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By Sean Heuvel - For those interested in the American presidency and Civil War history, it is useful to explore the wartime service of relatives of America's presidents. Many of our modern chief executives had noteworthy family connections to the conflict.
For instance, both of Lyndon B. Johnson's grandfathers, Joseph W. Baines and Samuel E. Johnson, served the Confederacy as members of Texas cavalry regiments. Richard Nixon's great-grandfather George Nixon III died during the Battle of Gettysburg serving as a private in the 73rd Ohio Infantry. In fact, then-Vice President Nixon visited the Gettysburg grave of this Unionist ancestor in the 1950s.
However, it is particularly compelling to explore the Civil War service of descendants of America's earliest presidents. Their significant link to the Founding Fathers meant that they faced the difficult burden of supporting or resisting a government their ancestors had worked hard to create.
For such research, "Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of America," a thorough genealogical reference guide, proves invaluable because the task of identifying members of an early president's family decades after he left office can be daunting. Even by the 1860s, however, years after the deaths of their presidential patriarchs, many descendants still enjoyed social prominence and influence among their peers. Accordingly, several played important roles during the Civil War, including service as key military officers and diplomats.
Many of George Washington's descendants were active during the war, mostly supporting the Confederacy as officers in the Rebel army. For instance, John Augustine Washington, a great-nephew of the president, served as a lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp to Gen. Robert E. Lee before his death during a skirmish at Cheat Mountain in what then was western Virginia in September 1861. Col. Washington had sold Mount Vernon to the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association just three years earlier.
Another Washington relative achieved prominence before the war began. Lewis William Washington, the president's half-great-great-nephew and a former Army colonel, was among those held hostage by John Brown during his famous raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.
However, Lee was the most prominent Civil War-era combatant with family ties to Washington. Lee was related to the first president through his wife, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, Washington's step-great-granddaughter. This line of the Custis family was especially proud of its heritage because Mary's father, George Washington Parke Custis, grew up at Mount Vernon under George and Martha Washington's care.
Many descendants of President John Adams also were active during the war. However, unlike much of Washington's Virginia-based family, the Adams relatives all supported the Union cause. Charles Francis Adams, a grandson of John Adams and son of John Quincy Adams, played the most influential wartime role among his family.
As U.S. minister to Great Britain from 1861 to 1868, Adams was a major force in preventing that nation and other European powers from recognizing the fledgling Confederacy. Many regarded this feat as the diplomatic equivalent of winning a major U.S. military victory at home.
Two of Charles Adams' sons also supported the Federal cause as officers in the Union Army. John Quincy Adams II served as a colonel on the staff of Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrews, while Charles Francis Adams Jr. served as a lieutenant colonel and brevet brigadier general in Federal cavalry units.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison also had several relatives who fought in the Civil War. As with George Washington's descendants, many served as officers in the Confederate army, though some sources suggest that a few of Jefferson's relatives supported the Union cause.
George Wythe Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, was his family's most prominent wartime participant. A former U.S. naval officer and Richmond lawyer, Randolph served as a delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention in 1861, where he voted to withdraw from the Union.
Commissioned a major in the Confederate army, he served with distinction during the Battle of Big Bethel, eventually earning himself promotion to brigadier general in February 1862. A month later, Randolph was appointed Confederate secretary of war, a post in which he served only briefly because of a stormy relationship with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Upon discovering that he suffered from tuberculosis, Randolph sat out the rest of the war and died in 1867.
James Madison's most notable Civil War descendant was his great-nephew, James Edwin Slaughter. A career Army officer and Mexican War veteran, Slaughter left the U.S. Army in 1861 to join the Confederate war effort, earning promotion to brigadier general in 1862. He served primarily in the Western theater, working with Confederate Gens. Albert Sidney Johnston, Braxton Bragg and P.G.T. Beauregard.
After seeing action in Tennessee in engagements including Shiloh, Slaughter spent the rest of the war in Texas as chief of staff and chief of artillery to Gen. John B. Magruder. Upon the war's conclusion, he spent several years in exile in Mexico before returning to the United States to work as a civil engineer and postmaster. He died in 1901 during a visit to Mexico and is buried in Mexico City.
Sean Heuvel is a professor of American studiesat Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. He and his wife live in Williamsburg.
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
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