Brigadier General William Harvey Gibson (16 May 1821 – 22 November 1894) was a Republican politician from Ohio and Brigadier General of the Union Army’s 49th Ohio Infantry of Volunteers during the American Civil War.
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William Harvey Gibson was born on 16 May 1821 to John Gibson (1778–1852) and Jeannette Gibson (née Coe) (1782–1850). He was raised in a family that valued hard work, plain dress, temperance and sympathy for the unfortunate and opposed slavery and "social gilded livery."[1] The Gibson family also placed special attention on developing good oratory and debating skills and held a regular family debating circle during the long winter evenings.[2]
On his mother's side, Gibson was descended from Robert Coe who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 aboard the ship the Francis.[3] On his father's side, he was of Scotch-Irish descent, the grandson of Colonel John Gibson, commanding officer of Virginia's 7th Regiment during the American Revolutionary War, Secretary of the Territory of Indiana (1800–1810), and Acting Governor of Indiana (1811–1813).[4]
William Harvey Gibson was known to everyone except his mother as "Bill."[5] He was the tenth of 11 children. He had five brothers and five older sisters (Sally, Polly, Hetty, Patty, Eliza, Robert McDowell, Moses Coe, John Kendall, Benjamin, and James Allen).[6] When he was only four months old, the Gibson family moved to Seneca County from its farm on the Ohio River in Jefferson County, outside of Steubenville, Ohio. The family settled in Melmore, Ohio. At the time, it was still a wooded frontier and home to Seneca and Mohawk Indians. Both sides of the family were Presbyterians and Gibson recalls being baptized with ten Indian children by Rev. James B. Findley with the ceremony being translated by the Indian interpreter "Black Jack." Gibson also recalls hearing Chief "Grey Eyes" preach.[7] In the 1820s, the Gibson brothers took their corn for milling at the mill that the U.S. government built for the Wyandotte Indians on the Upper Sandusky River.[8]
Gibson attended the first school organized in Seneca County, Ohio in 1826 with his brothers Robert, Benjamin and James Allen. It was located in the second room of James Latham's log cabin and the teacher was Mrs. Laura Latham.[9] The Lathams later donated land and asked the community to help build a one-room log schoolhouse, which became known as Craw's Hill School. It was run by Headmaster Edward Ranger. Among Gibson's early schoolmates were Anson Burlingame (diplomat), Consul Wilshire Butterfield (author and historian), O. D. Conger (U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from Michigan), and Charles Foster (35th Governor of Ohio and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury).[10]
In his late teens, Gibson was eager to explore the American West. Together with his brother Robert McDowell Gibson and his neighbors John Kennedy and James Downs, he formed an exploration party that travelled west to explore the Territory of Iowa. The trip was a disaster with Kennedy and Downs dying by the time they reached Iowa City. The Gibson brothers returned to Melmore, Ohio. It would be their youngest brother James Allen Gibson who would explore the West and settle in Kansas.[11]
Bill and his brother Robert McDowell Gibson (who would later become a practicing M.D.), enrolled in Ashland Academy in Richland County, Ohio in 1841. (The school later became Ashland University and Ashland Theological Seminary).[12] Here, he honed his debating and oratory skills, becoming known for his strong position on temperance.
In 1841 when William Harvey Gibson petitioned the law firm of Rawson & Pennington to join their firm, he was following in the steps of his older brother John Kendall Gibson who had studied law at Washington & Jefferson College and during the U.S. Presidential campaign of 1840, campaigned alongside General William Henry Harrison. Bill (William Harvey) Gibson and Warren P. Noble (later a prosecuting attorney, judge and U.S. Congressman) studied law together under Abel Rawson.[13] Gibson was admitted to the Ohio bar and his first case was defending a client against racial slurs before Judge Reuben Wood.[14][15]
Gibson became involved in politics as a member of the Whig Party with strong anti-slavery views.[16] During the U.S. Presidential campaign of 1844, he gave stump speeches for Henry Clay due to the Whig Party's platform that opposed admitting Texas into the Union because it was a slave state.[17] In the U.S. Presidential campaign of 1848, Gibson supported Whig candidate, "Rough and Ready" General Zachary Taylor. However, he was concerned about the Whig Party's lack of opposition to the abolition of slavery and personally visited Henry Clay at his home in Ashland, Kentucky in 1848 to discuss this issue.[18] In 1853, following the large defeat of the Whig candidate General Winfield Scott in the U.S. Presidential election of 1852, Gibson threw his support to the Free Soil Party and began organizing what would become the Republican Party in Ohio.[19] He attended the first organization meeting of the Republican Party in spring of 1856 in Pittsburgh. He was one of the 69 Ohio delegates (of a total 600 delegates from around the country) that attended the first Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia in June 1856.[20] In 1856, he ran and was elected as the first Republican to hold the office of Ohio State Treasurer.
