Roswell S. Ripley
Roswell Sabine Ripley | |
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Battle of Gaines Mill - Battle of Malvern Hill - Battle of South Mountain - Battle of Antietam - Battle of Fredericksburg - Charleston Harbor |
Roswell Sabine Ripley (March 14, 1823 – March 29, 1887)
Early life and career
Ripley was born in Worthington, Ohio, a small village in Franklin County not far from Columbus. His family relocated to the state of
Lieutenant Ripley served in the
He was engaged in the
Ripley resigned from the army in 1853 and moved to Charleston to settle his wife's estates. From 1853–1854 he was the publisher, along with
He joined the South Carolina state militia and became a major of ordnance.
Civil War
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Brigadier_General_Roswell_Sabine_Ripley.jpg/220px-Brigadier_General_Roswell_Sabine_Ripley.jpg)
After South Carolina seceded from the Union, Ripley became a lieutenant colonel in the Army of South Carolina. He and his men garrisoned in Fort Moultrie. He directed the fort during the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 13, 1861. On August 15, 1861, he was appointed as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army and assigned command of the Department of South Carolina and its coastal defenses. From December 1861 until May 1862, he had charge of the Second Military District of South South Carolina.[3] In the Spring of 1862, slave Robert Smalls along with a slave crew, stole from Charleston Harbor a high-pressure side-wheeler steam powered ship, the 147-foot long “Planter”. Brigadier General Roswell S Ripley was astonished when his troops told him that the “Planter” had vanished from her berth directly in front of Ripley’s headquarters on the Charleston wharf.
Transferred to field command in
Despite being depleted from recent fighting and illness, Ripley's Brigade fought in the
Criticized for his performance at Antietam, General Ripley in early 1863 returned to South Carolina and took charge of the First Military District. His men constructed a series of improved defenses around Charleston, and Ripley commanded the troops that repelled a Union Navy attack on April 7, 1863. He continued in command of Charleston's fortifications until the city was evacuated in mid-February 1865 and fought under Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Bentonville.
Postbellum
After the war, Ripley went abroad and resided in England for over twenty years. His wife and daughter had left him to return to Charleston.[5] In the late 1880s, he returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where he died of a massive stroke. He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.
His uncle,
Recent Developments
With the recent efforts to remove monuments and memorials related to the Confederacy, in August 2017 the city of Worthington, Ohio, in conjunction with a private property owner, removed an Ohio state marker from outside of the home where Ripley was born.[6]
See also
References
- ^ Although the date of his death is sometimes given as 26 March 1887, contemporary (primary) sources report the date as Tuesday, 29 March. See calendar for 1887 Archived 2014-02-02 at the Wayback Machine.
- "News of the Week for week ending April 2. Domestic" (PDF). Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. 64 (14). Battle Creek, Mich.: 222 5 April 1887. Retrieved 16 November 2011..
- ISBN 978-1-61117-029-0.
- JSTOR 27570020.
- ^ Brigadier General Roswell Sabin Ripley by Chester A. Bennett
- ^ Zoebelein, Jennifer Madeline. Charleston's forgotten general: Roswell Sabine Ripley. Master's Theses, The College of Charleston and the Citadel. (Full text)
- ^ Gearino, Dan. Confederate general's historic marker removed in Worthington, Columbus Dispatch, August 19, 2017. Accessed August 24, 2017.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1891). "Ripley, James Wolfe, subsection Roswell Sabine" in Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. Volume 5. New York: D. Appleton, 1891.
Further reading
- Eicher, John H., and ISBN 978-0-8047-3641-1.
- Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. ISBN 978-0-8160-1055-4.
- ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.
- Kennedy, Robert F , Jr. Robert Smalls: The Boat Thief, Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group, 2008, ISNN 978-1-4231-0802-3.
External links
- "Roswell S. Ripley". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2008-02-13.
- General Roswell Sabin Ripley
- Monument to Ripley in Charleston, S.C. Archived 2011-06-09 at the Wayback Machine