Life and military career of Winfield Scott Hancock; his early life, education and remarkable military career

Front matter

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Prologue

I MAKE no apology for this book. It has already had the double advertisement of praise from friends and abuse from foes, and if that does not secure it a fair clientage, no explanation of mine will. My chief motive is to help once more to put an American into the Presidency who will honestly lead the American people away from quarrels into comradeship and confidence. Such a man is the soldier Hancock.

Believe me, I have no other aspiration in writing his life. I do not want any of his" offices. Never having been a candidate before any administration of the general government for place, I have simply, in order to maintain my independence, resigned most valuable positions voluntarily tendered to me by other Presidents. I can safely make this statement ; and as for money, I have never learned to steal it from the Government, though I dearly love to earn a fair living by honest industry in my own chosen profession. The little organs and placemen of a party just ushered into being one year after I myself co-operated with it to put down human slavery, are now as much disturbed by my refusal to follow that party into the very sectionalism I have always despised, and are as angry as so many disturbed mice in a rich cheese because they say that I have left the ring Eepublicans. As I never belonged to these rings, I cannot therefore be accused of leaving them. In one thing I am consistent at least, and that is in sincere love of my

12 PROLOGUE.

country; and I will join any side or drop any side, if by so doing I can get the American people to be good to each other, to be grateful to thoi^e who have served them, to put the best men into oflEice, to help our youth to be honest and manly, and have pluck enough to drive out of positions of trust a set of mercenaries as utterly disqualified for public responsibility as any men that ever lived. I think it is high time for our country to realize that the parrot politicians, running up and down the land, shrieking Eepublicanism and abusing honest people because they will not bow to such temporary fantococcini,* are mere impostors, and no more genuine in their professions than a set of play actors trying to show that they are real kings, when they are simply paste, spangles and feathers.

General Hancock seems to me to be the constable to clear out these intruders. At all events, let us give the bold soldier a full chance. I believe in him thoroughly, and have always believed in him. I knew him as boy and man, in peace and war, and his father's associates in Montgomery County were the friends of my youth. I do not condemn him because he was born in my State, for I have a Scotchman's love of home ; and I would not shoot him because he continues a Democrat, when I know that without Democrats we should have been beaten in the civil war.

This is the general scope of the volume now committed to the public. It has been quick work ; and when J recollect that one distinguished American has been toiling nearly twenty years on the life of Voltaire, that another started on the biography of General Grant twelve years ago, and has only printed one volume, and that another ten years ago advertised an elaborate memoir of Thaddeus Stevens, and has not yet issued a single page of it ; if this campaign life of Winfield S. Hancock, the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, is a little defective, I cannot be

blamed. Very sincerely,

J. W. Forney.

* Fantococcini. Exhibitions and dramatic representations, in which puppets are substituted for human performers. — Worcester.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Fro:ntispiece — Winfield Scott Hancock.

Maternal Home 19

Ancestral flome 23

Eoad between Yorktown and Williamsburg 53

Battle of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks 71\

Battle-Field of the Seven Pines 71

Hospital at Fair Oaks 89

Bridge over the Chickahominy 89

Battle of Gaines' Farm 107

Ruins of Gaines' Mill 107

Malvern Hills 123

-^Antietam Battle-Ground 141

Battle of Antietam 159

■Rattle of Fredericksburg 177

Fredericksburg on the Morning of the 12th 199

Phillips' House on Fire 199

Defenses on Gulp's Hill 217

Ruins of Chancellorsville 217

Gettysburg .-.. 251

General George G. Meade 285^

General Robert E. Lee. 285

Waiting for Tickets of Admission to National Convention. 375 General Hancock receiving Congratulations at Head- Quarters 399

Official Notification 435

W. H. English 485

WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK.