Gibson was the 49th Ohio Infantry's commanding officer throughout the U.S. Civil War. In August and September 1861, he organized and trained the 49th Ohio Infantry at Camp Noble, near his home in Tiffin, Ohio. With Gibson in command, the regiment was mustered for three years and fought at 42 Civil War battles including: the Battle of Shiloh, the Siege of Corinth, the Battle of Stone River, the Tullahoma Campaign, the Battle of Chickamauga, the Battle of Missionary Ridge, the Atlanta Campaign, the Battle of Resaca, the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the Siege of Atlanta, the Battle of Jonesboro, the Second Battle of Franklin, and the Battle of Nashville.[21]
Gibson was known amongst his soldiers for his leadership, his positive speeches, and willingness to personally command in battle. At the Battle of Shiloh he had three horses shot from under him and was wounded.[22] For his leadership, Gibson was commissioned Brigadier General in 1865.
In his home town of Tiffin, Ohio Gibson is commemorated for his leadership during the U.S. Civil with a bronze statue known as the William Harvey Gibson Monument, located on the grounds of the Seneca County Courthouse. Funding for this statue came from state funds and also from donations made by his soldiers.[23][24]
Following the Civil War, General Gibson returned to civilian life to practice law. In 1871, he laid out the town of Gibsonburg in Sandusky County, Ohio.[25] He continued as active stump speaker in support of Republican candidates. In 1879, Ohio Governor Charles Foster appointed Gibson Adjutant-General for the state of Ohio. In 1887, Ohio Governor Joseph B. Foraker appointed him to the Ohio Canal Commission.[26][27] In the 1880s, he was ordained a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church.[28]
William Harvey Gibson is best remembered for his eloquent oratory during at a difficult period in U.S. history. Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe said that she had "listened to many of the most gifted orators of Europe and America, but have never listened to such eloquence as poured forth for two hours and half as from the lips of William H. Gibson, of Ohio."[29] At Gibson's funeral in 1894, William McKinley, who at the time was Governor of Ohio (1892–1896, and later U.S. President, 1897–1901) made the eulogy. McKinley also noted Gibson's gift for oratory saying that, "For fifty years, Gibson has been the most attractive and sought after of public speakers. On the lecture platform, at hundreds of Grand Army camp-fires, and in the pulpit, wherever duty called him, General Gibson made fitting responses. ... I am here, to pay tribute to the man I loved so much. The last time I heard him was at Old Fort, the Sunday before Memorial day. He was never more eloquent. General Gibson believed the two most important things in life were piety and patriotism. In his creed they were linked in indissoluble union. His piety was broad enough to include every creed and his patriotism wide enough to cover the whole country."[30][31]
“General William H. Gibson,” New York Times, 23 Nov. 1894. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70B14FF355515738DDDAA0A94D9415B8485F0D3 [retrieved 1 February 2011]
Bartlett, J. G. (1911). Robert Coe, puritan: His ancestors and descendants, 1340-1910, with notices of other Coe families. Boston, Mass: Pub. for private circulation by the author.
Baughman, A. J. (1911). History of Seneca County, Ohio: A narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests. Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co.
Bigger, D. D. (1901). Ohio's silver-tongued orator: Life and speeches of General William H. Gibson. Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Pub. House.
Gibson, M. M. (1967). Reminiscences of the early days of Tiffin, Ohio. S.l: s.n.
Sandusky Scrapbook, “William Harvey Gibson Monument,” http://www.sandusky-county-scrapbook.net/hughesgranite/Gibson.htm [retrieved 18 January 2010]