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“Not Fortunate in War”: Major General Thomas James Churchill Mark K. Christ maJor geNeral riChard taylor aCCurately summed up thomas James Churchill’s career as a Confederate general in a single sentence: “A worthy, gallant gentleman, General Churchill, but not fortunate in war.”1 Thomas James Churchill was born on March 10, 1824, to Samuel and Abby Churchill on their farm near Louisville, Kentucky. He and his four brothers and two sisters attended public schools, with Thomas receiving his diploma from St. Mary’s College at Bardstown in 1844 at age twenty. Churchill then pursued a law degree from Transylvania College at Lexington . The Churchills were descendants of prominent Virginia families and had strong political connections in Kentucky (one sister was married to that state’s governor). The family also had a military tradition that stemmed from Abby Churchill’s father, who served during the American Revolution and died fighting Indians at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791. Thomas Churchill would pursue both political and military prominence in the years that followed.2 An opportunity for the latter presented itself first as the United States declared war against Mexico in 1846. Churchill enlisted in Colonel Humphrey Marshall’s 1st Kentucky Mounted Rifles, serving as a lieutenant. The regiment set out for San Antonio to join other American troops gathering for the invasion of Mexico but was forced to stop in eastern Arkansas when several cavalrymen fell ill in the region’s pestilential swamps. During this lull, several officers, including Churchill, were invited to the imposing home of Judge Benjamin Johnson in Little Rock. This visit had several future ramifications for the young Kentuckian. First, it familiarized him with Johnson, Arkansas’ first federal district judge and a key player in the political dynasty know as “The Family,” which dominated the state until the Civil War. Second, it was at this soiree that he met Ann Sevier, Johnson’s Mark K. Christ 168 granddaughter and the daughter of U.S. Senator Ambrose Sevier. She and Churchill would marry after the war.3 The 1st Kentucky Mounted Rifles continued to Mexico, and it was there that Richard Taylor’s assessment of Churchill’s fortunes at war were first confirmed. On January 23, 1847, a mixed party of seventy-two Kentuckians under Major John P. Gaines and Arkansans commanded by Major Solon Borland were surprised and captured at a hacienda called Encarnacion while on a mission to probe Mexican strength. Churchill was sent out with a second group, consisting of Captain William J. Heady and seventeen other men, to seek the missing soldiers. The patrol camped at the ranch at San Juan del Pratho on the evening of the twenty-sixth, having learned that Gaines had passed through there a few days earlier. When they woke up the next morning , the fog lifted to reveal some three hundred cavalrymen, each with a small Mexican flag fluttering from his lance. On seeing them, an observer wrote, Churchill, “ever cool and intrepid, exclaimed to Captain Heady, ‘How beautiful!’” Heady deemed it futile to resist, and Thomas Churchill—not for the last time—became a prisoner of war.4 The captured Americans, though sometimes threatened by civilians, were treated fairly well by the Mexican army; Churchill accepted an offer to dine with General José V. Minon, and both he and Heady were introduced to General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Fellow prisoner Cassius Clay wrote that “at Queratero the mob rose against us, and stoned us”; the captives were saved only by seeking sanctuary in the town’s church. At the village of San Louis Potosi, where the residents were “uttering the bitterest curses and imprecations , and showering volleys of stones and other missiles upon the prisoners ,” Churchill and Heady were united with the officers from the other captured patrols.5 The combined group of captives traveled two hundred miles to Mexico City and were thrown into prison, though they later received leave to wander the city after giving their paroles. After several months in the Mexican capital, as Major General Winfield Scott’s American army drew nearer, the captives were ordered to Toluca. Churchill, “mounted on a fine horse handsomely rigged and caparisoned,” led a group of eighteen men. As he passed outposts of Mexican soldiers, “they mistook him for a Mexican General . . . and sent out their guard to salute him. The Lieutenant duly appreciated the compliment and rode in state.” In Toluca, the men were allowed to roam freely, but the populace turned...

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