William Starke Rosecrans (6 September 1819 – 11 March 1898) was a Major-General of the US Army who commanded the Army of the Mississippi and the Army of the Cumberland during the American Civil War. Rosecrans succeeded in chasing Braxton Bragg's Confederate army out of Tennessee from 1862 to 1863, but his flawed pursuit led to the Battle of Chickamauga, during which he was defeated. From 1881 to 1885, he served as a member of the US House of Representatives (D) from California's 1st district, succeeding Horace Davis and preceding Barclay Henley.
Biography[]
William Starke Rosecrans was born in Delaware County, Ohio in 1819 to a Methodist family of Dutch descent; his ancestor Harmon Henrik Rosenkrantz arrived in New Amsterdam in 1651. He graduated from West Point in 1842, 5th in a class of 56 cadets, and he converted to Catholicism in 1845. Rosecrans was retained at West Point during the Mexican-American War, and he worked as an engineer in the years before the American Civil War.
Civil War[]
Rosecrans in January 1863
On 16 May 1861, Rosecrans was promoted to Brigadier-General, and he fought in West Virginia before serving as a guide for Louis Blenker's division. In May 1862, he became the leader of two divisions in the Army of the Ohio under Don Carlos Buell, and he took command of the entire army in June 1862 after Buell was relieved of command by Henry Halleck. Rosecrans was victorious over Earl Van Dorn's Army of the West at Iuka and Corinth, and he assumed command of the Army of the Cumberland after Buell failed to pursue Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee following the Battle of Perryville. Rosecrans won a decisive victory at Stones River, a morale boost after the recent Union defeat at Fredericksburg, and he proceeded to force Bragg to retreat back to Chattanooga in the low-casualty Tullahoma Campaign of June–July 1863.
However, Rosecrans pursued Bragg too far, leading to his army being disorganized when battle was joined at Chickamauga on 19 September 1863. George Henry Thomas saved the army from disaster, and Rosecrans was relieved from command after the battle. From January to December 1864, he commanded the Department of Missouri, repelling Sterling Price's raid. He was considered to be President Abraham Lincoln's vice-presidential pick for the 1864 election, as he needed a War Democrat to run with him in order to win the support of the people, but Rosecrans' rival Edwin Stanton intercepted and suppressed Rosecrans' positive response.
Postwar career[]
In 1867, Rosecrans resigned from the army, and he proceeded to engage in several business ventures, many of which failed. He repeatedly declined to run for political office until 1880, when he was elected to the US House of Representatives from California's 1st district, as he had bought the Rancho San Pedro in the Los Angeles basin and made the state his home. He opposed a bill that would grant a pension to former president and Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant, but the bill was passed in 1885. In 1889, he spoke at the dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, capturing the feelings of veterans from both sides in one of the best Civil War dedication speeches in history. He died of pneumonia in 1898 at the age of 78.
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