William Rosecrans

• 1. Introduction

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  William Starke Rosecrans was born on the 6th of September 1819, on a farm near Little Taylor Run in Kingston Township, Ohio, and by the time he died on the 11th of March 1898, his casket lay draped by the same headquarters flag that had flown over two of the Civil War's most consequential battles. He was a man of staggering contradictions: a Catholic convert in a Protestant army, an inventor who nearly died when his own "safety" lamp exploded, a general praised by Abraham Lincoln one month and likened to a stunned duck the next. How did a farm boy who had to beg a congressman for a military school appointment become one of the Union's most celebrated field commanders? And how did a single poorly worded order on a September morning in 1863 unravel everything he had built? Those questions run through every chapter of Rosecrans's life, from the kerosene refineries of Cincinnati to the ridgelines above Chickamauga Creek.

• 2. A Farm Boy Climbs

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  At the age of 13, Rosecrans left his family farm to work as a store clerk, first in Utica and then in Mansfield, Ohio. Unable to afford college, he pursued a West Point appointment by securing an interview with Congressman Alexander Harper, who had been saving the slot for his own son. Harper was so struck by the young man that he awarded the nomination to Rosecrans instead. The family heritage was distinctive: Rosecrans traced his ancestry to Harmon Henrik Rosenkrantz, a Dutch-Scandinavian nobleman who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1651. The family name changed its spelling during the American Revolutionary War, and his mother was a widow related to Stephen Hopkins, the Colonial Governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. At West Point, the self-taught farm boy thrived. He graduated fifth in his class of 56 cadets in 1842, excelling in mathematics, French, drawing, and English grammar. His classmates included James Longstreet, Abner Doubleday, and D. H. Hill, men he would later meet on very different terms. At graduation he met Anna Elizabeth Hegeman of New York City, and they married on the 24th of August 1843. Their marriage lasted until her death on the 25th of December 1883; they had eight children.

• 3. Inventor, Convert, Businessman

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  During a posting at West Point in the late 1840s, Rosecrans converted to Catholicism in 1845, a decision that rippled through his entire family. West Point was a stronghold of Episcopal Protestantism, yet Rosecrans embraced his new faith so thoroughly that he wrote to his family about the choice. His youngest brother, Sylvester Horton Rosecrans, converted as well and eventually became the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus. According to historian William B. Kurtz of the University of Virginia, Rosecrans "played the central role in his family's faith life," unlike many men of his era who left such matters to their wives. Ultimately, both parents converted on their deathbeds. Rosecrans resigned from the Army in 1854 after a period of failing health and threw himself into civilian enterprise with the same intensity he had brought to his studies. He designed and installed one of the first complete lock and dam systems in what is now West Virginia, work today recognized as the Coal River Locks, Dams, and Log Booms Archeological District. In Cincinnati, he and two partners built one of the first oil refineries west of the Allegheny Mountains. He obtained patents for multiple inventions, including the first kerosene lamp to successfully burn a round wick. Then, in 1859, an experimental "safety" oil lamp exploded at his refinery, burning him severely. He required 18 months to recover. The facial scars that resulted, most later hidden by his beard, left him with what observers described as a permanent smirk. He was still working to put the Preston Coal Oil Company in order when Fort Sumter surrendered.

• 4. Western Virginia and the Grudge with Grant

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  Just days after Fort Sumter fell, Rosecrans offered his services to Ohio Governor William Dennison Jr. He was quickly promoted to colonel and briefly commanded the 23rd Ohio Infantry Regiment, whose enlisted ranks included two future presidents: Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. His plans in the Western Virginia Campaign proved immediately effective. His victories at Rich Mountain and Corrick's Ford in July 1861 were among the first Union successes of the entire war. His superior, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, received most of the public credit. Transferred to the Western theater in May 1862, Rosecrans operated under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. At the Battle of Iuka in September 1862, an unusual acoustic shadow caused by a north wind blowing from Ord's position prevented the sound of the fighting from reaching Grant's co-operating force, leaving those troops idle while Rosecrans's men fought alone. The Northern press published accounts that portrayed the episode as Grant's failure, and some rumors even suggested Grant had been drunk. Grant's first battle report praised Rosecrans; his second, written after Rosecrans published his own account, turned sharply negative. In his later Personal Memoirs, Grant wrote that he had been "disappointed at the result" but had held his tongue because his opinion of Rosecrans had been so high. That grudging remark captured the whole of their relationship: two capable men whose professional rivalry, fed by press coverage and personal pride, would shape the rest of the war.

