Resolute Rebel , livre ebook

Resolute Rebel
CHET BENNETT

Resolute Rebel
General Roswell S. Ripley, Charleston’s Gallant Defender

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS
© 2017 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-754-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-755-8 (ebook)
Front cover illustration by Brock Henderson; Portrait of General Roswell S. Ripley C.S.A., provided by the Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.
To the memory of Anthony W. F. (Tony) Taylerson and my maternal great-grandfather Private Gardner Lytle Davis, Company A, First South Carolina Artillery
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations, Maps, and Patents
Preface
Acknowledgments
C HAPTER 1
Family and Early Years
C HAPTER 2
West Point
C HAPTER 3
Prelude to War
C HAPTER 4
Mexico, 1846
C HAPTER 5
Mexico, 1847
C HAPTER 6
Postwar, 1848–1849
C HAPTER 7
Florida, 1849–1850
C HAPTER 8
Twilight of a Career
C HAPTER 9
A New Life in South Carolina
C HAPTER 10
Secession
C HAPTER 11
The Bombardment
C HAPTER 12
Robert E. Lee in Command
C HAPTER 13
General John C. Pemberton
C HAPTER 14
Peninsula Campaign
C HAPTER 15
Maryland Campaign
C HAPTER 16
Return to Charleston
C HAPTER 17
The Impending Storm
C HAPTER 18
Attack of the Ironclads
C HAPTER 19
The Defense of Morris Island
C HAPTER 20
Attacks on Battery Wagner
C HAPTER 21
Siege and Bombardment
C HAPTER 22
The H. L. Hunley Arrives
C HAPTER 23
Ripley Rebuked
C HAPTER 24
The H. L. Hunley Lost at Sea
C HAPTER 25
Ripley Returns and Reacts
C HAPTER 26
Ripley in Crisis
C HAPTER 27
Death of the Confederacy
C HAPTER 28
Chaos and Flight to England
C HAPTER 29
England, 1866–1869
C HAPTER 30
Financial Struggles, 1869–1873
C HAPTER 31
Literary Career, 1874–1875
C HAPTER 32
An Eventful 1875
C HAPTER 33
Ripley’s “The Situation in America”
C HAPTER 34
Inventor
C HAPTER 35
Return to America
C HAPTER 36
Death in New York and Honors in Charleston

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PATENTS
Illustrations
Ohio Historical Marker, R. S. Ripley
Ripley’s Birthplace
St. Lawrence Academy
General P. G. T. Beauregard
Governor Francis W. Pickens
General Robert E. Lee
General John C. Pemberton
Mumma Farm Outbuildings
Colonel Alfred Moore Rhett
Colonel David B. Harris
Captain John C. Mitchel
Francis Lawley
Senator Louis T. Wigfall
Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin
79/89 Gloucester Place
Jackson Monument
Stanhope Arms Pub
Colonel William Hope, V.C .
The New York Hotel
Captain Thomas A. Huguenin
Major John Johnson
Grave Monument of General Roswell S. Ripley
Maps
All maps by James L. Williams
Charleston Harbor
Battle of Mechanicsville/Beaver Dam Creek
Battle of Sharpsburg
Attack of the Ironclads
Patents
No. 2069
No. 5314
No. 5315
No. 4363
No. 1733
No. 2923
No. 1831
No. 3042
No. 817
No. 314,127
PREFACE
I first heard of Roswell Ripley in April 1961 while attending the College of Medicine at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. It was the centennial of the Civil War, and I learned that Ripley, a Confederate officer born in the Columbus suburb of Worthington, was in command of the artillery at Fort Moultrie. Ripley’s artillery fired on Sumter at the onset of the hostilities in that terrible conflict. I wondered how that came about, but over time Ripley’s role slipped to the back of my mind.
Nearly thirty years later, in 1990, while researching my maternal South Carolina genealogy, I discovered that my great-grandfather, Private Gardner Lytle Davis, served with Company A, 1st South Carolina Artillery, and that his commanding officer was General Roswell S. Ripley. Believing Gardner must have at least known of Ripley, I wanted to learn more about this Ohioan and why he fought for the Confederacy. My paternal great-grandfather John Bennett, from Guernsey County, Ohio, was too young to serve. However, his brothers, David and Daniel, incredibly served on Folly Island with Company G, 62nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and the assaults on Battery Wagner.
Living in central Ohio, I thought it would be fairly easy to discover information about Ripley’s early years. Worthington officials had erected a sign in front of Ripley’s birthplace, a small brick house now painted white. A white wood sign at 623 High Street identified the Ripley House but with no explanation of who Ripley was or why his birthplace was recognized. On September 26, 2004, through the efforts of the Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley Camp 1535, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an Ohio historical marker recognizing Ripley was approved and erected on the site. 1
No one at the Worthington Historical Society knew much about Ripley, and they referred me to a nine-page paper, Worthington’s Confederate General , written by former mayor Richard T. Savage. Published in 1961, and although not an in-depth study, Savage presented a rather sympathetic view of Ripley, stating his belief that more should be known about “General Ripley, at least in the community where he was born.”
I soon determined that no one had ever written a biography of Ripley, but I did learn that in 1963 Charles Martin Cummings received a doctorate in American history from Ohio State University for his dissertation, “Seven Ohio Confederate Generals: Case Histories of Defection.” The amount of research Cummings conducted in completing his study is impressive. Although he hesitated to refer to the seven men as traitors, the subtitle of his dissertation indicates his bias against them. He minimized the fact that none of these men were in the U.S. Army at onset of the war. All had left Ohio years before the war, and their homes, families, and businesses were located in the South. Cummings contended that significant character flaws led to their “defection.”


