Valor Friday

Colonel (Brevet Brig. Gen.) Archibald Henderson

It’s been a while since I updated our list of those with exceptionally long service to their country.

First up is Archibald Henderson. He was a contemporary of Winfield Scott. Both men had meteoric rises in the ranks due to the War of 1812. Scott (an Army officer) went from a captain to brigadier general by the end of the conflict two and half years later. He was also brevetted to major general. At the time, major general was the highest rank a man could hold in the Army. Henderson was a Marine. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1806, and served aboard USS Constitution (which still remains in active commissioned service) during her victories during the War of 1812 (where she earned the nom de guerre “Old Ironsides”). He was made a captain in 1811 and brevetted to major during the war.

After the war, both men remained in active service. Scott would become Commanding General of the US Army (the position would later become the Chief of Staff US Army) in 1841. This raised his substantive rank to major general. He’d subsequently be the first man in America to be brevetted to lieutenant general. He held his post until the start of the Civil War more than 20 years later.

Henderson similarly commanded his military branch, but for much longer, and at a much younger age. He took the post of Commandant of the Marine Corps in an acting capacity in 1818. This brought his rank up to major with an acting rank of lieutenant colonel. He was replaced a few months later by Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Gale. Gale is deserving of a whole article of his own, but suffice to say he didn’t last long. Gale was one of only two Commandants to face courts martial, and he holds the ignominious distinction of being the only Commandant ever fired.

With Gale vacating the position, Henderson returned to his role as Commandant in 1820. He was only 37 years old. He ultimately led the Marines for more than 38 years, until his sudden death in 1859 at the age of 75. He’d been in uniform for 53 of those years.

Henderson’s mark on the Marine Corps was decisive. He’s credited with thwarting President Jackson’s attempts to merge the Corps into the Army. As part of legislation ensuring they would remain under the Navy Department, he was the first Marine promoted to the substantive rank of colonel. He was made a brevet brigadier general (to my knowledge, the Corps’ first) after leading Marines in the field during Indian Campaigns in Georgia and Florida in 1836-1837. It was said that he pinned a note to his office door while away on these campaigns saying, “Gone to Florida to fight the Indians. Will be back when the war is over.”

After the Mexican-American War, his returning Marines presented him with a ceremonial sword. They engraved on it, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli.” These would famously become the opening line of the Marine Corps Hymn.

It’s also said that Henderson willed his home of 38 years to his descendants, forgetting that the place he’d lived for so long was in fact government-owned quarters for the Colonel Commandant of the Marine Corps.

I find it interesting that Henderson led men in the field as his service’s top ranking officer, as Winfield Scott similarly did during the Mexican-American War. They are likely to be the last commanding officers of their branches to have done so.

Major General Winfield Scott Hancock

Speaking of Winfield Scott, when Benjamin Franklin Hancock and Elizabeth Hoxworth Hancock of Philadelphia had twin sons in 1824 they chose to name the boys after two prominent men. Hilary Baker Hancock was named for Philadelphia Mayor Hilary Baker. Baker was a veteran of the Continental Army, was a noted abolitionist, and started the city’s first paid police force. It was while serving with that force during a yellow fever outbreak that he became the city’s first police officer to die in the line of duty in 1798. He contracted the virus, having refused to leave the city like other wealthy men of Philly had done.

The other boy would get the name of famed War of 1812 General Winfield Scott. Hancock would secure appointment to West Point in 1840, and be commissioned in 1844 into the infantry. He had graduated 18 out of 25 in his class.

With the small active duty Army of the time, graduating USMA cadets were given brevet commissions as second lieutenants until such time as a full commission became available. Some men spent years waiting for a substantive commission, which is hard to imagine these days.

Initially assigned to Indian Country, when war with Mexico broke out in 1846, Hancock was assigned recruiting duties in Kentucky. He lobbied for a front-line posting, but he was such an excellent recruiter that his superiors resisted reassigning him. In 1847 he was given a field posting and joined his namesake General Winfield Scott’s army in Puebla, Mexico.

In battle at Mexico City he distinguished himself enough to get a brevet promotion to first lieutenant. He was wounded in subsequent battle, and remained in Mexico after the war until the peace treaty was signed.

He made the slow creep upward in rank of the peacetime Army. He served in Florida as a quartermaster during the Third Seminole War. Then he was assigned to Leavenworth during the Bleeding Kansas and to the Utah Territory for the Utah War. He ended the 1850s with a posting in California where he remained until the Civil War started.

