By Frank Boles
Through the generosity of former CMU Trustee John Kulhavi, the Clarke Historical Library has been given nine framed collages featuring the autographs of Abraham Lincoln, as well as many of the generals who led the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.
Among the most interesting is the panel including the signature of Abraham Lincoln, and which tells the story of Edward G. Beckwith.
Born in 1818, Beckwith graduated from West Point in 1842 and was a career Army officer.
He was promoted First Lieutenant June 18, 1846, and took an active part in the Mexican–American War. However, Beckwith is most often remembered as the man responsible for the Pacific Railroad Survey, which he commanded from 1853 to 1857. The First Transcontinental Railroad followed his recommended route.
During the Civil War Beckwith served in the Commissary Department. The Office of the Commissary was responsible for purchasing and issuing food for the Army. During the Civil War, the Office was also responsible for feeding escaped slaves, prisoners of war, political prisoners, and for caring and compensating Union families in areas invaded by the Confederacy.
Included in the panel are the documents signed by both Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton promoting Beckwith to major, as well as a second document issued shortly after the war’s end, making him a brevet brigadier-general. Brevet promotions gave a commissioned officer a higher ranking title as a reward for gallantry or meritorious conduct but without conferring the authority or pay of an officer who held the title by regular promotion.
As John E. Smith wrote in,
Our County and It's People: A Descriptive and Biographical Record of Madison County, New York, published in 1890, “After the close of the war he [Beckwith] was brought to Washington to settle the claims held against the Commissary Department throughout the country. His record of fidelity and ability in the accomplishment of this arduous task is too well known to need comment.”
In addition to the signatures of Lincoln and Stanton promoting Beckwith, there are several other important signatures, including U.S. Grant, Brinton McClellan, William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, Henry Slocum, and John Adams Dix. Each man had a career worth remembering, and many clashed with each other over how best to pursue the war.
In 1861 no one would have expected that at the end of the war Ulysses S. Grant would be the nation’s most acclaimed general. Grant began his military career as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at in 1839. He was forced to retire from the service in 1854, accused of chronic drunkenness. In April 1861, Grant was working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store.
When the war began he was denied an assignment in the regular Army, but soon was in command of an Illinois Volunteer Infantry regiment. Promoted because he had both an ability to win and the willingness to candidly acknowledge when he failed, Grant saw his principle objective as destroying the Confederate armies. Grant doggedly engaged the Confederates, inflicting unsustainable casualties on their army. At war’s end, Grant’s forces captured the Confederate capital of Richmond and forced the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.
The book-end to Grant’s autograph is that of Major General Brinton McClellan, who became commander–in-chief of the Union Army in November 1861. The “Young Napoleon” was very popular with the men who served under him, but as a commander proved consistently timid and was sometimes outmaneuvered by his Confederate opponent. After several defeats Lincoln relieved him of command of both the Union Army and the Army of the Potomac. Although temporarily reappointed commander of the Army of the Potomac, in November 1862 McClellan was relieved of all command responsibilities and sent to Trenton, New Jersey to await orders. Those orders were never issued. In 1864 McClellan ran against Lincoln for president as a Democrat, running on an anti-war platform calling for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.
William Tecumseh Sherman was another West Point educated soldier. He was less serious than many of his peers in the Academy. Fellow cadet William Rosecrans would later remember Sherman as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind." Those in charge of the Academy found his larks less amusing than did his classmates. Sherman himself noted that “My average demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty,”
Sherman resigned from the military in 1853 to pursue a business career. When war broke out he was summoned to Washington, and recommissioned a colonel. Although successful, the strain of command caused him to suffer a nervous breakdown. He himself would write that in the waning months of 1861 the concerns of command “broke me down” and he contemplated suicide. A newspaper described him as “crazy.” By December 1861, however, he was again in active service, although in rear-echelon positions.
On March 1, 1862 Sherman reported to U.S. Grant, under whom he had long hoped to serve. The Battle of Shiloh changed his career. As Sherman wrote to Grant, "Before the battle of Shiloh, I was cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of 'crazy', but that single battle gave me new life, and I'm now in high feather." Shiloh also led to one of the war’s most quoted exchanges. The first day of the battle had gone very badly for Grant and the Union army, with only Sherman’s fighting retreat saving the Union from a complete defeat. At day’s end, finding Grant smoking a cigar under a tree, Sherman said simply: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" After a puff of his cigar, Grant replied calmly: "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."
And they did.
With Grant’s confidence and friendship, Sherman went on to become one of the most successful of Union generals. When Grant assumed overall command of Union troops, Sherman took Grant’s old command of the Western theatre. In a prophetic letter to Grant he wrote, "if you can whip
Lee and I can march to the Atlantic I think ol'
Uncle Abe will give us twenty days leave to see the young folks."
Both men did exactly that, and won the war.
Joseph Hooker, like Grant and Sherman graduated from West Point but resigned his commission in 1853 to pursue private interests. Considered a highly competent officer, when the war broke out he was quickly commissioned as a brigadier general. Hooker’s career during the war had both significant successes and major failures. He would be chosen by Lincoln to command the Army of the Potomac but lose that command after being defeated in May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville, losing to a Confederate force half the size of the one that he commanded. He was re-assigned to serve under Sherman, with whom he was constantly at odds. Eventually, when Sherman passed him over for promotion, Hooker asked to be relieved of duty. In September 1864 he was given a rear echelon assignment.
The West Point-educated Henry Slocum was severely wounded in the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). He recovered in time to lead Union troops in 1862’s Peninsula Campaign and earn a promotion to major general that July. During the Battle of Gettysburg, where he was temporarily the senior Union officer present, Slocum was criticized for his hesitation to order troops into action on the first day of fighting. More recent scholarship, however, suggests such criticism was misplaced.
Regardless of the justness of the criticism, after Gettysburg Slocum was reassigned to the war’s western theater, under the command of Joseph Hooker. Slocum deeply distrusted Hooker’s judgment and resigned his commission rather than serve under him. To keep Slocum in the Army, Abraham Lincoln personally arranged a peculiar command structure that, although Slocum would be in the general area commanded by Hooker, Slocum and his troops would act independently rather than serve under Hooker’s orders. Slocum later served successfully under General William T. Sherman, in the Atlanta campaign and his famous “March to the Sea”.
J.A. Dix was Secretary of the Treasury who order revenue agents in New Orleans: "If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." Although considered too old for a field command, Dix was appointed a major-general of volunteers at the outbreak of the war. In this capacity, he was notable for ordering the arrest of several pro-Southern Maryland legislators, thus preventing the legislature from meeting and the state from seceding.
The signatures recall many stories of those who served during the Civil War. They will be on display in the library’s reading room through the summer.
