Robert H. Milroy
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Robert Huston Milroy (June 11, 1816 – March 29, 1890) was a lawyer, judge, and a Union Army general in the American Civil War, most noted for his defeat at the Second Battle of Winchester in 1863.
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[edit] Early life
Milroy was born on a farm near Salem, Indiana, but the family moved to Carroll County in 1826. He graduated from Norwich Academy in Vermont in 1843. He moved to Texas in 1845, returning to Indiana in 1847. He was a captain in the 1st Indiana Volunteers from 1846 to 1847. He graduated from Indiana University Law School in 1850 and became a lawyer and judge in Rensselaer, Indiana.
[edit] Civil War
Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Milroy recruited a company for the 9th Indiana Militia and was appointed captain, but two weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter, he was appointed to the Federal service as Colonel of the 9th Indiana Infantry. He took part in the western Virginia campaign under Major General George B. McClellan and was promoted to brigadier general on September 3, 1861. He commanded the Cheat Mountain District of the Mountain Department and served as a brigade commander in the Mountain Department during Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign of 1862. Milroy commanded another brigade in John Pope's Army of Virginia for the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was promoted to major general on March 10, 1863, to rank from November 29, 1862.
On May 8 and May 9, 1862, Milroy led Union forces in the Battle of McDowell against Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Milroy's "spoiling attack" surprised Jackson, seized the initiative, and inflicted heavier casualties, but did not drive the Confederates from their position.
The low point of Milroy's military career was during the early days of the Gettysburg Campaign. He commanded the 2nd Division of the VIII Corps, Middle Department, from February 1863 until June. Despite overall objectives of the Middle Department to guard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Milroy, a staunch and radical abolitionist, was eager to occupy Winchester, Virginia. After reconnaissance-in-force operations on December 4, 1862, and December 24–31, 1862, Milroy was satisfied that Winchester was easy pickings for unopposed entry, and he subsequently occupied the town from January 1, 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation Day) to June 15. In celebration of Emancipation Day, Milroy instituted "reforms" in Winchester that were so harsh he was ultimately forced to court-martial some officers under his own command for not complying with the spirit of his orders. Milroy is famous in Winchester for this time period, which stands out as worse even than The Burning wrought later by Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan. On January 18, Milroy uttered his audacious statement that "my will is absolute law".
The ladies of Winchester outperformed the ladies of New Orleans in resistence to occupation. Milroy is most famous for evicting Mrs. Lloyd Logan out of her house in April 1863, initiated so he could move his own wife into the home. Mrs. Logan was not allowed to even gather any clothing, and one daughter, suffering with erysipelas, was not allowed to bring her medicene. Like many citizens of Winchester before and after them, they were escorted "beyond the lines" outside of town and "exiled" from Winchester.
General-in-chief Henry W. Halleck never favored this "forward" position, so far from the B&O Railroad, and he wanted Milroy to withdraw his 6,900-man garrison from Winchester. Major General Schenck was seemingly undecided and gave contradicting orders on the evacuation of Winchester, as Milroy convinced Schenck that he could hold Winchester and its extensive fortifications against any Confederate invasion, for months if necessary. Schenck capitulated and left Milroy with a final telegram to wait further orders... and then the telegraph wire into Winchester was cut by Confederate raiders.
As Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's Confederate Second Corps closed in on Winchester, Milroy was further blinded by the fact that his videttes and pickets were not extensively placed in the surrounding territory, due to heavy and repeated bushwacking of his men, and he never realized that an entire Confederate corps was bearing down upon him. Milroy's mistreatment of Winchester citizens had been so harsh that even many pro-Unionists had changed their sympathies, serving to further isolate Milroy's ability to gather intelligence around him.
During the Second Battle of Winchester, he was outsmarted and "gobbled up" by Ewell's Confederate corps, the vanguard of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on its way north to invade Pennsylvania. In one of the most brilliant flanking movements of the entire war, Maj. Gen. Jubal Early, extensively familiar with the local terrain, completely overran Milroy's "West Fort" (afterwards renamed "Louisiana Heights") and forced Milroy's entire division to concentrate and cower in two last fortifications, in an Alamo-like standoff. In the wee morning hours of June 15, 1863, Milroy escaped with his staff, but 4,000 of his men were captured, as were all of his artillery pieces and 300 supply wagons. When Milroy showed up at headquarters after the rout, he was held in arrest for a short while, and General-in-chief Henry W. Halleck commented about Milroy that "we have had enough of that kind of military genius."
He was called before a court of inquiry to answer for his actions, but after ten months he was relieved of any culpability for the debacle. The original question for the inquiry, posed by Halleck, was to find out "who disobeyed" the orders to withdraw from Winchester. But the successes of Gettysburg apparently softened President Lincoln's approach to this inquiry, and the question before the court was modifed to report on the "circumstances" of the evacuation of Winchester. Amazingly, Milroy argued that his brilliant defense of Winchester was a key to the Union victory at Gettysburg, having caused the timing of the Confederate movements to be altered in such a way as to ensure Meade's victory.
After this period of inactivity, Milroy was transferred to the Western Theater, recruiting for Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas's Army of the Cumberland in Nashville in the spring of 1864. He also commanded the Defenses of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad in the Department of the Cumberland until the end of the war. Although it was not anticipated that this would be a combat assignment, he fought briefly in the Third Battle of Murfreesboro, part of the Franklin-Nashville Campaign in 1864. Anxious to reduce some of the stigma of Winchester, he ordered the 13th Indiana Cavalry to make a mounted charge directly at an enemy artillery position, assuming that it was only a portion of Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest's dismounted cavalry. The Indianans suffered heavy casualties. When Milroy realized that he was facing not cavalry, but an infantry division of Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Cheatham's corps, he returned to the safety of "Fortress Rosecrans" in Murfreesboro. He resigned his commission on July 26, 1865.
[edit] Postbellum
After the war, Milroy was a trustee of the Wabash and Erie Canal Company and, from 1872 to 1875, he was the superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Washington Territory and an Indian agent for the following ten years.
Robert Milroy died in Olympia, Washington, and is buried in the Masonic Memorial Park at Tumwater. He is remembered by the people of Rensselaer with a large bronze statue.
He was the author of Papers of General Robert Huston Milroy, published posthumously in 1965 and 1966.
[edit] References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Sword, Wiley, The Confederacy's Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville, University Press of Kansas, 1992, ISBN 0-7006-0650-5.
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0822-7.
