Earl Van Dorn

• 1. Introduction

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  Earl Van Dorn died not on a battlefield but at his own desk, shot in the back of the head by a doctor who accused him of seducing his wife. It was the 7th of May, 1863, in the Spring Hill mansion where Van Dorn had made his headquarters, and he never regained consciousness. He was a major general in the Confederate Army, the senior major general in the Confederate States Army at the moment he was killed, and a man whose cavalry raids had, only months before, humiliated Ulysses S. Grant and helped save Vicksburg. How does a great-nephew of Andrew Jackson, a decorated veteran of two wars, a man described as "the beau ideal" by foreign military observers, end up shot at a writing desk over a rumored love affair? The answers run through West Point demerits and Comanche arrows, through a piracy charge from Abraham Lincoln and a desperate winter raid across Mississippi. They also run through what the source called Van Dorn's "fatal weakness": his attraction to beautiful women.

• 2. A Jackson Connection

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  Van Dorn was born near Port Gibson, Mississippi, on the 17th of September, 1820, into a family tangled with American political royalty. His mother, Sophia Donelson Caffery, was a niece of Andrew Jackson, and it was that connection that secured her son an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1838. He did not distinguish himself academically. He graduated 52nd out of 68 cadets in the class of 1842, a low rank driven in large part by 163 demerits collected for infractions including failing to salute in passing, tobacco use, and profanity. On the 1st of July, 1842, he was appointed a brevet second lieutenant in the 7th U.S. Infantry Regiment, and he began a decade and a half of garrison life, bouncing between Fort Pike in Louisiana, Fort Morgan in Alabama, the Mount Vernon Arsenal, and eventually Pensacola harbor in Florida, where he was promoted to second lieutenant on the 30th of November, 1844. In December 1843, he married Caroline Godbold, daughter of a prominent Alabama planter family; they would have two children, daughter Olivia, born in 1852, and son Earl Van Dorn Jr., born in 1855. The garrison years were unremarkable by any military measure, but they set the stage for a war with Mexico that would make his name for the first time.

• 3. Fire in Mexico

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  Van Dorn saw action at the Battle of Monterrey on the 21st-the 23rd of September, 1846, and participated in the Siege of Vera Cruz from the 9th to the 29th of March, 1847. He was transferred to General Winfield Scott's command in early 1847 and promoted to first lieutenant on the 3rd of March of that year. His performance over the following months earned him two brevet promotions. He was appointed brevet captain on the 18th of April for his actions at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, and brevet major on the 20th of August for conduct near Mexico City, which included fighting at Contreras, Churubusco, and the Belen Gate. He was wounded in the foot near Mexico City on the 3rd of September, and wounded a second time during the storming of Belen Gate on the 13th of September. Those wounds, earned in quick succession, fed a reputation for physical courage that would follow Van Dorn for the rest of his career. After the war ended, he served as aide-de-camp to Brevet Major General Persifor F. Smith before returning to garrison duty at Baton Rouge and later Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. He also saw action against Seminoles in Florida from 1849 to 1850 as the United States tried to dislodge them from the Everglades, an effort only partly successful; some Seminoles evaded capture and survived there, becoming the ancestors of two federally recognized Seminole tribes in Florida today.