• 5. Stones River and a President's Words

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  By late December 1862, General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck had run out of patience with Rosecrans's delays in Nashville. He warned in writing that another week of inaction would cost Rosecrans his command. Rosecrans replied with studied defiance: "To threats of removal or the like I must be permitted to say that I am insensible." He then led the Army of the Cumberland against Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee outside Murfreesboro. The Battle of Stones River became the bloodiest battle of the war measured by the percentage of casualties on both sides. Bragg attacked on the morning of December 31, driving Union forces back into a constricted defensive perimeter. In the chaos, Rosecrans's close friend and chief of staff, Col. Julius Garesché, was beheaded by a cannonball while riding at his side. Rosecrans rode on, covered in his friend's blood, personally rallying brigades and companies across the crumbling line. Bragg attacked again on January 2 against a strong position on Rosecrans's left flank and was repulsed with heavy losses. Bragg then withdrew to Tullahoma, effectively surrendering Middle Tennessee. Abraham Lincoln wrote directly to Rosecrans: "You gave us a hard-earned victory, which had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over." The battle came just weeks after the Union's defeat at Fredericksburg, making its symbolic weight even heavier. Rosecrans would later be awarded a brevet major generalship retroactively to the 21st of March 1862, in recognition partly of Stones River's importance.

• 6. The Tullahoma Masterpiece

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  Abraham Lincoln described Rosecrans's flanking of Bragg at Shelbyville, Tullahoma, and Chattanooga as "the most splendid piece of strategy I know of." The campaign ran from June 24 to the 3rd of July 1863, and was characterized by flawless maneuvers and remarkably low casualties. Cavalry commander David S. Stanley wrote that no better example of successful strategy had been executed during the entire war. When Union troops entered Shelbyville, they rescued captured Union spy Pauline Cushman, who had been condemned to hang in three days' time after being caught scouting Bragg's movements. Rosecrans and Cushman later raised over one million dollars together for soldiers' aid at the 1863 Cincinnati Sanitary Fair. Yet the campaign earned far less recognition than it deserved. The day the Tullahoma Campaign ended, Robert E. Lee launched Pickett's Charge and lost at Gettysburg. The following day, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton telegraphed Rosecrans: "Lee's Army overthrown; Grant victorious. You and your noble army now have a chance to give the finishing blow to the rebellion. Will you neglect the chance?" Rosecrans's furious reply asked the War Department not to overlook what the Army of the Cumberland had accomplished simply because it was "not written in letters of blood." The exchange crystallized a bitterness that had been building since their clashes over the Shenandoah Valley command in 1862. Bragg had abandoned Chattanooga without a major battle, giving Rosecrans one of the most strategically valuable cities in the Confederacy. The momentum felt unstoppable.

• 7. Chickamauga and Its Aftermath

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  On the 19th of September 1863, Bragg attacked Rosecrans's not fully concentrated army along West Chickamauga Creek, and for a day the Union line held. On the second day, a garbled order sealed Rosecrans's fate. Rosecrans directed Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood to close up on and support Reynolds's division, intending to fill what he believed was a gap. Wood's resulting movement instead opened an actual division-sized gap in the line. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet had planned a massive assault in exactly that sector; the Confederates poured through and shattered the Union right. Rosecrans, two corps commanders, and his chief of staff James Garfield were swept toward Chattanooga. Garfield was sent back to Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, who organized a famous defensive stand on Horseshoe Ridge that earned him the nickname "Rock of Chickamauga." Lincoln telegraphed the besieged Rosecrans to "be of good cheer," but privately told John Hay that the general seemed "confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head." Grant arrived in Chattanooga on October 23, having been placed in command of the newly created Military Division of the Mississippi. He replaced Rosecrans with Thomas. Before leaving, Rosecrans described the tactical situation to Grant in precise terms. Grant later wrote that his only wonder was that Rosecrans had not carried out the very plan he outlined. Grant then executed a relief operation originally devised by Rosecrans and Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith to open the supply line called the "Cracker Line," and in battles fought November 23-25, 1863, routed Bragg's army and drove it into Georgia.

• 8. Decline, Reinvention, and a Complicated Legacy

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  Reassigned to the Department of Missouri, Rosecrans spent 1864 opposing Sterling Price's Missouri raid, a posting that felt like a deliberate marginalization. In an odd counterfactual footnote, his former chief of staff James Garfield, heading the Ohio delegation at the 1864 Republican National Convention, telegraphed to ask whether Rosecrans would consider running as Abraham Lincoln's vice-presidential candidate. Rosecrans replied in a cryptically positive manner. The return telegram never reached Garfield. Friends of Rosecrans believed Secretary Stanton had intercepted and suppressed it. After the war, Rosecrans became one of eleven incorporators of the Southern Pacific Railroad, but he lost his stake to what he described as unscrupulous business partners. From 1868 to 1869 he served as U.S. Minister to Mexico, but was replaced after just five months when his old rival Grant became president. In 1869, Rosecrans bought 16,000 acres of Rancho San Pedro in the Los Angeles basin at $2.50 per acre, land considered nearly worthless for lack of water. He was elected U.S. Representative from California's 1st congressional district in 1880 and was reelected in 1882, becoming chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee. As chairman he publicly opposed a pension bill for Grant, delivering a pointed condemnation of Grant's business conduct. He died on the 11th of March 1898, at Rancho Sausal Redondo in Redondo Beach, California, shortly after learning that a favorite grandchild had died of diphtheria. In 1896, two years before his death, the University of Notre Dame awarded him the Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious award for American Catholics, a recognition that would have pleased a man who had converted at a bastion of Protestant military tradition half a century earlier.