"The Perfect Model of a Christian Hero": The Faith, Anti-Slaveryism, and Post-War Legacy of William S. Rosecrans

Union Major General William Starke Rosecrans (1819-1898) was a central figure in the Catholic experience of the Civil War. Among the few Union generals to become an army commander, he led the Army of the Cumberland, one of the three most important northern armies of the war. Prior to the fall of 1863, patriotic northerners widely praised his battlefield victories and sharp rebuke of anti-war northerners known as Copperheads. Many northerners, particularly Republicans, lauded his opposition to slavery and outspoken support of the Emancipation Proclamation. His prominence as the highest-ranking Catholic in the Union Army, perhaps obscured both at that time and in memory by the better known Irish Brigade, makes his career worthy of study at length. William Lamers, in writing the only twentieth-century biography of Rosecrans, focused on his military career while neglecting important aspects of his character and life.¹

While briefly discussing his career in the Union Army, this study is the first to examine three essential elements of his life to account for his importance as a Catholic figure of the time: religious faith, anti-slavery views, and status as the Catholic community's greatest wartime hero. First, historians have long recognized the general's piety. Most recently George Rable ranked him as one of the Union Army's most devout Christians.² Yet, many Civil-War scholars, including his only biographer, mention his faith only in passing, thus Rosecrans's Catholicism remains an understudied aspect of his character. Second, at the time Catholics rarely criticized slavery openly, in part because they distrusted radical reform movements and saw abolitionists as anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. By supporting the Emancipation Proclamation and abolition, Rosecrans took a brave stand against an institution that he considered to be contrary to the Catholic faith. His position angered many Catholic opponents of the war. Third, even Catholic scholars of the Civil War have underestimated Rosecrans's importance as the Catholic Union general. After the war, Catholic apologists, aiming to remind Americans of their coreligionists' role in helping to save the Union, made him a hero and symbol of their community's wartime patriotism. By looking closely at his war and post-war career, this study will show why Rosecrans became an important nineteenth-century, non-Irish Catholic symbol for a community struggling to prove its belonging and patriotism in American society and history.³

General William S. Rosecrans leading the charge (William S. Rosecrans Papers, Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)

William Starke Rosecrans was born on September 6, 1819, in Delaware County, Ohio, and his family baptized him into the Episcopal faith. His family's military background influenced his career choice. His maternal grandfather had been a Pennsylvania lieutenant in the Continental Army, and his father had served in a light horse battalion with General William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812. While Rosecrans himself was not given a combat assignment in the Mexican War (1846-1848), his brother, Henry, served in a volunteer cavalry unit and saw action in Mexico. Patriotism and military service were therefore Rosecrans's birth right. Catholicism came later to him and most of his family.⁴

In 1838, Rosecrans entered West Point where his experiences shaped the course of his life. Apart from preparation for a military career, his education helped when trying his hand at patent writing, mining, and inventing. Finishing fifth in the class of 1842, he earned a coveted position in the engineering corps. At his graduation he met and soon became engaged to Ann Eliza Hegeman, an Episcopalian and daughter of Judge Adrian Hegeman of New York City. Rosecrans, assigned to duty in the engineering corps, secured an appointment as an assistant professor at West Point, allowing them to live near Ann's family. The couple married a year later on August 24, 1843 at St. John's Chapel, an Episcopal church in New York City.⁵

Rosecrans converted to Catholicism while teaching...