Ohio historical marker, Worthington, Ohio, for Brigadier General Roswell Sabin Ripley, C.S.A . Author’s photograph.
Cummings was viciously critical of Ripley. He minimized positive assessments, emphasized the most negative, and at times took quotations out of context to disparage Ripley. Cummings included photographs of the seven generals; all but Ripley are photographed in their Confederate uniforms and captioned with their name and rank. Cummings printed the most unflattering image of Ripley in existence. It is a postwar photograph of him in a business suit captioned, “Roswell Sabin Ripley, Business Failure.” Later the Ohio History magazine printed Cummings’s condensed and more balanced version of his dissertation entitled “Fruit of the Restless Spirit—Ohio’s Confederate Generals.” 2
The brief biographical sketches found in volumes such as Stewart Sifakis’s Who Was Who in the Civil War and Ezra Warner’s Generals in Gray are incomplete, especially lacking information concerning Ripley’s life after the war. Clifford Dowdey in The Seven Days malevolently wrote, “An opinionated man, Ripley was even more contumacious than D. H. Hill: where Hill respected some superiors, Ripley was against them all.” 3
In contrast, many of Ripley’s contemporaries described him much differently. According to Colonel E. M. Seabrook, a former staff officer, “He always endeavored to bestow upon his subordinates, officers and men, the full measure of praise due to them.” Confederate general Samuel G. French, a former classmate at West Point, stated, “His cheerful presence dispelled all unnecessary solemnity…. his generous and unselfish disposition formed friendships among his classmates that lasted through life.” George C. Eggleston, who served in an independent battery in Charleston, commented, “He was portly in person, commanding and almost pompous presence, and yet, when one came to know him, was as easy and unassuming in manner as if he had not been a brigadier general at all.” 4
There are probably two reasons a biography of Ripley has never been written. First, the twenty years he spent in England after the war were difficult to research. Second, Ripley had been so denigrated by historiographers, South Carolina’s Governor Francis Pickens, and General P. G. T. Beauregard that many writers would not have thought it was worth their time or effort.
The negativity toward Ripley began with Governor Francis Pickens. Pickens fancied himself an authority on military tactics and bombarded Ripley with recommendations regarding troop dispositions around Charleston. Finally, Ripley, not very tactfully, suggested that Pickens’s “interfering” was not at all helpful and caused “confus