Theodore Winthrop
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Theodore Winthrop (September 22, 1828 – June 10, 1861) was a novelist, lawyer, and world traveler, best known today as the first Union officer killed in the American Civil War.
Winthrop was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He was descended through his father from Governor John Winthrop and through his mother from Jonathan Edwards. An 1848 graduate of Yale University, he travelled for a year in Great Britain and Europe and then through the United States. After contributing to periodicals, short sketches, and stories, which attracted little attention, Winthrop enlisted in the 7th Regiment, New York State Militia, an early volunteer unit of the Federal Army that answered President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops in 1861. He wrote a popular essay about the experience titled "Our March to Washington." He soon became an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commander of the Department of Virginia headquartered at Fort Monroe.
At the Battle of Big Bethel on June 10, 1861, he volunteered for General Ebenezer Pierce's staff and drew up a crude plan of battle. After a Federal attack to the enemy right flank was foiled, Winthrop led an ill-fated assault on the Confederate left held by four companies of the 1st Regiment North Carolina Infantry, under the command of Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Daniel Harvey Hill.
In the heat of battle, Winthrop leapt onto the trunk of a fallen tree and reportedly yelled, "One more charge boys, and the day is ours." Soon thereafter, he was killed by a musket ball to the heart and became the first casualty for the Northern side in what history regards as the first pitched land battle of the Civil War. Ironically, ardent abolitionist Winthrop was shot by a Black Confederate soldier—Private Sam Ashe of the 1st North Carolina Infantry.
Winthrop's novels, for which he had failed to find a publisher during his lifetime, appeared posthumously. They include John Brent, founded on his experiences in the far West, and Edwin Brothertoft, a story of the American Revolution. Cecil Dreeme, his most important work, was a semi-autobiographical novel dealing with social mores and gender roles set at New York University, where Winthrop had once been a lodger. Other works include The Canoe and Saddle and Life in the Open Air.
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This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