Chapter I. Biography

HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

THERE are some maxims that grow more precious with age because they seem to apply more forcibly every day to the ordinary transactions of life. One of these is that of the ancient philosopher who declared that most history was false except in its dates and names, and that much fiction was true except in its dates and names. The life of Winfield Scott Hancock is an experience that sometimes reads like romance and reality combined. It is a succession of lessons to young and to old, and we can read none of it without feeling that Hancock was raised among good people and by careful parents, who had instilled their own domestic methods into his early training. The impression his experience makes upon me revives another saying of the great Roman 2 17 freedman, Terence, who, more than two thousand years ago, wrote, " I am a man and have an interest in everything that concerns humanity/'

The ancestral homestead of General Hancock, on the maternal side, stands in Montgomery Co., Pa,, half a mile east of Lansdale and about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia. The old portion of the house was erected in 1728, and the new portion in 1764. In this house the mother of General Hancock resided at the time of her marriage to the General's father. The county in which this historic homestead stands was named after General Montgomery, who fell at Quebec, and whose monument stands in St. Paul's Churchyard, New York. At the time of his marriage, Mr. Benjamin Franklin Hancock — father of General Hancock — was living in what was afterwards the birth-place of General Hancock, some three miles east of Lansdale. It stands about half a mile east of the Square, and it is a solid, well-preserved building, of fine appearance.

When young Hancock v^as a year old, his father removed from this old mansion to a house of less pretensions, somewhat nearer to Montgomery Square, where he resided and taught school under the same roof. The school-house residence is still standing, but greatly altered in appearance. Two years later, young Hancock's father removed to Norristown, and there taught school and practiced law till he died, at the age of sixty-seven years.

The ancestors of General Hancock, on both sides, belonged to families of revolutionary fame, and were engaged in all the wars, from the French and Indian, before the Eevolution, down to the war of 1812.

The father of General Hancock married against the will of his guardian, who was a Quaker, and joined the Baptists, to whom his wife belonged, and became a deacon in the Baptist church at Norristown. He was a constitutional man and a Democrat, but not a politician, and never sought or held any political office. When his son, the j)resent General Hancock, at the age of sixteen, went to West Point, the Quakers attempted to induce the sister of his father's guardian. Miss Polly Roberts, to cut off young Winfield in her will, as the profession of a soldier, educated as a man of war, was not to be encouraged. She remained steadfast, however, until General Hancock had graduated and gone to Mexico and become engaged with the enemy, and, as she supposed, had "killed people.'* Then the "Friends" said it was impossible she could bestow a legacy upon a person who was killing men by wholesale, and this prevailed. Winfield was cut off in the will. But, as she suspected that the "Friends" wanted her money, she provided for the younger brother in place of Winfield.

In this old homestead his grandfather died, at 84, and was buried in the churchyard at Montgomery Square, and his father before him died in the same house. This very house was attacked by Indians and bravely defended by the women.

Nature cast Hancock in a mould of rare comeliness. He seems to have been physically fashioned for a soldier. Now in his fifty-seventh year (born February 14, 1824) he stands six feet two inches, nearly as tall and as broad as the gigantic hero of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, Winfield Scott, after whom he was named; and he resembles in speech and bearing that impressive and courtly soldier, who died at West Point, where Hancock was educated, on the 29th day of May, 1866, in the eightieth year of his age. Doubtless Hancock's father and mother, Benjamin Franklin and Elizabeth Hancock, were largely influenced by the fascinating incidents of the brilliant hero, who was still suffering from the wounds he had received in repelling the second British invasion of our northern frontier — then bearing the golden honors of Congress, after declining the generous proffers of high political office from the administration of President Monroe. All unconscious of the future military renown of their son, they called him Winfield Scott. His twin brother, Hillary Hancock, a member of the Minnesota Bar, is living much respected in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, Minnesota; his youngest brother, John Hancock, who was also in the army of the Potomac with the General, is now living in Washington City, D. C, an officer of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. These three boys were the only children.

The father, Benjamin F. Hancock, a respected member of the bar, died at Norristown, in his sixty-eighth year, on the first of February, 1867, and his mother, at an advanced age, died in the same town, two years ago. They were always worthy members of the Baptist churches of Norristown and Bridgeport.

