Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,140

This is the grave of William Rosecrans.

Born in 1819 in Delaware County, Ohio, Rosecrans grew up in a middle-class environment, with a father who ran a tavern and store that served the local area. He didn’t get much education, but loved to read and so did as much self-education as possible. He started working at the age of 13 as a store clerk and moved around the area to various jobs. He took a hail mary shot at college–he tried to get an appointment to West Point. He must have been very good in the interview, because his local congressman was going to use his slot for his own son, but then chose Rosecrans instead after the interview. Rosecrans lacked much of the formal education usually required to do well at West Point, but he excelled at the school and finished fifth in the class of 1842.

Rosecrans specialized in engineering and after working as a second lieutenant for a year at Fort Monroe, Virginia, designing sea walls, he returned to West Point to teach at the academy. Somewhat surprisingly for a man of his time, he converted to Catholicism, which not many Protestants did back then and which could be a career killer given the anti-Catholic hate spreading at that time. He eventually got most of his family to convert too. Rosecrans did not get military action in the Mexican War, as it was seen as important to keep him teaching. But the Army didn’t pay that well and he had a big family and so he started looking around for alternative forms of income. He was a finalist for a better paying job at Virginia Military Institute in 1851, but VMI gave it to Stonewall Jackson instead.

Rosecrans thus left the Army in 1854 and did the variety of things a trained engineer might do in that time. He ran a mine in what is today West Virginia. He designed dams and locks on the Coal River in Virginia. He was involved in constructing early oil refineries as the oil boom started in the late 1850s. He invented a new form of a kerosene lamp that burned with a round wick and a method for making soap, both of which he patented. He also nearly died working on a supposedly safe oil lamp he wanted to patent. It was not safe. It caught the factory on fire and it caught Rosecrans on fire. Luckily for him, beards became popular for men at this time because his face was pretty scarred from the burning. He only recovered around the time the Civil War began.

Of course, men such as Rosecrans were nearly required to sign up for the war and most wanted to. Rosecrans volunteered immediately and was named an aide-de-camp to George McClellan. He was instantly named colonel and given charge of the 23rd Ohio, which had both Rutherford Hayes and William McKinley in its ranks. That lasted a few weeks before he was promoted to brigadier general. He had early success in the Western Virginia Campaign, which was important in that it solidified what would become West Virginia for the Union and effectively laid the groundwork for the secession of that area from the Confederacy. McClellan didn’t trust Rosecrans though and gave his western command to John C. Fremont, which did not go well. So for awhile, Rosecrans had a political job. He did not get along with anyone in Washington. Or really anyone at all. He had a huge ego. This would define his career.

Rosecrans was then put under Ulysses S. Grant in the Corinth campaign. He performed pretty well at the Battle of Iuka, a strange engagement with Confederate troops because Grant was nearby but because of an acoustic shadow, he had no idea the battle was going on. Now, Rosecrans’ arrival merely delayed a retreat move the Confederates were already making, but it seemed like a victory and the papers reported it as such, promoting Rosecrans over Grant in the public mind. This did not endear Rosecrans to Grant. Rumors about Grant in fact being drunk and that’s why he didn’t help Rosecrans circulated and let’s face it, those rumors existed for a reason. When Rosecrans published his own report that talked primarily about how great he was, Grant turned on him as a self-promoter. Wouldn’t be the last time. Then at Corinth, after a mediocre performance from his troops, he refused Grant’s orders to pursue, saying his troops needed rest, the ol’ McClellan excuse. Grant was furious.

But after Corinth, Rosecrans was given the command of XIV Corps, replacing Don Carlos Buell. He was very cautious here, infuriating Washington like McClellan did for the same reason. He had to be ordered to move. But he defeated Bragg in a very bloody battle at Stones River and was still popular in the press after that.

Then came the disaster at Chickamauga. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton urged Rosecrans to pursue but he didn’t want to once again. Then when he did engage, he screwed up big time. By issuing a poorly written order, a lesser officer assumed Rosecrans was ordering him to fill a gap in the line, which in fact created a gap in the line that Longstreet and his traitors rode right through. This is when George Thomas became known as the Rock of Chickamauga, basically saving Union forces from a total disaster, but it was really very close to complete destruction.

It’s hard to overstate how badly Rosecrans screwed up at Chickamauga. But it wasn’t just that. It’s that he was so disputatious. Almost everyone above Rosecrans hated him. It wasn’t only Grant. It was Stanton, who had hated Rosecrans ever since he was in Washington early in the war and openly criticized Washington’s prosecution of the conflict. So they were both ready to be done with Rosecrans. He was shoved off to Missouri to do nothing and remained there for the rest of the war.

Later in life, Rosecrans became very heavily involved in railroad speculation, especially in Mexico, where he worked closely with the allies of Porfirio Diaz to exploit that country to the max. Andrew Johnson named him Minister to Mexico in 1868. It took Grant about five minutes to get rid of him when he became president in 1869. Democrats tried to get him to run for office, but he didn’t want that until 1880. By then, he had invested heavily in lands around Los Angeles and so that year, agreed to go to Congress from a district in southern California. He and James Garfield had been close but he was so angry that Garfield’s campaign had played up his role in various battles over his superior office Rosecrans that our egoistic general ended the friendship. In 1882, Rosecrans was chair of the House Military Affairs Committee. As such, he tried to block a pension for Grant and his wife.

Rosecrans did not run for reelection in 1884. He became a regent at the University of California, got a good patronage position at home in the Cleveland administration, and was involved in the romantic Civil War remembrance stuff taking place by then. He died in 1898, at the age of 78. Pneumonia took him out.

William Rosecrans 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 so is Don Carlos Buell. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.