Hill, Daniel Harvey (12 July 1821–24 September 1889), soldier, educator, and editor, was born at Hill’s Iron Works, York District, South Carolina, the son of Solomon Hill, a farmer, and Nancy Cabeen. Signally influenced by the military and religious traditions of his forebears, Hill was descended from Scotch-Irish and Scottish Presbyterians who had settled in the Carolina upcountry before the American Revolution. Both grandfathers had fought with distinction under General ...
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Hill, Daniel Harvey (1821-1889), soldier, educator, and editor
Malcolm Lester
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Johnson, Bushrod Rust (1817-1880), soldier and educator
Arthur W. Bergeron
Johnson, Bushrod Rust (07 October 1817–12 September 1880), soldier and educator, was born on a farm near Morristown, Ohio, the son of Noah Johnson, a blacksmith and farmer, and Rachel Spencer. Apparently Johnson received little formal education except for a brief attendance at Marietta Academy in Marietta, Ohio. Although raised in an antislavery Quaker family, he decided to pursue a military education as a means of rising above his social status. His affiliation with the Quaker religion seems not to have been as strong as that of his parents and other relatives. In 1836 Johnson entered the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated twenty-third in a class of forty-two in 1840 and received a commission as a second lieutenant of infantry. He joined the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment at Fort Brooke, Florida, late in 1840 and served at various posts in that state during the next year. On 1 February 1844 he was promoted to first lieutenant. The Third Infantry joined General ...
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Johnston, William Preston (1831-1899), soldier and educator
Elizabeth Zoe Vicary
Johnston, William Preston (05 January 1831–16 July 1899), soldier and educator, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Albert Sidney Johnston, an army officer, and Henrietta Preston. Johnston’s mother died when he was four and his father was stationed in Texas shortly afterward, so the boy was left in the care of his mother’s relatives. He was educated first in public schools in Louisville and later at the S. V. Womack Academy in Shelbyville, Kentucky. He attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, for a brief time in 1846 and then matriculated with the first class of the Western Military Institute in Georgetown, Kentucky. An excellent student, Johnston was chosen by his classmates at WMI to give the address at the school celebration of Washington’s birthday. Admitted to Yale as a junior in May 1851, he graduated the following year, earning the Townsend Prize for English composition and the Clark Prize for an essay titled “Political Abstractionists.” He then entered law school at the University of Louisville, graduating in 1853....
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Lane, James Henry (1833-1907), army officer and educator
Steven E. Woodworth
Lane, James Henry (28 July 1833–21 September 1907), army officer and educator, was born in Mathews Court House, Virginia, the son of Walter Gardner Lane and Mary Ann Henry Barkwell, planters. Educated at private schools and by tutors, Lane entered the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1851 and was graduated three years later, second in a class of fourteen. In 1857 he was graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in science. He returned to VMI, which accorded him the title of lieutenant and the duties of assistant professor of mathematics and assistant instructor in tactics. Thereafter he taught in several different private schools....
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Lee, George Washington Custis (1832-1913), army officer and educator
Steven E. Woodworth
Lee, George Washington Custis (16 September 1832–18 February 1913), army officer and educator, was born at Fort Monroe, Virginia, the son of Robert Edward Lee, an army officer, and Mary Ann Randolph Custis. After an early education in local private schools, Custis Lee (as he was commonly called) entered West Point in 1850 and graduated first in the class of 1854. His academic performance entitled him to an assignment in the elite Corps of Engineers, in which he was commissioned second lieutenant. During the remaining years before the Civil War, he worked on river and harbor improvement projects in various parts of the country. When the attack on Fort Sumter brought Virginia’s secession, Lee was serving as a first lieutenant and assistant to the chief engineer of the army in his bureau in Washington. Lee resigned his U.S. Army commission on 2 May 1861 and offered his services to Virginia. On 1 July 1861 he was commissioned captain of engineers in the Confederate army, and that month and the next he worked at designing and directing the construction of the fortifications at Richmond. Other duty beckoned, however, when on 31 August he was selected by President ...
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Lee, Stephen Dill (1833-1908), soldier, educator, and author
Albert Castel
Lee, Stephen Dill (22 September 1833–28 May 1908), soldier, educator, and author, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Thomas Lee, a physician, and Caroline Allison. He was also the grandson of the prominent South Carolina judge Thomas Lee (1769–1839). At the age of seventeen, after attending a boarding school in North Carolina, he entered West Point from which he graduated in 1854, ranking seventeenth in a class of forty-six that included ...
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Pike, Albert (1809-1891), lawyer, soldier, and Masonic scholar
Mark C. Carnes
Pike, Albert (29 December 1809–02 April 1891), lawyer, soldier, and Masonic scholar, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Pike, a cobbler, and Sarah Andrews. The boy was torn between his father, whose irreverence and drinking scandalized neighbors, and his mother, who read the Bible to her only son daily and planned on his entering the ministry. In 1813, seeking to supplement his income by farming, Benjamin Pike moved the family to Newburyport, Massachusetts. In 1825 Albert was sent to live with his uncle, a teacher at Framingham Academy, who soon learned that Pike had a prodigious memory that enabled him to digest large volumes and recall their contents at will; the boy learned Hebrew, Latin, and Greek almost effortlessly. Eight months after his arrival in Framingham, Pike passed the entrance examination for Harvard College. He could not afford the tuition, however, so, instead of enrolling at Harvard, he taught common school at Gloucester. The following year Harvard agreed to admit him as a junior, but school officials insisted that he pay the first two years’ tuition. Outraged, Pike abandoned his dreams of a formal education....
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Pike, Albert (1809-1891)
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Albert Pike. Photoprint, c. 1886. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-100590).
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Stewart, Alexander Peter (1821-1908), soldier, educator, and park commissioner
E. C. Bearss
Stewart, Alexander Peter (02 October 1821–30 August 1908), soldier, educator, and park commissioner, was born at Rogersville, Tennessee, the son of William Stewart and Elizabeth Decherd. He entered the U.S. Military Academy on 1 July 1838 and in 1842 graduated twelfth in a class of fifty-six. While at West Point, he roomed for two years with future Union general ...