The rapid growth of our country is one of the strongest arguments in favor of republican institutions, and the essential changes of government at different periods, not only diffuse official prizes among the masses, but also make them better acquainted with each other. Peculiar exigencies alone, maintained one party in power, consecutively, for more than a quarter of a century. Alternation in administration, and not mere rotation in office, is the salt that savors and saves at once. The distribution of public trusts among the people, not the wretched plan of removing subordinates at the command of every machine despot, is after all the highest conservatism. West Point and the Naval School are the real colleges of free government. Their acolytes come from all ranks of society, and from all parties and sections ; and while they are thoroughly educated, the course of instruction stimulates gentility, emulation, and manly comradeship; and above all, pride of country. The modern magicians, steam and electricity, add to this individual and general knowledge; and at the end of every decade the citizens have a better knowledge of each other, as well as of the vicinities in which they were respectively born and lived. A boy raised in one place, trained to duty in the army and the navy at another, sent abroad by government into distant sections and seas, becomes, not simply a student of men and manners, but a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world.

General Hancock was one of the cadets, who have made their native places as renowned as themselves, and there are many who would like to know something of his birthplace, as they study the interesting story of his life. Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, so called after General Richard Montgomery, the Irish-American General, killed at Queenstown, in 1775, only nine years before that county was taken from the larger district of Philadelphia, is one of many places that preserve the memory of that true-hearted martyr of the cause of human liberty. More than any other people, ours cultivate the habit of calling their sons, their shires, their towns, their counties and their states, after the great men who have figured conspicuously in science, literature, and arms. So that while the subject of our sketch bears the proud name of one of the greatest soldiers of the second generation of our civil existence, the district in which he first saw the light of life, bears that of another emhient hero of the generation which began two years after the Declaration of Independence. I count over sixty Montgomery s in the maps and gazeteers, North and South, to designate towns, villages, counties, and states in this country, a fact which proves that gratitude for bravery is indigenous in the American heart, and springs eternal in the American bosom.

HIS NATIVE COUNTY.

Montgomery County, where Hancock was born, is one of the loveliest in the State. Nothing could be sweeter in spring and summer, and bolder and more picturesque in winter, than the valley of the Schuylkill river. That useful and historic stream forms the south-western boundary ; for some distance passing through broad cultivated fields, with substantial stone houses and villas : here and there an elegant country-seat; then sweeps past bold bluffs of rock, almost denying a passage to the railroad, and then rushes by bright and busy manufacturing towns, its own waters helping to drive the machinery. There are other streams applied to other practical purposes. The mineral wealth, limestone, and marble, supply valuable material to the markets of Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Iron ore is mined in large quantities; copper in limited amount, has been found in one part of the county, while its agriculture and manufacturing resources add to the power of the county. The cash value of the land is estimated at over fiftyone millions of dollars, and the farm products in one year, are estimated to be worth about ten millions, while its many woolen, cotton, and iron mills are famous all over the country. The able editor of the Norristown Herald, my friend, Morgan R. Wills, Esq., has printed an excellent picture of the history and resources of this interesting region.

Hancock's native county is rich in Revolutionary memories and materials — in facts and legends: it is sacred ground — Valley Forge, a spot made memorable by the great encampment of Washington's army, in 1777, where they suffered incredible horrors during that terrible winter, is only six miles from Norristown, where Hancock was born. In that gloomy crisis in our American affairs, Washington himself wrote: "There was little less than a famine in camp. Part of the army had been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days ; yet naked and starving as they were, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they had not ere this been excited to mutiny and dissension." Within a few years Valley Forge has become the property of the people, purchased, furnished and decorated by the leading citizens of Pennsylvania.

What is now Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, was originally settled by Welsh and Swedes, and in the upper part by Germans. Subsequently came the Quakers, the Welsh and Swedes, and now their descendants are found all over the district, which is itself composed of eleven boroughs, thirty townships, fifty-four election districts, with a population of about ninety thousand souls.

