Ethan A. Hitchcock (general)

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Ethan Allen Hitchcock
United States of America
Union
Service/branchUnited States Army
Union Army
Years of service1817–1855
1862–1867
Rank Major General
Commands heldFort Stansbury
2nd Infantry Regiment
Pacific Division
Department of the Pacific
Battles/warsSeminole Wars
Mexican–American War
American Civil War
Spouse(s)
Martha Rind Nicholls
​
​
(m. 1868)​

Ethan Allen Hitchcock (May 18, 1798 – August 5, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and author who had War Department assignments in Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War, in which he served as a major general.

Early life

Hitchcock was born in

Alabama Supreme Court, who was married to the sister-in-law of Secretary of War John Bell.[2] Henry's son Ethan Hitchcock served as United States Secretary of the Interior under William McKinley. Another of Henry's sons, Henry Hitchcock
, was a prominent attorney in St. Louis.

Ethan A. Hitchcock graduated from the

third lieutenant of Field Artillery
.

Career

He was promoted to

West Point and was promoted to major in 1838. By 1842, he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the 3rd Infantry Regiment, in command of Fort Stansbury.[3]

He served in the

Seminole War in Florida, in the Pacific Northwest, and in the Mexican–American War, where he served as Gen. Winfield Scott's inspector general in the march on Mexico City. He received a brevet promotion to colonel for Contreras and Churubusco and to brigadier general for Molino del Rey
.

In 1851, he became the colonel of the

Pacific Division and then the Department of the Pacific
.

In October 1855, he resigned from the Army following a refusal by

St. Louis, Missouri
, and began a presumed retirement, occupying himself with writing and studies of general literature and philosophy.

Hitchcock was a diarist, and his journal entries from this time have served as a crucial source of evidence for Howard Zinn's reinterpretation of United States history, Voices of A People's History of the United States.

Civil War

After the start of the Civil War, Hitchcock applied to return to the service but was rejected. Maj. Gen

Edwin M. Stanton in the management of the War Department and the command of the Union armies during the period in which there was no general-in-chief. (Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan
had been relieved of his responsibilities as general-in-chief, and Halleck had not yet replaced him.)

Hitchcock sat on the

Prisoner of War
Exchange and then Commissary-General of Prisoners.

Hitchcock was mustered out in 1867 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, then to Sparta, Georgia.

Personal life

On April 20, 1868, he was married to Martha Rind Nicholls (1833–1918) in Washington, D.C.

née Rind) Nicholls.[5]

Hitchcock died on August 5, 1870, at Glen Mary Plantation in Sparta, two years after his marriage.[6] He was buried in West Point National Cemetery, New York. His widow died on August 15, 1918.[5]

The Pale Blue Eye (2022) is a film adaptation of the 2003 novel by Louis Bayard featuring Simon McBurney as Hitchcock.

Contributions to alchemy studies

By his death, Hitchcock had amassed an extensive private library, including over 250 volumes on

University of Missouri-St. Louis. Through Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists and other writings, Hitchcock argued that the alchemists were actually religious philosophers writing in symbolism. In Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, the Viennese psychologist Herbert Silberer
credited Hitchcock with helping to open the way for his explorations of the psychological content of alchemy.

A manuscript from the Hitchcock collection

Musical collection

Hitchcock also played the flute and amassed a sizable collection of flute music. In the 1960s, almost one hundred years after his death, part of Hitchcock's personal music collection was discovered in Sparta, Georgia. This collection, which consists of 73 bound volumes and approximately 200 loose manuscripts, currently resides in the Warren D. Allen Music Library at Florida State University.[7] Included in this collection are works by some of the general's contemporaries, music manuscripts handwritten by Hitchcock himself, and items of personal correspondence. The library's acquisition of these materials was celebrated in 1989 by a recital given by F.S.U. flute students and attended by several of Hitchcock's descendants.

Selected works

  • Remarks upon Alchemy and Alchemists (published in 1857)
  • Swedenborg a Hermetic Philosopher (1858)
  • Christ the Spirit (1861)
  • The Story of the Red Book of Appin (1863)
  • Spenser's Poem (1865)
  • Notes on the Vita Nuova of Dante (1866)
  • Remarks on the Sonnets of Shakespeare (1867)
  • Fifty Years in Camp and Field (posthumous, 1909)
  • A Traveler in Indian Territory: The Journal of Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Late Major-General in the United States Army (posthumous, 1930)

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ethan A. Hitchcock (general).

Notes

  1. ISBN 1-121-69376-8
  2. ^ Monaco, C.S. (Fall 2014). ""Wishing that Right May Prevail": Ethan Allen Hitchcock and the Florida War". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 93 (2): 169. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  3. ^ Hitchcock, Ethan Allen, Croffut, William Augustus, Fifty years in camp and field: diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A., G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1909.
  4. ^ Hitchcock, Ethan Allen (1909). Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 483. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  5. ^
    ISBN 9781851098071
    . Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  6. ^ "Ethan Allen Hitchcock". The Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society. Missouri Historical Society: 44. 1961. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
  7. ^ "Ethan Allen Hitchcock Flute Music Collection". Florida State University. 2009. Archived from the original on 2012-12-10. Retrieved 2010-02-14.

References

External links

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