ColorizedPast
Corporal
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2016
- Location
- Hangzhou, China (Wisconsin, USA)
Major General Edwin Vose Sumner (USV)
Edwin Vose Sumner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 30 January 1797. After losing interest in a mercantile career, he joined the United States Army as a second lieutenant in the 2nd US Infantry Regiment on 3 March 1819. He was promoted to first lieutenant on 25 January 1825. He married Hannah Wickersham Foster on 31 March 1822.
He served in the Black Hawk War and in various Indian campaigns. On 4 March 1833, he was promoted to captain and assigned command of B Company, the US Dragoon Regiment. In 1838, he commanded the cavalry instructional establishment at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania. He commanded Fort Atkinson, Iowa Territory, from 1842 to 1845. He was promoted to major of the 2nd Dragoons on 30 June 1846.
During the Mexican-American War, Sumner was brevetted lieutenant colonel for bravery at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, gaining the nickname "Bull Head" because of a story about a musket ball that bounced off his head during the battle. At the Battle of Molino del Rey, he was brevetted colonel. On 23 July 1848, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 1st US Dragoons. He served as military governor of the New Mexico Territory from 1851 to 1853. On 3 March 1855, he was promoted to colonel of the 1st US Cavalry.
In 1856, Sumner commanded Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and became involved in the Bleeding Kansas crisis. In 1857, he led a punitive expedition against the Cheyenne. In 1858, he commanded the Department of the West. Early in 1861, he advised President-elect Abraham Lincoln to carry a weapon. Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott assigned Sumner as the senior officer to accompany Lincoln from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C.
In February 1861, Brig. Gen. David E. Twiggs was dismissed from the Army for treason. On 12 March, Lincoln nominated Sumner to replace Twiggs as one of three brigadier generals in the regular army. He replaced Brig. Gen. Albert S. Johnston (who joined the Confederacy) in command of the Department of the Pacific in California.
In November, Sumner was brought back east to command a division. When Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan began organizing the Army of the Potomac, Sumner was given command of the II Corps. The oldest general in the Army of the Potomac, he led his corps through the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles.
McClellan formed a poor opinion of Sumner after the Battle of Williamsburg on 5 May 1862, but Sumner's initiative in sending reinforcements prevented a Union disaster at the Battle of Seven Pines. He received the brevet of major general in the regular army for his gallantry at Seven Pines. He was struck multiple times by spent balls at the Battle of Glendale. Despite his old-fashioned ideas on disciple and respect for commanding officers, the troops had a generally positive opinion of him. On 4 July 1862, he was promoted to major general of volunteers.
At the Battle of Antietam, Sumner ordered Brig. Gen. John Sedgwick's division to launch an attack in the West Woods. The assault was devastated by a Confederate counterattack. Most historians have condemned Sumner's "reckless" attack, lack of coordination with other corps commanders, accompanying Sedgwick's division and losing control over his other attacking division, failing to perform adequate reconnaissance, and selecting an unusual line of battle formation that was so effectively flanked by the Confederate counterattack. Recent scholarship, however, has determined that Sumner did perform appropriate reconnaissance and his decision to attack where he did was justified by the available information.
Sumner's other divisions drove the weak Confederate center back, but Sumner was badly shaken by the disaster to Sedgwick. Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin wanted to attack with his fresh VI Corps, but Sumner, who was senior to him, ordered him to hold back with McClellan's support.
Shortly before being fired from command of the Army in October 1862, McClellan recommended that Sumner be relieved of duty due to his age and health, but nothing came of it. When Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside grouped the corps of the Army of the Potomac into "grand divisions", Sumner was appointed to command the Right Grand Division. He took part in the Battle of Fredericksburg where the II Corps, now commanded by Maj. Gen. Darius N. Couch, suffered heavy casualties in frontal assaults against Confederate troops fortified at Marye's Heights.
Soon after Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's appointment to command the Army of the Potomac on 26 January 1863, Sumner was relieved at his own request, disillusioned with the quarreling in the army and also thoroughly exhausted. He was reassigned to the Department of the Ohio, effective in the spring. Before that, Sumner went to his daughter's home in Syracuse, New York, to rest. Falling ill with fever, he died on 21 March 1863. His two sons, Brig. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner, Jr. and Maj. Gen. Samuel S. Sumner, both served in the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.
Bringing the