When I think of the men of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, they seem to pass before the mirror of my memory like the familiars of my youth. I knew many of them, including the descendants of the old families, just as to-day I can mentally hold converse with the leading minds of both parties in all the States and Territories of this Great Republican Empire. I hold in my hand an admirable book just out, prepared and edited by a citizen of Norristown, M. Auge, " Lives of the Eminent Dead and Biographical Notices of Prominent Living Citizens of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania," and with this for my torch and teacher I light up the past and linger upon the present with all the pleasure of the spectator pondering in a great picture gallery. These were the men who went before and walked at the side of General Hancock's ancestors. Every county has its own record, and such is the fortunate condition of our people under republican institutions, aided by scientific discoveries and modern inventions and a thousand adaptabilities, the results of our admirable system of universal education, that the record of one county has become interesting to all others; and he who reads the annals of a northern or southern state or district, frequently recognizes unforgotten names and events. Here we have David R. Porter and Francis R. Shunk, Democratic Governors of Pennsylvania from 1838 to 1841 and from 1844 to 1848, both natives of Montgomery County. Here I find excellent sketches of Jonathan Roberts, John B. Sterigere, Jacob S. Yost, Benjamin Markley Boyer, Joshua Evans, Cadwalader Evans, Joseph Fornance, Jacob Fry, Jr., James Boyd, George Bullock, Peter F. Rothermel, J. F. Hartranft, the Corson families, the Woods families, Samuel Allen, David Crouse, Owen Jones, Charles Cutler, Daniel 0. Hitner, E. F. Acker and John Friedley; a long catalogue of men, most of them dead, some living, members of all professions, every one of them known beyond the borders of Pennsylvania as men of mark in their day and time. The great picture of the Battle of Gettysburg, now at Memorial Hall, opposite the Permanent Exhibition Building, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, was painted by the Rothermel, whose name I have just written.

But it is not only in art and arms, in the learning of the Bar, in the inspiration of the Pulpit, and in the great historic deeds of the past that this single county of Pennsylvania is rich. There are manufacturing centres where skilled labor has won some of its proudest triumphs. Conshohocken, the great iron manufacturing centre, a few years ago a comparative village, now with a population of six thousand, with an annual product of from three to four millions of dollars — this and other great centres show how rapidly, in connection with mental development, the material growth of a great county increases with years. Montgomery County was also the home and almost the birthplace of David Rittenhouse, the astronomer and philosopher; where Charles Thompson, the great secretary of the first revolutionary congress, had his residence — in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County — and where he died in 1824, in the ninety-seventh year of his age. Here too lived Richard Penn Smith, well beloved and remembered in Philadelphia and elsewhere for his genius and genial nature.

THE MUHLENBERGS.

But no names awaken a deeper and more permanent interest than the Muhlenbergs. How often I have dwelt upon the interesting and attractive story of these wonderful men ! — these fighting priests, profound scholars, and natural leaders. Long ago, in my youthful days, these romantic lives came to me, as fascinating as the absorbing pages of Robinson Crusoe or the Arabian Nights, or Riley's Narratives among the Arabs, or the pious legend of John Bunyan. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the founder of the family, was a

