No Disgrace to My Country

C. Tidball Eugene

Description

This exhaustive study chronicles the life of career army officer John C. Tidball, from action in major Civil War battles to postwar service in the West.Beginning with the first Battle of Bull Run, Tidball, saw action in nearly all the major engagements in the Eastern Theater, including Chancellorsville, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Petersburg.Using previously unpublished wartime letters and memoirs, Eugene C. Tidball captivates the reader with the story of his most famous relatives years in service to his country. Tidballs account extends beyond the Civil War, to include recounting his presence at the Supreme Courts delivery of the Dred Scott decision; his commanding of the military District of Alaska; his traversing the Southwest in 1853 as a member of the 35th Parallel Pacific Railway Survey; and his service as aide-de-camp to General-in-Chief William Tecumseh Sherman.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 13 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631011528
• Langue: English

Extrait

“No Disgrace to My Country”
Lt. John C. Tidball, circa 1850. USMA Archives.
T HE L IFE OF J OHN C . T IDBALL
“No Disgrace to My Country”

E UGENE C . T IDBALL
THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
KENT & LONDON
© 2002 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number
2001002307
ISBN 0-87338-722-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
06   05   04   03   02      5   4   3   2   1
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tidball, Eugene C., 1930–
No disgrace to my country : the life of John C. Tidball / Eugene C. Tidball.
p. cm.
Includes Bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87338-722-8 (alk. paper) ∞
1. Tidball, John C. (John Caldwell), 1825–1906.
2. United States. Army—Officers—Biography.
3. Soldiers—United States—Biography.
4. Generals—United States—Biography. I. Title.
U 53. T 54 T 54 2002
355′.0092—dc21
2001002307
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
Portions of the following chapters of this book were originally published elsewhere, in earlier forms: Chapter 4 , “First Experiences in the Old Army,” Civil War History 45 (September 1999); Chapter 5 , “A Visit to Antebellum Georgia,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 84 (Spring 2000), 85 (Spring 2001); Chapter 7 , “Artist of the Great Reconnaissance,” Journal of Arizona History 37 (Summer 1996); Chapter 11 . “The Fort Pickens Relief Expedition,” Civil War History 42 (December 1996); Chapter 12 , “First Bull Run,” Civil War History 44 (September 1998); Chapter 20 , “Commandant of Cadets,” Civil War History 45 (March 1999); Chapter 26 , “General Sherman’s Last March,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 44 (Spring 1994); Colorado History 1 (1997).
Designed by Will Underwood
Composed in Stone Print by Charles W. King
Printed & bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
to the artillerymen ,
North and South ,
who stayed with their guns
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Prologue
P ART O NE : T HE O LD A RMY
1 Growing Up: “I became my own preceptor.”
2 Getting through West Point—From “Thing” to Plebe: “There was certainly nothing in my rustic appearance to indicate that I was a phenomenon of intellect, or for that matter, of anything else”
3 Getting through West Point—From Plebe to Graduate: “I had gone to the academy with the determination of staying”
4 First Experiences in the Old Army: “He then fairly frothed at the mouth, and the air around became blue with his lurid imprecations”
5 A Visit to Antebellum Georgia: “I was charmed by the openhearted hospitality with which I had been received”
6 Florida: “I had the pleasure of ‘trampoodling’ through the swamps between Indian River Inlet and the Kissimmee”
7 Artist of the Great Reconnaissance: “During the last days mule meat sufficed to get us through”
8 An Office Job in Washington: “It was the Dred Scott decision … that I had heard Chief Justice Taney delivering”
9 Training for War: “We went out at four o’clock in the morning and drilled like fury”
10 Guarding the President: “From it emerged a tall, lanky, awkward figure, which I knew at once to be that of the President-elect”
P ART T WO : T HE W AR OF THE R EBELLION
11 The Fort Pickens Relief Expedition: “Everything had to be done on the jump, for we did not know at what moment Bragg might open on us”
12 First Bull Run: “In the minds of the South it confirmed them in its much vaunted boast that one Southerner was equal to two Yankees”
13 Up the Peninsula: “We have had a good many little skirmishes”
14 Down the Peninsula: “They fight like fiends”
15 Bloody Antietam: “I always managed to have the last shot”
16 Waiting for a Promotion: “I have no spirit nor life left in me”
17 Chancellorsville and Gettysburg: “Never … has such arduous service been required of batteries”
18 From the Wilderness to Spotsylvania: “In this delightful little recreation called war we are sometimes liable to have our heads knocked off”
19 From Cold Harbor to Petersburg: “Where we have to fight such bloody battles for every inch gained, the miles appear very long”
20 Commandant of Cadets: “I felt much wounded in pride”
21 Fort Stedman and the Grand Assault: “Never since the invention of gunpowder has such a cannonade taken place”
P ART T HREE : P EACETIME AND R ETIREMENT
22 Up the Pacific Coast to Alaska: “Take it all in all, it is the sorriest country that I have yet ever seen”