In California he became friends with many southern officers, who left for the Confederacy when the war began. Most noteworthy was then-Major Lewis A. Armistead of Virginia. Upon parting for the South, Armistead said to Hancock, “You’ll never know what this is costing me, but goodbye, goodbye.” Armistead would become a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, and commanded a brigade at Gettysburg as part of Pickett’s Charge, where he was killed in action.

Experienced officers in the Union Army were rapidly advanced in rank as state militia forces were federalized. Hancock was made a brigadier general of volunteers and given command of an infantry brigade. He served under McClellan in the Army of the Potomac, earning a nickname along the way. McClellan telegraphed Washington, “Hancock was superb today,” and Hancock became known as “Superb.”

Hancock was promoted to major general, fighting Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. He was wounded in the latter two battles.

Hancock would also be at Gettysburg as a corps commander. He most famously held his ground as he and his men took the brunt of Pickett’s Charge. During the brutal artillery barrage that preceded the attack, Hancock was a constant, inspiring presence on the front lines to his men. When one of his subordinates protested, “General, the corps commander ought not to risk his life that way,” Hancock is said to have replied, “There are times when a corps commander’s life does not count.”

Hancock was seriously wounded in action, taking a bullet to the pommel of his saddle, which sent a saddle nail into his right thigh. Removing the nail, he remarked “They must be hard up for ammunition when they throw such shot as that.” Hancock refused evacuation until the battle was won. Due to his injury, he was unable to attend to Armistead when word of his friend’s mortal wounding was brought to him.

It has been said that, “No other Union general at Gettysburg dominated men by the sheer force of their presence more completely than Hancock. Hancock received the Thanks of Congress (one of the highest honors of the United States government) for Gettysburg.

Hancock’s thigh wound would hinder him for the rest of his life. He was able to return to field duty in the the spring of 1864. Serving under Grant during the Overland Campaign, he served in the Battle of the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania Court House, and Col Harbor. He continued to hold a corps command until the end of the war. He was given the substantive rank of brigadier general in the regular Army in 1864 and in 1865 was given a brevet to major general in the regular Army for services at Spotsylvania.

When Lincoln was assassinated, several of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators were tried. Despite the war being over, they were all tried by military courts, which operated exceptionally quickly. Less than a month after the assassination, they were all convicted. President Johnson ordered Hancock to execute them, with the sentence to be carried out on 7 July (less than three months after Lincoln’s killing). While conflicted about whether to carry out the order, particularly for some of those that were only tangentially culpable of conspiring with Booth, he ultimately carried out his duties as ordered.

Hancock was briefly assigned to the Plains, where he was in command when General Custer was famously slaughtered with all his men, but was then assigned to the reconstruction in New Orleans. He replaced Philip Sheridan after President Johnson (a Democrat) was displeased with the way Republican generals (Sheridan being the most offensive to him) were governing. Johnson had ordered Hancock to replace Sheridan as he felt that Hancock (a Democrat) might align with his priorities.

Hancock did align with Johnson, and gave the order that the military authorities would only take over where necessary. This emboldened local Democrats to return to power, and led blacks and Republicans (rightfully it would turn out) to fear a return of governance to the pre-bellum rule of white Democrats.

Hancock returned to the Plains after Grant’s Presidential victory in 1868 cemented Republican control in Washington. Out west, Hancock had a role in helping create Yellowstone National Park. In 1872, when General Meade died, Hancock was then the Army’s senior major general. Grant wanted to keep him out of the south but was compelled to give him a more prominent posting than his exile to the west. Hancock was given command of the Division of the Atlantic, which he commanded from Governor’s Island, NYC.

Hancock, as a prominent states-rights Democrat and with unquestionable anti-secession bona fide, was seen as an excellent candidate for President. He was first proposed (but unsuccessful) as a candidate for the party’s nomination in 1868. His return to the east allowed him to keep those political ambitions alive. He received some votes at the conventions in 1876, but again was unsuccessful in securing the party nomination.

With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the Democrats’ felt their best chance to re-take the presidency was 1880. Hancock was put forward as the Democrat candidate for POTUS that year. He lost to James Garfield, but was chivalrous enough to attend Garfield’s inauguration.

Hancock spent his final years largely out of the public eye after losing the election. He was active with many civic organizations, including as president of the National Rifle Association and headed the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. His final public act was organizing and leading the nine-mile funeral procession for President Grant after he died in 1885. Hancock died the following year at the age of 61 at Governor’s Island, still in command of the Military Division of the Atlantic. He’d served 42 of those years in the Army, had been a general officer for 25, and had repeatedly been wounded in action.

I’ll be back next week with two more men, one with more than 40 years of service and another with more than 50 years, and the most epic of all epic hats.

Category: Army, Historical, Marines, Valor, We Remember