William Babcock Hazen

• 1. The Best Hated Man

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  William Babcock Hazen, a United States Army officer who lived from 1830 to 1887, was summed up by the writer Ambrose Bierce as "The best hated man I ever knew." Bierce did not mean it as a compliment, and the record suggests he had reasons. Hazen fought in some of the hardest battles of the American Civil War, and at one of them his stand became a legend. He also quarreled with fellow generals, with a famous author, and with the government he served. Yet he finished his career running the Army's Signal Office, a post tied to weather and science. How did one man earn both a battlefield reputation and a lifetime of enemies? And what did a stranded polar expedition have to do with his final fight?

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• 2. Ohio to the Llano

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  William Babcock Hazen was born in West Hartford, Vermont, but his family moved to Ohio when he was three years old. He spent his boyhood in the town of Hiram, where he formed a close friendship with a future President, James A. Garfield. In 1855 he graduated from the United States Military Academy and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry. His early service took him mainly to the Pacific Northwest and to Texas.

  On the 3rd of November 1859, Hazen was severely wounded in a fight with Comanches along the Llano River in Texas. The injury kept him away from duty on sick leave until 1861. Soon after the fall of Fort Sumter, he would be promoted to captain of the 8th U.S. Infantry.

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• 3. The Round Forest

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  By the 29th of October 1861, Hazen was the colonel of the 41st Ohio Infantry. In January 1862 he took command of a brigade in the Army of the Ohio, under Major General Don Carlos Buell. His first major battle was Shiloh, where Buell's army arrived on the second day, the 7th of April 1862. That timing let the Union counterattack and win. In the fall he fought under Buell again at Perryville. His brigade was then reorganized into the XIV Corps, later known as the Army of the Cumberland, under Major General William S. Rosecrans.

  On the 31st of December 1862, near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg struck without warning. The assault surprised Rosecrans and drove his men back three miles, leaving them with their backs to the Stones River. Hazen's brigade held a small cedar forest that locals called the Round Forest. Hazen and Brigadier General Charles Cruft stood at a salient in the Union line. If it fell, the Confederates would have won a complete victory.

  Major Generals George H. Thomas and Lovell H. Rousseau, who was Hazen's division commander, massed artillery to support them. Several Confederate attacks were beaten back. The defense was so spirited against heavy odds that it arguably saved the Union line. The four-acre forest is now informally known as Hell's Half Acre. Hazen was wounded in the shoulder, and he was promoted to brigadier general for his gallantry, effective the 29th of November.

  Months after the battle, veterans put up a monument in a small Union cemetery at the site. It is considered the oldest Civil War monument still standing in its original battlefield location. Where exactly it should stand would later become a quarrel of its own.

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• 4. Cracker Line to Savannah

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  After Stones River, Hazen stayed with the Army of the Cumberland through the successful Tullahoma Campaign. He then served in XXI Corps at Chickamauga, a serious Union defeat.

  At Chattanooga, the Confederates had penned the Army of the Cumberland inside its own defenses. Hazen's brigade, now in IV Corps, played a major role in the crossing at Brown's Ferry. That crossing, together with the arrival of troops under Major General Joseph Hooker, opened a supply route known as the Cracker Line. The Union victory at Chattanooga followed.

  The regular army rewarded Hazen with a brevet promotion to major for Chickamauga and another to lieutenant colonel for Chattanooga. Under Major General William T. Sherman, he then served in the Atlanta campaign, the March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign.

  At the Battle of Pickett's Mill, Hazen's brigade had to attack without enough support and suffered badly. Later, someone asked where the brigade was. Hazen answered, "Brigade, Hell, I have none. But what is left of it is over there in the woods."

  In September 1864 Hazen became a brevet colonel in the regular army. Late in the Atlanta Campaign he was elevated to command a division in XV Corps. On the 13th of December 1864, during the March to the Sea, that division captured Fort McAllister, Georgia. The victory opened communications between Sherman's army group and the United States Navy, and it allowed Sherman to capture Savannah. Hazen was promoted to major general of volunteers that same day.