23 Chasing Moonshiners and Training Artillerymen: “Among such lawless people … it is impossible … to assist in the enforcement of the revenue laws without risk”
24 Aide-de-Camp to General Sherman: “The general was a man of striking personality”
25 Odd Jobs for the Commanding General: “The cold became still more biting, but the grandeur of the occasion almost made us forget this”
26 General Sherman’s Last March: “The Chief justice fell heavily to the ground”
27 The Last Campaign: “As to my mental and moral qualifications, I am content to stand on my past record”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
T HE WRITER of a historical narrative invariably incurs debts. The debit side of my ledger is filled with the names of librarians, archivists, historians, university teachers, and authors, all but a few of whom must remain anonymous.
Anyone writing about nineteenth-century American military history will find it necessary to “round up the usual suspects”—that select group of scholars and archivists in possession of information and documents indispensable to the military historian. Among those who assisted me are Michael Musick and Michael Meir of the Old Military Records group at that splendid repository, The National Archives; Dr. Richard J. Sommers, notable Civil War scholar at the U.S. Army Military Institute; and Alan Aimone, senior special collections librarian, U.S. Military Academy Library, who was always courteous and helpful. The documentary spine of my narrative is composed of the memoirs and letters of John C. Tidball, the mother lode of which resides at the U.S. Military Academy Archives; I am greatly indebted to Suzanne Christoff and her willing and able staff at that institution.
David Hedrick, collections librarian at Gettysburg College, a longtime admirer of John Tidball, made available to me that institution’s small but interesting collection of Tidball papers, and, with the help of archivist Karen Drickamer, assisted me in locating documents at other institutions. Numerous state historical societies, state archives, and libraries provided me with abundant information and advice, and many university teachers, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, gave me useful leads. Several historians with the National Park Service provided specialized information.
Fortunately, John Tidball wrote much about himself. Unfortunately, historians have ignored him, so nearly everything we know about him is what he has told us. Only two people before me, both professional soldiers, have written about him and, although they wrote very little—only about a dozen pages in all—they wrote very well, indeed. One was Col. John Calef, who as a subaltern served in Tidball’s horse battery during the war, and kept up a life-long friendship and correspondence with him. The other, Col. James L. Morrison Jr., former history teacher at the U.S. Military Academy and York College of Pennsylvania, edited Tidball’s West Point memoirs more than twenty years ago; his perceptive commentary tells us that he understood his subject exceedingly well. Jim and I have corresponded for ten years, and his advice and encouragement have been an important motivation for me.
I should acknowledge the influence of the seminal writing courses I took at the University of Montana—from H. G. Meriam, Chairman of the English Department, and especially from my mentor and old friend Walter Brown, whose instruction in composition of more than a half-century ago I remember vividly today.
My wife, Ardith Sehulster, who is a fine writer and enthusiastic student of American history, read and criticized my drafts and helped me bring them to a stage where I thought they were good enough to submit to the publisher. She is an exacting and relentless editor of first impression, and whatever merits this book is judged to have, it is better because of her essential contribution.
To John Hubbell, Director Emeritus of the Kent State University Press, I owe the greatest debt, because if it were not for his persistent cajoling I never would have undertaken this biography. At a time when I had not even thought about writing a book, and tried to convince him that I had neither the desire nor the stamina to do it, he persuaded me that John Tidball was “bigger than life,” and deserved full biographical treatment. I soon found myself intrigued, and then possessed by the subject, and worked steadily until the book was finished. Once the book was underway, John became my editor. A good editor is expert and forceful, yet restrained, and John is all of these; his deft, discreet intervention worked just right for me.
Preface
T HIS IS THE story of a nineteenth-century soldier, John Caldwell Tidball, a prototypical antebellum West Point graduate. It is also the story of many soldiers, because in his life can be traced the lives of hundreds of other men who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century. They went on to serve at the four points of the national compass, trudging through the Florida swamps pursuing Seminoles, conquering Mexico, exploring the uncharted regions of the West, training for war, and then fighting in the bloodiest armed conflict known to the American republic. After that, the underpaid and now battle-toughened veterans again scattered across the continent, built and manned remote forts protecting the American domain, occupied a defeated South, and engaged in a prolonged, disheartening running battle with the nati