioned as a Captain in the Native Guard to serve the United States. Cailloux was killed months later during the first assault against Port Hudson on May 27th, 1863. His funeral in New Orleans, like Dreux’s, was also apparently one of the largest ever in New Orleans up to that time, with thousands attending.
Carrie McGavock. During the 1864 battle of Franklin, the McGavock plantation, Carnton, was used as a field hospital, and was the first resting place for the bodies of four Confederate Generals. After the battle, dead Confederate soldiers were buried in shallow graves all across the battlefield. By 1866, farmers were struggling with graves that had washed out and graves that impeded their efforts to cultivate their fields. The McGavocks donated 2 acres of land adjacent to their family cemetery as a resting place for these victims of the battle. Carrie McGavock made it her life’s work to disinter more than 1400 bodies and rebury them in the new McGavock Confederate Cemetery. One can hardly imagine what dedication, fortitude and perseverance that woman possessed.
I nominate Captain Samuel Johnston, an engineer and a member of Robert E. Lee’s staff who led perhaps the most important and consequential reconnaissance of the entire Civil War. On the early morning of 2 July, 1863, he was assigned the task of locating the end of the Federal Line at Gettysburg. He supposedly climbed up on Little Round Top and reported back to Lee that he did not see any Federal Troops on Cemetery Ridge or on the Emmitsburg Road. So as a result of this faulty intelligence, the Confederates launched the ill fated and pivotal attack on the Union position on that fateful day.
Shephard Mallory was one of the three fugitives who escaped to the Union Army at Fortress Monroe. Benjamin Butler refused to return them to slavery, and his formulation of “contraband of war” is problematic, but it was a major step in destroying slavery.
Richard Rowland Kirkland, known as “The Angel of Fredericksburg” and/or “The Angel of Marye’s Heights”.
George Washington Roberts. Elevated to Colonel of the 42nd Illinois Infantry upon the death of the original commander in 1861, Colonel Roberts found himself engaged in the Island No.10 Campaign in March 1862. The Rebels held a strong position consisting of fifty artillery pieces and 7000 men in New Madrid Bend; one gun in particular, an 80-pound pivot gun, commanded the straight channel of the Mississippi River and prevented Foote’s gunboats from reaching Island No.10.
To solve the problem, Colonel Roberts suggested a night raid against the pivot gun. Forty volunteers from the 42nd Illinois boarded rowboats and stealthily completed the voyage. Rebel sentries finally noticed the intruders and sounded the alarm. But within five minutes several of the rebel artillery pieces had been spiked: Colonel Roberts disabled the 80-pound pivot gun, himself. The raiding party returned to their boats, pulled against the current, and returned to safety.
The elimination of the threat of the pivot gun on 1 April 1862 facilitated Walke’s run in the Ironclad Carondelet past Island No.10 a few nights later.
Medal of Honor recipient BG Manning F. Force, the tactical commander of the brigade defending Leggett’s Hill named after MG Mortimer D. Leggett whose division initally captured the hill which protected a key landmark on the southern flank of Sherman’s Army attempting to besiege Atlanta. Force’s command protecting the hill was repeatedly unsucccessfully attacked by Confederates including Patrick Cleburne’s crack division. During the intensive fighting that later resulted in Force’s serious wounding, he demanded that he be provided a flag to display to the attackers. When he discovered that the discouraged officer following his orders was looking for a white flag, he exclaimed, “Damn you, sir! I don’t want a flag of truce, I want an American flag!” Leggett’s overall command prevented Force’s name being used to identify the topographical feature, and the construction of Interstate I-20 physically removed the hill entirely.
John C. Breckenridge, a man of towering intellect, experience and ability; the youngest Vice President in American history; who accomplished great things in the war yet remains largely unknown. Few realize that, as Vice President, he ran for the Presidency in 1860 on the Southern Democrat ticket; fewer still realize that, had he won, unlike Lincoln he would have been able to avert war.
EP Schafer
I concur with your assessment: “Had John C. Breckinridge been elected President in 1860, the Civil War would not have happened in 1861.”
As Fate would have it, Breckinridge failed to win the Presidency, despite Fusion Tickets in Northern states and Prohibition of Lincoln’s name on the ballot in most Southern States. Perhaps it was Breckinridge’s perceived association with the perfidious Buchanan Administration… maybe it was the timely realization in the North that Breckinridge had signed on to the “rule or ruin” program that brought his candidacy unstuck. In any event, Abraham Lincoln won the Presidency in accordance with the rules then in place; and John Breckinridge earned his most deserved current rating: ‘forgettable.’