Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (14 January 1836 – 4 December 1881) was a Union Arm ly Major-General during the American Civil War who was famed as a cavalry commander who devastated the American South.
Biography[]
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick was born in Wantage, Sussex County, New Jersey in 1836, and he graduated from West Point in 1861. On 10 June 1861, he became the first Union Army to be wounded during the war when he was struck in the thigh by canister shot at the Battle of Big Bethel. He soon became a cavalry colonel, losing a full squadron of troopers in a foolish charge at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. He was nicknamed "Kill Cavalry" for his recklessness, as he was willing to exhaust men and horses in suicidal cavalry charges. In 1862, he was arrested twice for selling captured Confederate goods for personal gain and for a drunken spree in Washington DC, but he took command of a cavalry brigade in George Stoneman's division of the Army of the Potomac. Just before the Battle of Chancellorsville, he aggressively captured Robert E. Lee's wagons, burned bridges, and rode around Lee, although this failed to distract him from the battle. He went on to fight at the Battle of Brandy Station, became a Brigadier-General on 13 June 1863, and fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, where his only brigade commander Elon J. Farnsworth was killed. In 1864, his soldier Ulric Dahlgren was killed in a failed raid on Richmond, and the Confederates discovered that Dahlgren was supposed to play a role in an assassination plot against President Jefferson Davis. Kilpatrick lost 324 cavalry dead and 1,000 captured, but he destroyed tobacco barns, boats, railroad cars, tracks, and other infrastructure across the outskirts of Richmond. Kilpatrick was nonetheless transitioned to the West, as the "Dahlgren affair" created outrage against the Union. In May 1864, Kilpatrick fought in the Atlanta Campaign, and he was severely wounded that month at the Battle of Resaca. He later took part in the March to the Sea, delighting in destroying Southern property. Wade Hampton III nearly captured him as he was in bed with a Southern woman he had met while moving through Columbia, South Carolina, and he fled in his underclothes after being ambushed at the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads. On 18 June 1865, he was promoted to Major-General, and he went on to serve as minister to Chile from 1866 to 1870 and in 1881, dying in Santiago shortly after his second arrival.
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