Gottingen student, born in Hanover, Germany, who landed in this country in 1742, and founded a Lutheran Congregation at Trappe and New Hanover, Montgomery County, marrying the daughter of Conrad Weiser, the celebrated Indian interpreter. And here were born to him the three noted children, Peter, Frederick Augustus and Henry Ernest, all distinguished clergymen. One of his daughters was the mother of Governor John Andrew Schultz. His sons born at Trappe were educated in Germany. They were a wild set, these early Muhlenbergs, brave, original, imperious, all of them Democrats, fighting and preaching for patriotic ideas when they were young and defending them when they were old. Peter, preacher as he was, had a congregation at Woodstock, Shenandoah County, Va. In January, 1776, he pronounced a sermon on the "duties men owe to their country.'* He preached, adding "There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to fight, and now is the time to fight." Then he descended from the pulpit and took off his gown, which covered a colonel's uniform, read his commission, ordered the drummers to beat for recruits, and within a few days recruited three hundred men from his own churches, enlisted for the revolutionary war. It was not long until he had a full regiment mustered into the service. He fought in Georgia and South Carolina, at the battles of Brandy wine and Germantown, at Valley Forge, in the battle of Monmouth and at the capture of Stony Point. He was at the taking of Yorktown in 1781. Then he came back, not to the church but to the Trappe in Montgomery County. He was chosen as a member of Congress^ member of the State Legislature, serving several years in each, and was finally United States Senator. In 1803 he was Collector of the Port of Philadelphia, made so by Thomas Jefferson, which he held until 1807, when he died at the age of sixty-two. The Aurora, the Democratic organ of Philadelphia, said "In private life just, in domestic life affectionate and sincere, his body lies beside his father's at the Trappe Church." It is this great man's statue that Pennsylvania, by Act of Congress, has selected to place in the Hall of the Old Eepresentatives at Washington, side by side with that of Robert Fulton, the great engineer and inventor, born in Lancaster County, very near Montgomery — the sculptor of Muhlenberg being Blanche Nevin of Philadelphia, and that of Fulton being Edward Roberts of the same city.

The second son, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, was not less brilliant and distinguished than Peter. Educated at the University of Halle^ Germany, he returned, and established a church in New York, but soon entered politics, also returning to Trappe, Montgomery county. He was in the State Assembly in 1779, one of the Judges of the county, then Register and Recorder, then

Representative in Congress, and afterwards the great Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States.

The other brother, the Rev. Henry Ernest Muhlenberg, was born in Trappe, Montgomery county, November, 1753. He was ordained, and acted as assistant pastor of a Lutheran church of Philadelphia, — and a patriot, a man of science, a linguist. He removed to Lancaster, where he remained at the head of a Lutheran church for thirty-five years. The third generation of Muhlenbergs I knew and honored: Henry A. Muhlenberg of Reading, Dr. Frederick Augustus of Lancaster, and the eminent scholar of the same name, one of the professors in the University of Pennsylvania, — the first two gone, the last surviving, — filled high positions in public, and have always been eminent for their virtues.

I

MADE A CADET AT THE MILITARY ACADEMY.

It was among such scenes and men, many of the latter known to himself, and those not known to him, frequently spoken of by his father, that young Hancock approached manhood. A proud father and fond mother saw their three boys growing in grace and strength. In 1840, Winfield was just sixteen years old. It is not flattery to say that he was a handsome boy, if you may judge by the picturesque soldier now before the country, as the candidate of the great party, for the highest gift of over forty-eight millions of people. The member of Congress from the district, in that year, was Joseph Fornance, a Democrat like Hancock's father, who had, at that time, considerable influence in Washington. A mild, yet conscientious lawyer, he wielded a large influence in society and at the bar. It fell to his lot, under the law of the government, to select a cadet to West Point. For some years Winfield had become quite a soldier boy among his school-fellows. He was a lad of spirit and natural elegance of manner, vigilant at Sunday-school, (his father wa3 a Sunday-school teacher,) and a leader among his mates. His parents were sincere Christians ; morning and evening they had their family prayers. Winfield acquired a sort of chivalry, and more than once assumed the championship of weaker and younger boys. The lads of the village organized a volunteer " soldier company," and Winfield was unanimously elected captain, when he was only twelve years old, and to this date it is remembered in Norristown, how well the drills, parades, inspections, reviews, battles, and camps of these little men were conducted under the command of their graceful boyish chief. He had learned at home that obedience was not only a virtue, but a duty. He, and his brother Hillary, worshipped their mother. I wish I could say that the influence of home in these latter days is as controlling as it was fifty years ago, and I hope there are still hamlets and country-sides where the simple, gracious, indulgent, yet courageous ministrations of a dear mother are as frequent and effective as they were in 1835 and 1840. Is it because women are less amiable or emulous to excel in piety and devotion, or because their children are more eager to rush all unprovided and unarmed and inexperienced, into the wild and terrible attractions and dangers of life? Assuredly, admiration for the sex is not dead among men, and ambition to excel no longer a passion. Yet without pausing to decide the problem, it is useful and certainly pleasant to recur to that gentle household in Norristown, of which the presiding divinity was the sweet mother of the Hancock boys. Her authority was the law. And so in the discipline of his little soldiers, whenever an offence had to be punished, the case was referred, by Winfield, to the mother of the culprit, and she, as the supreme court of the occasion, generally cured the delinquent.

