William Rosecrans

William Starke Rosecrans (September 6, 1819 – March 11, 1898) was an American inventor, coal-oil company executive, diplomat, politician, and U.S. Army officer. He gained fame for his role as a Union general during the American Civil War. He was the victor at prominent battles in the Western theater of the American Civil War. However, his military career declined after his defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863.

Rosecrans graduated in 1842 from the United States Military Academy, where he served in engineering assignments and was a professor before leaving the Army to pursue a career in civil engineering. At the start of the Civil War, he led troops from Ohio and achieved early combat success in western Virginia. In 1862, in the Western theater, he won the Battle of Iuka and the Second Battle of Corinth while under the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. His brusque manner and willingness to quarrel openly with superiors caused a professional rivalry with Grant (as well as with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton) that would adversely affect Rosecrans' career.

Given command of the Army of the Cumberland, he fought against Confederate general Braxton Bragg at Stones River. He then outmaneuvered him in the Tullahoma campaign, driving the Confederates from Middle Tennessee. His strategic movements then caused Bragg to abandon the critical city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, but Rosecrans' pursuit of Bragg ended during the bloody Battle of Chickamauga, where the wording of his order mistakenly opened a gap in the Union line and Rosecrans and a third of his army were swept from the field. Besieged in Chattanooga, Rosecrans was relieved of command by Grant.

Following his defeat, Rosecrans was reassigned to command the Department of Missouri, where he opposed Price's Raid. After the war, he served in diplomatic and appointed political positions and in 1880 was elected to Congress, representing California.

William Starke Rosecrans was born on a farm near Little Taylor Run in Kingston Township, Delaware County, Ohio, the second of five sons of Crandall Rosecrans and Jemima Hopkins. (The first child, Chauncey, died in infancy.) Crandall was a veteran of the War of 1812, in which he served as adjutant to General William Henry Harrison, and then subsequently ran a tavern and store as well as a family farm. One of Crandall's heroes, General John Stark, was the inspiration for William's middle name. Rosecrans was descended from the Dutch-Scandinavian nobleman Harmon Henrik Rosenkrantz (1614–1674), who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1651, but the family name changed spelling during the American Revolutionary War. His mother was the widow of Timothy Hopkins, a relative of Stephen Hopkins, the Colonial Governor of Rhode Island and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

William had little formal education in his early years, relying heavily on reading books. At the age of 13, he left home to work as a store clerk in Utica, and later Mansfield, Ohio. Unable to afford college, Rosecrans decided to try for an appointment to the United States Military Academy. He interviewed with Congressman Alexander Harper, who had been reserving his appointment for his son, but Harper was so impressed by Rosecrans that he nominated him instead.

Despite his lack of formal education, Rosecrans excelled academically at West Point, particularly in mathematics, French, drawing, and English grammar. At the academy, he received his nickname, "Rosy," or more often, "Old Rosy." He graduated from West Point in 1842, fifth in his class of 56 cadets, which included future generals such as James Longstreet, Abner Doubleday, Daniel Harvey Hill, and Earl Van Dorn. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the prestigious United States Army Corps of Engineers, reflecting his high academic achievement. At his graduation, he met Anna Elizabeth (or Eliza) Hegeman (1823–1883) of New York City and immediately fell in love. They were married on August 24, 1843. Their marriage lasted until her death on December 25, 1883. They had eight children.

After graduating from West Point, Rosecrans was assigned to duty at Fort Monroe, Virginia, engineering sea walls. After a year, he requested assignment as a professor at West Point, where he taught engineering and served as post commissary and quartermaster. Although West Point was a strong bastion of Episcopal Protestantism, during this assignment, he converted to Catholicism in 1845. He wrote about this decision to his family, who had raised him in the Methodist faith, which inspired the youngest of his brothers, Sylvester Horton Rosecrans, to convert as well. Sylvester would become the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus.

Ultimately, both of Rosecrans's parents had deathbed conversions to Catholicism. According to University of Virginia historian William B. Kurtz, “unlike many men of his era content to leave religion to (that of) their wives, he played the central role in his family’s faith life."

Although most of the officers in his graduating class fought in the Mexican–American War, the War Department retained Rosecrans at West Point. From 1847 through 1853, he served on engineering assignments in Newport, Rhode Island, New Bedford, Massachusetts and (on temporary assignment to the United States Navy) at the Washington Navy Yard. During this period, Rosecrans sought several civilian jobs as an alternative way to support his growing family, now with four children. He applied for a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute in 1851, losing the position to fellow West Pointer Thomas J. Jackson.

While serving in Newport, Rhode Island, he volunteered his services as the engineer for the construction of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. The church is best known as the site of the wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953 and was one of the largest churches constructed in the United States at that time. There is a memorial window in Rosecrans' honor in the church.

