Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,902

This is the grave of Edward Ord.

Born in 1818 in Cumberland, Maryland, Ord grew up pretty well off. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where he and his family knew many leading political figures. He became known for his mathematical prowess and he received an appointment to West Point, graduating in 1839. It was Andrew Jackson himself who sponsored Ord’s application for the Academy.

Ord’s early military career was pretty typical–fighting in the Seminole Wars in Florida, then the Mexican War. In the latter, he was sent to Monterrey, in California, and so missed any fighting. While there, his commanding officer said that all his other officers should take on other jobs if they wanted since there wasn’t really anything for them to do and the cost of living there was more than Army salaries could handle. So Ord did a bunch of surveying, including what became downtown Sacramento and then a good bit of the small but growing town of Los Angeles. Naturally, his interest in surveying was also personal and he like many of his ilk were trying to find the best route for a transcontinental railroad that would connect California to the east and he was personally interested in profiting from that.

Ord was in the Northwest by 1850 and was promoted to captain. Due to his surveying experience, he was sent to the U.S. Coast Survey in 1852 and did some important work in surveying the California coast, cutting down on shipwrecks. He was involved in the horrific wars of genocides against the tribes of Washington in 1855, led by scumbags such as Isaac Stevens. By 1859, he was at Fort Monroe in Virginia and was on hand for John Brown’s execution.

By the time the Civil War started, Ord was still a captain in the 3rd Artillery, based out of Fort Vancouver, back in the Northwest. Of course he was sent back to the east immediately. He was immediately promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and was involved in the Battle of Dranesville in the fall of 1861 against Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart and the Union won this relatively small battle. He did well here, getting promoted to major general of volunteers. Wrote George Meade, “I think the promotion of Ord just and deserved.”

Ord was given command of the 2nd Division of the Army of Tennessee in 1862, but managed to miss most of the major battles out there until he was wounded himself at the Battle of Hatchie’s Bridge. He recovered relatively quickly and was involved in the siege that took Vicksburg in 1863. During all of this, he became close to Ulysses S. Grant, who would seek out Ord for specific missions he thought perfect for his skills. They remained close for the rest of their lives. For most of 1864, Ord was commanding troops in the Division of the Gulf, seeing little real action, but he was called back to Virginia. He was wounded again trying to take Fort Harrison and was out of action until early 1865. But when he came back, he was given command of the Army of the James and was in critical positions in the last days of the war, culminating in Appomattox. Phil Sheridan himself credited Ord with a hard march toward the town that finally forced Robert E. Lee to give up. It’s interesting though that Ord rose so far during the war while seeing relatively little action. But Grant really trusted him and who saw action tended to be a bit random anyway.

Ord’s first job after the war was an important one–he was tasked with seeing if the Confederate government was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. He correctly discovered that there was no connection. He was then part of the occupying force during Reconstruction and was commander of the Fourth Military District when Congress took over the process from Andrew Johnson. This placed Ord in charge of Arkansas and Mississippi. He wasn’t particularly effective I don’t think in enforcing much of Reconstruction, but that had much more to do with a lack of resources and commitment from Washington than it did with anything he did.

In 1868, Ord was transferred back to the West and given command of the Department of California. He was there til 1871 and then became commander of the Department of the Platte from 1871-75 and then the Department of Texas until he retired in 1881. He shot a lot of bison, part of the extermination campaign to starve Native Americans into submission. He did some more surveying out west too. While in Texas, he also ordered American troops, or at least scouts, into Mexican territory to seek out Apaches who were using the border as a way to escape both Mexican and American forces when necessary. But he went too far here. Grant didn’t care too much, or he was too close to Ord personally to reprimand him, but Congress really laid into him and the Mexican government was pretty angry too.

Ord in fact did not want to retire in 1881. But he had reached the retirement age of 62 and Rutherford Hayes wanted to reshape the military to promote his own guys. So he forced Ord out to promote Nelson Miles. This was pure politics. Among those disgusted by this incident was William Tecumseh Sherman, who rightfully believed that Miles, a political operator and knifefighter in the military, had used his connections to push out a superior officer.

After his 1880 retirement, Ord became a railroad hack. Most of these guys were going down that road, including Ulysses S. Grant. Jay Gould had hired Grant to be president of the Mexican Southern Railroad to connect Oaxaca and Puebla by rail, part of Gould’s growing rail empire that was welcomed by Porfirio Diaz and his modernizing government. Grant then hired Ord to build a rail line from Texas to Mexico City to connect all this up. But it didn’t really go anywhere and the Mexican Southern went bankrupt in 1885.

But Ord didn’t live that long. There was no cure for yellow fever yet. Ord was in Veracruz to catch a ship back to New York when he contracted the horrible illness after getting bit by the wrong mosquitoes. He was put ashore in Havana and died there in 1883, at the age of 64.

Most importantly, the tiny speck of a town where my grandfather was born is called Ord, Nebraska, named for Edward Ord. I finally visited that town back in 2017. It’s pretty much nothing, but I was surprised to see a brewery there. I was there earlier in the day, driving from Lincoln to Badlands National Park so it wasn’t open, but I guess Ord isn’t too far from the sand hills and when you live in Nebraska, it doesn’t take much to pass for interesting outdoor recreation, so I guess the little town has been able to take advantage of that a little bit.

Edward Ord is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

If you would like this series to visit other Civil War generals, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. William Tecumseh Sherman is in St. Louis and William Rosecrans is also in Arlington, but for some reason I’ve never visited his grave despite all the times I’ve been there. It’s a rather large cemetery, as you may be aware. Previous posts are archived here and here.