• 4. Arrows and the Comanche

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  Van Dorn's reputation gained another dimension entirely on the Texas frontier. Assigned to Camp Cooper and Fort Belknap in 1855 and 1856, he began scouting against the Comanche, who had been raiding new Native American settlements that the United States had promised to protect. At the Battle of Wichita Village on the 1st of October, 1858, Van Dorn commanded the first expedition against the Comanche and was struck by two arrows, one in his left arm and another in his right side, injuring his stomach and a lung. He was not expected to live. He recovered in five weeks. General David Emmanuel Twiggs described Van Dorn's defeat of the Comanche as "a victory more decisive and complete in the history of Indian warfare." In the spring of 1859, Van Dorn led six companies of cavalry and a company of scouts recruited from the Brazos Reservation into Kansas, located the camp of Buffalo Hump in a valley he identified as the Nescutunga or Nessentunga, and on the 13th of May, 1859, defeated them. His forces killed 49 persons, wounded five, and captured 32 Comanche women. Van Dorn was wounded four separate times in total while in Indian Territory. These campaigns, combined with his Mexican War record, gave him the celebrity that historian Arthur B. Carter described plainly: Van Dorn was "a major attraction and the center of attention at public and private events," and attractive women were drawn to him, which he "apparently did little to discourage." On the 28th of June, 1860, while at Fort Mason, he was promoted to major.

• 5. Pirate, by Order of Lincoln

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  When secession came, Van Dorn was initially resistant, holding what the source calls a certain naivety about whether war could be avoided. Despite opposing secession, he eventually sided with the Confederacy. His U.S. Army commission was accepted as resigned effective the 31st of January, 1861, and he was appointed a brigadier general in the Mississippi Militia on the 23rd of January. After Jefferson Davis was selected as Confederate President, Van Dorn replaced him as major general and commander of Mississippi's state forces. He entered the Regular Confederate States Army as a colonel of infantry on the 16th of March, 1861, and was sent west to Texas. Leaving New Orleans on the 14th of April, he arrived at Matagorda Bay, Texas, and on the 17th of April, 1861, captured the Union supply ship Star of the West. Van Dorn allowed the Union troops to keep their firearms, citing that they were all Americans; the result was the first surrender of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln responded by declaring Van Dorn a pirate under U.S. law, specifically for seizure of vessels by persons acting under Confederate authority. Van Dorn then pushed to Indianola, forcing the surrender of the last remaining regular U.S. Army soldiers in Texas on the 23rd of April. He was summoned to Richmond, appointed colonel in the 1st Confederate Regular Cavalry on the 25th of April, promoted to brigadier general on the 5th of June, and then to major general on the 19th of September, 1861. Five days after that promotion, he was made divisional commander of the Confederate Army of the Potomac.

• 6. Infantry Command and Its Costs

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  Confederate President Jefferson Davis selected Van Dorn to command the Trans-Mississippi District because the leading generals there, Sterling Price and Benjamin McCulloch, were bitter rivals who needed someone to contain them. Both Henry Heth and Braxton Bragg had turned down the posting. Van Dorn headed west on the 19th of January, 1862, and assumed command on the 29th of January. His army numbered roughly 17,000 men and 60 guns. Cavalry was his specialty; infantry command was not. Before attacking, he wrote to his wife Caroline with striking confidence: "I am now in for it, to make a reputation and serve my country conspicuously or fail. I must not, shall not, do the latter. I must have St. Louis - then Huzza!" To move quickly against U.S. Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis's 10,500-man Army of the Southwest, Van Dorn left his supply wagons behind. The decision would prove critical. His men lacked proper gear for a forced march, some reportedly without shoes, and felled trees across the path further slowed them. At the Battle of Pea Ridge in early March 1862, Price was wounded during the fighting on the 7th of March, and McCulloch and Brigadier General James M. McIntosh were both killed, leaving Van Dorn's right wing without any effective command. The following day, Curtis counterattacked and routed the Confederate force, "mostly without actual contact between the opposing infantries." Van Dorn retreated south, his men living off the sparse countryside for a week. Casualties among the Union forces were estimated at around 1,000-1,200 total; Confederate losses were placed around 2,000. Despite the defeat, the Confederate Congress voted its formal thanks to Van Dorn and his men on the 21st of April. At the Second Battle of Corinth in October 1862, Van Dorn again commanded infantry instead of cavalry. He performed well in the opening stages on the 1st-the 2nd of October, with roughly 22,000 men, but failed to reconnoiter U.S. defenses and his attack on the 3rd was bloodily repulsed. Total Confederate casualties at Corinth were 4,233, against U.S. losses of 2,520. Davis later called the battle an "impossibility" because many of the soldiers Van Dorn inherited were starving and diseased, and praised Van Dorn for handling such conditions "masterfully." Van Dorn was sent before a court of inquiry and acquitted, but he would never again command an army in the field.