Rosecrans suffered a period of failing health and resigned from the Army in 1854, moving into civilian fields. He took over a mining business in Western Virginia (today West Virginia) and ran it extremely successfully. He designed and installed one of the first complete lock and dam systems in Western Virginia on the Coal River; today recognized as the Coal River Locks, Dams, and Log Booms Archeological District. In Cincinnati, he and two partners built one of the first oil refineries west of the Allegheny Mountains. He obtained patents for many inventions, including the first kerosene lamp to successfully burn a round wick and a more effective method of manufacturing soap. On December 4th, 1865, the San Francisco Directory for the year 1867 records Rosecrans arriving from Panama in a steamship among many passengers. While Rosecrans was president of the Preston Coal Oil Company, in 1859, he was burned severely when an experimental "safety" oil lamp exploded, setting the refinery on fire. It took him 18 months to recover, and the resulting facial scars, most of which would later be covered by his beard, gave him the appearance of having a perpetual smirk. He had recovered from his injuries and was working to get the company in order when the Civil War began.

After the war, Rosecrans became interested in railroads and was one of the eleven incorporators of the Southern Pacific Railroad, but his valuable interests in the stock of the railroad were lost to some of the unscrupulous financiers who were his business partners. From 1868 to 1869, Rosecrans served as U.S. Minister to Mexico, but was replaced after just five months when his old nemesis, Ulysses Grant, became president. During this brief service, he became convinced that Mexico would benefit from a narrow-gauge railway and telegraph line from Tampico to the coast, but this venture, from 1869 through 1873, was a failure.

Rosecrans then became interested in civil administration and wrote a book, Popular Government, with a former newspaperman, Josiah Riley, which advocated registration and voting reforms. He was approached by various political parties to run for high office: Governor of Ohio (Union party, 1866); governor of California (Democratic Party, 1868); governor of Ohio (Democratic Party, 1869); U.S Representative from Nevada (Democratic Party, 1876). He refused all of these offers because they conflicted with potentially promising business ventures, leading him to be referred to by the nickname "The Great Decliner."

In 1869, Rosecrans bought 16,000 acres (65 km2) of Rancho San Pedro in the Los Angeles basin for $2.50 per acre ($620/km2), a low price possibly because the land was deemed worthless for lack of a spring for water. The ranch, dubbed "Rosecrans Rancho", was bordered by what would later be Florence Avenue on the north, Redondo Beach Boulevard on the south, Central Avenue on the east, and Arlington Avenue on the west. By the time of Rosecrans's death, his son Carl was living on the estate, but most of the land had been sold parcel by parcel to support the financial needs of mining ventures in which Rosecrans invested.

In 1880, Rosecrans was elected U.S. Representative as a Democrat from California's 1st congressional district. That same year, James Garfield was elected President as a Republican. Rosecrans was distressed to see that Garfield's campaign literature played up his role in the war at Rosecrans's expense. Their former friendship was irretrievably broken. After Garfield's assassination, Charles A. Dana capitalized on the tragedy by publishing the letters written by Garfield after Chickamauga to then-Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase; the letters may have been the major reason for Rosecrans's loss of political support at the time.

Rosecrans was reelected in 1882 and became the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, a position in which he publicly opposed a bill that would provide a pension to former President Grant and his wife. Unaware of the serious financial condition of Grant's family, Rosecrans objected that some of Grant's official statements "were false, and which he knew to be false at the time he made them, and which I have shown in my official reports to be false. I cannot say to the people of this country that a business which has been conducted as to rob poor people of millions, and which, if done on a smaller scale would have sent its managers to prison, shall be considered as important when the principal manager has allowed a great name to be used as the instrument of the robbery." The bill was passed over his objections. When a bill was introduced in 1889 to restore Rosecrans's rank and place him on the retired list, some representatives objected, based on Rosecrans's actions against Grant in 1885, but the bill was passed.

In February 1898, Rosecrans suffered from a cold that turned into pneumonia, but appeared to recover successfully. Then he learned that one of his favorite grandchildren (Rosecrans Toole, the son of Lily and Joseph Kemp Toole, the first Governor of Montana) had died of diphtheria. He was seized with grief and his health failed precipitously. He died on March 11, 1898, at Rancho Sausal Redondo, Redondo Beach, California. His casket lay in state in Los Angeles City Hall, covered by the headquarters flag that flew over Stones River and Chickamauga. In 1908 his remains were interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

Rosecrans' reputation has improved somewhat in recent years. Historian Frank Varney presented a case for review in his book General Grant and the Rewriting of History: How the Destruction of General William S. Rosecrans Influenced Our Understanding of the Civil War.

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, in San Diego, California, is named in his honor. Major streets named after William Rosecrans include Rosecrans Avenue, a major east–west street that runs through the southern part of Los Angeles County, and Rosecrans Street in San Diego, which runs near the aforementioned cemetery.

General Rosecrans Elementary School, on Rosecrans and Acacia Avenues in the city of Compton, California, a Los Angeles suburb, bears his name, as does General Rosecrans Elementary in Sunbury, Ohio.

A memorial was constructed on the site of Rosecrans' birthplace and childhood home. A large boulder surrounded by a wrought iron fence holds a plaque in memoriam and rests beside a rural road that bears his name.

An equestrian statue of Rosecrans, resting on a 55,000 pound black granite boulder, is located on the square surrounding the Town Hall of Sunbury, Ohio. Rosecrans' Headquarters in the buildup to the Chickamauga Campaign was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.