  Very late in the war he commanded the XV Corps of the Army of the Tennessee. On the 13th of March 1865 he received a brevet promotion to major general in the regular army. The postwar army was about to shrink, and Hazen's next posts lay far to the west.

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• 5. Frontier Colonel

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  In July 1866, Hazen was redesignated colonel of the 38th U.S. Infantry, one of four Buffalo Soldier infantry regiments. In March 1869 he transferred to the 6th U.S. Infantry. He served mainly on the Western frontier, and from 1872 to 1880 he was stationed at Fort Buford in the Dakota Territory. He also crossed the Atlantic to observe the Franco-Prussian War.

  One of his most important frontier roles was handling the negotiations that came before the Battle of Washita River. Those talks would become a point of dispute later.

  During the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, procurement corruption scandals shook Washington. Hazen offered testimony in one of them, and the result was the resignation of Grant's Secretary of War, William W. Belknap. The Belknap scandal was tied to other disputes over promotions and squabbles over who deserved credit for Civil War victories. Those arguments would trail Hazen for years.

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• 6. A Talent for Quarrels

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  Major General David S. Stanley argued that the Stones River monument stood in the wrong place, and Hazen disagreed. Stanley was fighting other generals over credit for the Union victory at the Second Battle of Franklin. He was also a friend of Belknap, and that friendship tied the separate controversies together.

  Hazen also took on George Armstrong Custer. In one of his own books, Hazen criticized Custer's book Life on the Plains. Custer had earlier criticized how Hazen dealt with the chief Black Kettle before the Battle of Washita River.

  Hazen even managed to offend Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, who had been both a friend and an ally against Belknap. None of it kept Hazen from a senior appointment that would last the rest of his life.

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• 7. Signal Office and Greely

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  On the 15th of December 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes promoted Hazen to brigadier general and appointed him Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army. His tenure was noted for pointing the department toward basic research. His predecessor, Albert J. Myer, had been occupied with practical matters. At the time, the Signal Corps also managed the Weather Service.

  In the summer of 1881, Lieutenant Adolphus Greely led an International Polar Year expedition to Fort Conger, at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, Canada. In 1882 a scheduled resupply effort failed. That left the expedition's 25 men without support for the winter, about 500 miles from the North Pole. In 1883 a rescue party under Lieutenant Ernest A. Garlington also failed. When a rescue expedition finally reached Greely in June 1884, only he and six of his men were still alive.

  Hazen publicly criticized Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln for his handling of the affair. He pointed to Lincoln's refusal to send more help after Garlington's mission failed. Greely's wife, Henrietta, pushed Lincoln to act in response to outraged public opinion. Lincoln then censured Hazen for his public criticisms, and Hazen was court-martialed in 1885.

  His defense attorney was Thomas Jefferson Mackey, a former judge and Mexican American War veteran. Mackey had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, then backed Congressional Reconstruction, and later wrote books about the expedition.

  President Chester A. Arthur gave Hazen only a mild reprimand, and the newspapers sided with Hazen against Secretary Lincoln. Lake Hazen, on the same Canadian island as Greely's camp, would later carry his name.

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• 8. Death and Legacy

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  The New York Times, in its obituary, called Hazen "aggressive and disputatious." Those traits had served him well on the battlefield, but they made him powerful enemies in peacetime. Hazen died in Washington, D.C., after being taken ill following a reception held by President Grover Cleveland. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

  Hazen, Nevada, and Hazen Bay in Alaska are named in his honor. So is Camp Hazen, on Ellesmere Island.

  After the Civil War, Hazen married Mildred McLean, who lived from 1847 to 1931. She was the daughter of Washington McLean, owner of The Washington Post, and she did not accompany her husband to his posts in Indian Country. They had a son, John McLean Hazen, who lived from 1876 to 1898 and was named for his uncle John Roll McLean. They also had a daughter, May, who died as an infant. Mildred outlived her husband by decades, and on the 9th of November 1899 she married Admiral George Dewey.

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