• 7. The Holly Springs Raid

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  Returning to cavalry, Van Dorn found his true register. On the 16th of December, 1862, he left Grenada with 2,500 cavalry, crossed the Yalobusha River, and rode northeast without telling his own soldiers what the objective was. At dawn on the 20th of December, they struck Holly Springs, Mississippi, capturing 1,500 U.S. soldiers and destroying at least $1,500,000 worth of Union supplies. The local Confederate women proclaimed it "the Glorious Twentieth" and cheered Van Dorn as a conquering hero. Grant had not been caught unaware: cavalry commander T. Lyle Dickie had warned him that Van Dorn had left Grenada and was heading northeast, and Grant had warned Colonel Robert C. Murphy of Holly Springs twice by telegraph. Murphy did nothing to prepare. The raid had a consequence that extended well beyond the supply depot. It directly coincided with and delayed Grant's General Order No. 11, issued less than 72 hours before Van Dorn struck, which had expelled Jews as a class from Grant's military district. With Van Dorn's cavalry destroying communication lines, and Confederate General Bedford Forrest simultaneously tearing up fifty miles of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, Grant could not communicate his withdrawal order to General Sherman, who was repulsed at Chickasaw Bluffs on the 29th of December. Grant withdrew entirely, his army forced to live off the countryside. President Lincoln revoked the controversial General Order No. 11. The raid thwarted Grant's first attempt to capture Vicksburg. Van Dorn was appointed to command all cavalry in the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana on the 13th of January, 1863, and his next significant victory came at the Battle of Thompson's Station on the 5th of March, 1863, where he surrounded a Union brigade under Colonel John Coburn, cutting off every escape route and forcing surrender.

• 8. Spring Hill

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  Van Dorn made his headquarters at Spring Hill, Tennessee, in the home of Martin Cheairs. There he encountered Jesse Helen Kissack Peters, wife of Dr. George B. Peters, a prominent local physician and state legislator. Mrs. Peters was nearly 25 years younger than her husband and was described by locals as "bored" during his long absences. Gossip spread quickly about Van Dorn's visits and their frequent unchaperoned carriage rides. When Dr. Peters returned home on the 12th of April, he was mocked by townspeople. He threatened to shoot Van Dorn or any of his staff who stepped on his property, then hid outside one night and caught the two in what he described as a passionate embrace. Van Dorn pleaded for his wife to be spared any responsibility, and Peters accepted. A few weeks later, on the morning of the 7th of May, Peters went to the Cheairs mansion, where Van Dorn's security staff recognized him as a regular visitor who stopped in to obtain passes through Confederate lines, and let him through. Peters entered Van Dorn's office, where the general was writing at his desk, and shot him in the back of the head with a small caliber pistol. Van Dorn was found unconscious but still breathing. The bullet had traversed his brain and lodged behind his forehead. He died four hours later, never having regained consciousness. Peters was arrested by Confederate authorities but was never brought to trial. He claimed to have defended the sanctity of his home. A later conspiracy theory, advanced in part by Van Dorn's sister Emily, held that Peters was motivated by Union loyalty rather than marital honor; Peters had earlier sworn an oath of loyalty to the United States in Memphis, and the federal government later returned confiscated land in Arkansas to him. Van Dorn was initially buried at his wife's family graveyard in Alabama; at his sister's request, his body was returned to Port Gibson and reburied next to their father at Wintergreen Cemetery. In 1942, the U.S. Army named a World War II training camp near Centreville, Mississippi, in his memory, Camp Van Dorn, which operated until 1946.