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"Certain as the sun . . Rising in the east
Tale as old as time . . song as old as rhyme . .
Beauty and the Beast." {*}
Tale as old as time . . song as old as rhyme . .
Beauty and the Beast." {*}
First we look at the most obvious couple that come to mind. Mention Beast and one goes immediately to Union General Benjamin Butler. Theodore Lyman, an aide to General George Meade wrote:
"He is the strangest sight on a horse you ever saw; it is hard to keep your eyes off him. With his head set immediately on a stout, shapeless body, his very squinting eyes and a set of legs and arms that look as if made for somebody else, and hastily glued to him by mistake." {1}
However he still managed to find quite the beauty for a wife. She was remarkable even before she met her Beast. As a teenaged girl living in Massachusetts Sarah demonstrated a love for dramatics and had a family that believed in her talents so she was sent to study performance arts in Boston. She gained quite success and performed as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, as far west as Cincinnati, Ohio and of course the artistic cities of New York and Boston. Her life changed when she married the man of her dreams on May 16, 1844 and gave up her stage career to be a wife and mother.
When you have a book named "The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy" you probably know the next "Beast" would be discovered within the pages. In fact when he met his wife Eliza or commonly called "Elise" the oldest daughter of an owner of a sugar and cotton plantation "Evergreen" in Terre Boone Parish, Louisiana, she confided she found him to be a bit reserved and cold.
He at least had a friend in his wife when she later described her husband as a man with a depth of affection and devotion. However others were not so gracious as Edward Porter Alexander described him:
"He was celebrated through all the Confederate armies as a stern disciplinarian . . . But I don't think Gen. Bragg inspired any enthusiasm in his men . . he certainly never impressed me as a man of intellectual power . . and to be utterly frank there were some who did not hesitate openly to say that he was simply muddle headed & especially that he never could understand a map, & that it was a spectacle to see him wrestle with one." {1}
Princess Nadezhda Antonina L'vova was born in Russia in 1826. She was given an excellent education and on May 10, 1856 she married Ivan Vasilovitch Turchaninov and in that same year the couple immigrated to the United States. They anglicized their names and her husband was known as John Turchin while she was Nadine Turchin. Since neither spoke English they both enrolled in higher education with John at the University of Pennsylvania studying engineering and Nadine at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia.
She was a woman with a mind of her home and during the war she traveled with her husband. There is even some who claim when her husband was ill in 1862, she filled in as the regimental commander until he could resume his duties. When her husband was accused with dereliction of duty, Madame Turchin (as her husband's soldiers began calling her) went to Chicago and on to Washington D.C. in an effort to clear her husband's name. It was successful for President Lincoln reinstated him into the Union Army.
Although he was adored by his wife not all thought he was so wonderful. "A dumpy, fat Russian, with short legs, he could sit on a horse as upon a chair but, when it came to a gallop or a full charge, he was afraid of falling off and of being run over. A perfectly cold-blooded foreigner, he did not care a fig what became of me or the few men who followed me. . . I had no faith in him," . . . so wrote David S. Stanley in his "Memoirs". {1}
According to the book "Nathan Bedford Forrest" by Jack Hurst the story is told of how Nathan Bedford Forrest met his wife Mary Ann Montgomery apparently a "good Christian girl". Their love story is legendary. When it came to asking for her hand in marriage, he approached her uncle and guardian Reverend Samuel Montgomery. Of course as a Godly guardian, the request was denied declaring "Why, Bedford, I couldn't consent. You cuss and gamble and Mary Ann is a Christian girl."
Of course just as legendary was the future Civil War General's response; "I know it and that's just why I want her." {5} The couple were married on September 25, 1845 - - and the rest of their story is history.
He proved to be a beast to those soldiers wearing blue as Sylvanus Cadwallander wrote:
"General Nathan B Forrest was one of the ablest cavalry officers developed on either side, especially for partisan warfare. Bold and reckless, almost to a fault, he often accomplished by sheer audacity and celerity of movement, what could never have been done in any other way. . He was quick to take advantage of our errors, and the exact moment in which to strike." {1}
Teresa Bagioli was the daughter of a well known singing teacher living in New York City. The young lady was talented and smart and believed to have been able to speak five different languages when she was a teenager. Then Daniel Sickles came into the home and when he was thirty-two years old he sought the hand of the beautiful fifteen year old lady. They were married on September 17, 1852. Dan Sickles was a known womanizer and was not going to let marriage stop his bad behavior.
By 1857, his young wife had enough and took a lover of her own which Sickles gunned down and then literally got away with murder. Hoping to redeem himself he decided to fight in the Civil War. His career was summed up brilliantly by Alpheus Williams in his book "From the Cannon's Mouth":
"A Sickles would beat Napoleon in winning glory not earned. He is a hero without an heroic deed!" {1}
In his book "Three Months in the Southern States", Arthur Fremantle describes our next general as:
"a remarkable looking old soldier; with a bald head, a prominent nose and a rather haggard, sickly face; having so lately lost his leg above the knee, he is still a complete cripple, and falls off his horse occasionally . . . he used to be a great swearer . . but since his late marriage, he has 'joined the Church'." {1}
With such a description how did he ever find a beauty? But find he did when he married Elizabeth Campbell the daughter of a former United States Senator from Tennessee, secretary of Treasury and a former Minister to Russia where Lizinka was born. After the death of her first husband she resided in Nashville until the Union Army forced her to flee to Virginia. Richard Stoddert Ewell was her cousin and while in Virginia they reunite as she nurses him back from his wounding. They marry on May 25, 1863.
General Ewell married for the first time at forty-six years of age. John B. Gordon wrote:
"It was most interesting to note the change that came over the spirit of this formerly irascible old bachelor . . Ewell had become a husband and was sincerely devoted to Mrs. Ewell. He never seemed to realize, however, that her marriage to him had changed her name for he proudly presented her to his friends as 'My wife, Mrs. Brown, sir'." {1}
Our last "beauty's" grandfather was Alexander Hamilton the first Secretary of the Treasury and known for his death during a duel with Aaron Burr who was serving as the nation's third Vice-President at the time. Born some thirty years after her grandfather's death, Miss Hamilton married the future Civil War general Henry Halleck on April 10, 1855. She was twenty-four while her husband was a wealthy a California lawyer, a director of a bank and two railroads as well as a a part owner of one of the richest mercury mines, was forty years old. The newlyweds lived in San Francisco until the war began.
"Halleck was a mistake in the field." [so wrote David S Stanley in his "Memoirs"]. "Large and corpulent, he could not ride a horse out of a walk. He had a staff of old or middle aged men about him. . . When this queer cavalcade came riding slowly, ponderously along our lines, it was hard to suppress the boisterous laughter of the soldiers." {1}
George McCllellan was more direct with his comments:
"Of all men whom I have encountered in high positions Halleck was the most hopelessly stupid." {1}
Well at least his wife loved him.
"Of all men whom I have encountered in high positions Halleck was the most hopelessly stupid." {1}
Well at least his wife loved him.
Sources
1. "The Civil War Generals Comrades, Peers, Rivals in their Own Words", by Robert I. Girardi
2. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/08/sarah-hildreth.html
3. "Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy"; by Earl J Hess
4. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2016/10/madame-turchin.html
5. "Nathan Bedford Forrest"; by Jack Hurst
6. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/lizinka-campbell-brown/
7. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/09/elizabeth-halleck.html
{*} Lyrics from Disney Film "Beauty and the Beast";
Composer Alan Menken, Lyrics Howard Ashman
Photos (Public Domain)
Bringing the