George Crook (8 September 1828 – 21 March 1890) was a Major-General in the US Army who distinguished himself in command of a Union army corps in West Virginia during the American Civil War and as commander of the Department of the West during the Plains Indian Wars.
Biography[]
George Crook was born in Taylorsville, Montgomery County, Ohio in 1828, and he graduated near the bottom of his class from West Point in 1852. He served as a US Army second lieutenant in California from 1852 to 1861, commanding the Pitt River Expedition of 1857, being severely wounded by a Native American arrow, and establishing Fort Ter-Waw in Klamath Glen, California.
American Civil War[]
At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, he was made colonel of an Ohio regiment in the Union Army. His regiment fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862, and he was promoted to brigade command that same year, fighting at the Battle of South Mountain and the Battle of Antietam and becoming lifelong friends with his subordinate Rutherford B. Hayes. In July 1863, he assumed divisional command and fought at the Battle of Chickamauga and in the Chattanooga Campaign. In the spring of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant sent Crook to move his division from Charleston, West Virginia to attack the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and destroy the Confederate salt works at Saltville, Virginia. In May, he defeated Albert G. Jenkins' Confederate army at the Battle of Cloyd's Mountain, during which Jenkins was killed. He was then able to tear up the railroad tracks at Dublin, Virginia. In July 1864, he assumed command of the Army of Kanawha, and, despite his defeat at the Second Battle of Kernstown, he was given command of the Department of West Virginia on 9 August 1864. His army was absorbed into Philip Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah, functioning as a corps, and, after the successful Valley Campaigns of 1864, he was promoted to Major-General on 21 October 1864. In February 1865, he was captured by Confederate raiders at Cumberland, Maryland and held as a prisoner until his exchange a month later, upon which he took command of a cavalry division in the Army of the Potomac during the Appomattox Campaign.
Plains Indian Wars[]
In 1867, two years after the Civil War's end, he was given command of the Department of the Columbia in Washington, fighting the Paiute and Modoc from 1866 to 1868. President Ulysses S. Grant then gave Crook command of the Arizona Territory, leading US forces in the Yavapai War before becoming a Brigadier-General in 1873. From 1875 to 1882 and 1886 to 1888, he was in command of the Department of the Platte in Nebraska, and he defeated the Sioux at the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876. As commander of the Department of Arizona in 1886, he failed to capture Geronimo, which led to his replacement by Nelson A. Miles. In 1888, President Grover Cleveland gave him command of the Military Division of the Missouri, and he died in Chicago in 1890.
Gallery[]