It was perhaps these early American inclinings that attracted a friend of Mr. Fornance, the member of Congress from the district, to Winfield. But there is a curious incident connected with his selection to West Point, that may be related here: Appointments to the Military Academy, like those to the Naval Academy, have always been attractive to American youth. Some years ago a practice had grown up under which members of

Congress were not themselves indifferent to temptation, and even to bribes, when they came to distribute this peculiar patronage. A few exposures, however, seemed to have put an end to the wretched business, and now our Congressional statesmen have adopted the better practice of opening a competition to these great national Academies, by which the best pupils in our common schools may be examined whenever a cadet to West Point or Annapolis must be appointed. In this way there is little danger of corruption or inferiority. Forty years ago a Philadelphian came to Norristown with his son, intending to make a residence preparatory to his application for the waiting cadetship. His movements soon became known to an old friend of mine, long since dead, who had himself been in Congress and had special reason to distrust the Philadelphian. This reason was his knowledge of a transaction in which the latter was a principal. My old friend had sold this man a valuable horse under the plain condition that the noble animal should be treated well and only put to light work. In his day and time my friend had been the leader of the Democratic party of Montgomery County, and many a night he had been carried through the townships by this faithful steed, arousing the unterrified, or attending to his own heavy law business. He loved his old horse ; he trusted his Philadelphia acquaintance. But what was his amazement, on visiting the city some time subsequent to the sale, to find his favorite trotter hitched to a heavy loaded dray, and an angry driver lashing him with brutal ferocity. The poor animal had been sold by the man who had promised to be kind to him. It did not take long for the original owner to buy back his favorite horse at a high price. But he did not forget the bad faith of the Philadelphian, and when he found the latter had changed his residence to get his son into West Point, he at once resolved to see if he could not checkmate him. Joseph Fornance was the sitting member. The other veteran politician lost no time in letting him know the horse story, and the scheme to obtain his recommendation of the other boy. The next day after his interview with the member of Congress, my friend consulted Winfield's father and mother, telling them that he thought he could secure his selection as a cadet to West Point. They were much surprised, but needed little persuasion, especially reinforced by the earnest appeals of their son to consent to the suggestion. Thus giving the boy to his country to begin a career, which progressed so favorably and ended so brilliantly. My devoted friend died in 1852, leaving an ample fortune; and his first executor was Winfield's father, Benjamin Franklin Hancock.

And now we find young Winfield Scott Hancock an entered cadet at West Point. Forty years have produced a magical change in mankind. The Military Academy has had a tremendous experience since the Montgomery boy crossed its threshold. Of his comrades, those who preceded him, and those who followed, many are gone and forgotten; yet there is eternal youth and life in the liberty many of them perished to preserve. Cotemporaneous with him at the Academy, were many cadets who afterwards became distinguished. Among others were Horatio G.Wright, A.W.Whipple, Nathaniel Lyon, Schuyler Hamilton, John F. Reynolds, Don Carlos Buell Alfred Sully, John Newton, W. S. Rosencrans John Pope, Abner Doubleday, N. J. T. Dana George Sykes, Lafayette McLaws, James Long street, W. B. Franklin, C. C. Augur, Ulysses S Grant, Rufus Ingalls, W. F. Smith, Fitz John For ter, John P. Hatch, Gordon Granger, George B McClellan, J. L. Reno, D. N. Couch, T. F. Jackson and George Stoneman. Established by the wise prevision of Washington, West Point is a school that has proved its value to our institutions in many fields of science and of strife. The novitiate of Winfield was crowned by the respectability of his examination, and the average excellence of his standing in the graduating class.