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At 65 years old, Major General Edwin Sumner was the oldest corps commander on either side during the Civil War. Born on January 30, 1797, in Boston, Sumner was an Old Army regular who commanded the Second Corps on the Peninsula and at Antietam.
Sumner is best known for three episodes in his career. The first happened at the Battle of Cerro Gordo during the Mexican War. Riding at the head of a charge by the Mountain Rifles, Sumner was struck in the forehead by a spent musket ball. The ball fell to the ground and Sumner gained his nickname "Bull Head," allegedly for the thickness of his skull. Sumner was also known as "Bull of the Woods" for his booming voice as he shouted commands.
Leading his men from the front was a characteristic of Sumner's. While commanding the 1st Cavalry on the frontier before the Civil War, Sumner watched Lt. Lunsford Lomax, who was in charge of a detail that was ordered to stretch a ferry rope across the Platte River. "Go in, men," Lomax ordered. Sumner responded, "Never say go in, Mr. Lomax, but come in" (Until Antietam, pp. 157-158). Nothing better exemplifies Sumner's command philosophy. It was at the same time his greatest strength and perhaps his greatest flaw as a field commander. Later, O. O. Howard would write: "He was remarkable for two military virtues: an exact obedience to orders and a rigid enforcement of discipline. If two methods were presented, one direct and the other indirect, he always chose the direct; if two courses opened, the one doubtful and leading to safety, the other dangerous and heroic, he was sure to choose the heroic at whatever cost" (Autobiography, vol. I, p. 181).
The caricature of Sumner's thick skull has followed him through history, indicating an unimaginative commander who was too regimented in his thinking, too old to change his ways, and was not competent to command a corps. For example, Stephen Sears writes that "no one had risen in rank further beyond his capacity" (To the Gates of Richmond, p. 71) and that "he was afflicted with the narrowest of military minds." "Left to find his natural level," Sears asserts, "Bull Sumner might have achieved brigade command" (Landscape Turned Red, p. 216). McClellan's assessment of Sumner's performance at Williamsburg is often cited by historians as evidence of his incompetence. "Sumner has proved he was even a greater fool than I supposed & had come within an ace of having us defeated," McClellan wrote to his wife (The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, p. 257).
Such characterizations do a disservice to Sumner. While he may have had some very evident flaws, he also had virtues that are not often acknowledged. Less well known than the statement quoted above, McClellan also wrote of Sumner: "He was an old and tried officer; perfectly honest; as brave as a man could be; conscientious and laborious. In many respects he was a model soldier. He was a man for whom I had a very high regard, and for the memory I have the greatest respect. He was a very valuable man, his soldierly example was of the highest value in a new army. A nation is fortunate that possesses many such soldiers as was Edwin V. Sumner" (McClellan's Own Story, p. 138).
The second episode for which Sumner is remembered occurred during the Battle of Fair Oaks. As O. O. Howard recounted it,
"Sumner's corps, we know, lay along the Chickahominy, opposite the battlefield. An order from McClellan restraining him from moving without permission was received by Sumner that morning. We heard the first fitful sound from Casey's guns, and before one o'clock we knew that a hard battle was going on. Sumner at once asked, by telegraph, permission to cross the river. He walked up and down like a caged lion. McClellan first telegraphed him to be ready. He was ready. But to save delay he sent Sedgwick's division with three batteries to his upper bridge and our division to the lower. The order to cross came at last at 2.30 P.M. As Sumner with Sedgwick approached, a part of the upper bridge rose with the water, starting to float off with the current. It was difficult to keep the green logs in place by ropes and withes; great cracks appeared. The engineer officer met Sumner and remonstrated: "General Sumner, you cannot cross this bridge! "
"Can't cross this bridge! I can, sir; I will, sir!"
"Don't you see the approaches are breaking up and the logs displaced? It is impossible! "
"Impossible! Sir, I tell you I can cross. I am ordered."
The orders had come and that ended the matter with Sumner (Autobiography, vol. I, p. 237).
Sumner's determination to obey orders may have saved the Army of the Potomac on May 31, 1862. Of this episode Charles Wainwright would write: "But the old soldier was as honest as the day, and as simple as a child. The fault was not so much his, as of those who put him and kept him in such a place, while the glorious way in which he pushed across the half-gone bridges to the relief of Keyes at Fair Oaks suffices to cover all his faults." (A Diary of Battle, p. 174).
Sumner responded in much the same manner in the third episode for which he is remembered -- the tragedy that befell Sedgwick's division as Sumner personally led it from the front at Antietam.
While acknowledging his flaws, it is also important to recognize Sumner's strengths. My own eyes were opened to this usually ignored side of the general while reading Francis Walker's History of the Second Corps. Of Sumner, Walker wrote, "much may be said on either side of the question whether, with his mental habits and his advanced age, he should have been designated for the command of twenty thousand new troops in the field, against a resolute and tenacious enemy skillfully and tenaciously led; but every voice must award praise, and only praise, to his transcendent soldierly virtues. Jupiter, shining full, clear, and strong in the midnight heavens, might be the disembodied soul of Edwin V. Sumner. In honor, in courage, in disinterestedness, in patriotism, in magnanimity, he shone resplendent. Meanness, falsehood, duplicity were more hateful than death to the simple-hearted soldier who had put himself, sword in hand, at the head of the divisions of Richardson and Sedgwick" (p. 11).
Further, Walker wrote,"If the Second Corps had a touch above the common; if in the terrible ordeals of flame and death, through which, in three years of almost continuous fighting, they were called to pass these two divisions showed a courage and tenacity that made them observed among the bravest; if they learned to drop their thousands upon the field as often as they were summoned to the conflict, but on no account to leave a color in the hands of the enemy, it was very largely through the inspiration derived from the gallant old chieftain who first organized them and led them into battle. It is easy to criticize Sumner's dispositions at Antietam -- the dangerous massing of Sedgwick's brigades, the exposure of the flank of the charging column, the failure of the commander to supervise and direct, from some central point, all the operations of the corps; yet no one who saw him there, hat in hand, his white hair streaming in the wind, riding abreast of the field officers of the foremost line, close up against the rocky ledges bursting with the deadly flame of Jackson's volleys, could ever fail to thereafter to understand the furious thrust with which a column of the Second Corps always struck the enemy, or the splendid intrepidity with which it's brigade and division commanders were wont to ride through the thickest of the fight as calmly as on parade" (pp. 12-13).
After Antietam Sumner would command the Right Grand Division at Fredricksburg before being relieved at his own request. He was on leave at his home in Syracuse and preparing to assume a new command in the far west when he fell sick. Edwin Sumner died on March 21, 1863. His last words were, "God help my country, the United States of America."
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