Notes and Queries

NOTES AND QUERIES Edited by Boyd B. Stutter 517 Main Street Charleston 2, West Virginia This department is designed as an open forum for researchers into Civil War themes and for readers of Civü War History in general. It is open for questions on, and discussions of, all phases of the Great Conflict and its personnel. Also, notes on newly-discovered or little-known sidelights of the war are welcomed. Address Notes and Queries Editor. QUERIES No. 98—Last Confederate General to Surrender: Some historians writing on the Indian Territory during the Civil War conclude that Brigadier General Stand Watie, the capable Cherokee Indian leader, was the last Confederate officer of general rank to surrender . ( See Frank Cunningham, General Stand Watie's Confederate Indians [San Antonio, 1959], pp. 5, 198; Edwin C. McReynolds, OMahoma : A History of the Sooner State [Norman, 1954], p. 222.) Watie capitulated to Lieutenant Colonel Asa C. Matthews, 99th Illinois, at Doaksville in the Choctaw Nation on June 23, 1865. Query: Did any other Confederate general surrender his command after Watie? LeRoy H. Fischer No. 99—Confederate Ambassador and Stuart's Beard: ( 1 ) Sometime after thebattle ofChickamauga MajorGeneralWilliam Preston, distinguished Congressman, diplomat, and Confederate general , was designated ambassador to Mexico by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Preston never reached his post. Query: What happened? (2) In most physical descriptions, "Jeb" Stuart is said to have worn a beard to cover a weak chin. It has also been said that the nickname "Beaut" or "Beauty" given him during his sojourn at West Point was meant to be satirical because of his rough-hewn and homely looks. However, I recently saw a Library of Congress photograph of Stuart 434 taken during his West Point days which shows the unbearded face as being strikingly handsome, with strong features and finely formed mouth. Query: Didn't previous authors have access to this Library of Congress photo? If so, why the unfavorable description? E. R. Vandriest, Jr. NOTES An Unpublished Stanton Letter: [Contributed by Stephen Z. Starr, Cincinnati] Soon after the battle of Bull Run, a number of Northern newspapers began a campaign to have General Ethan Allen Hitchcock recalled to service in the army. Hitchcock, grandson of the Ethan Allen of the Green Mountain Boys, graduate of West Point (class of 1817), and later superintendent of the Military Academy, had reached the substantive rank of colonel and was a brigadier-general by brevet when he resigned from the army in 1855. Plagued by poor health, believing that his advanced years—he was born in 1798—unfitted him for active service, and with the interests of a scholar, he resisted as long as he could the public and private pressure to return to the service. On February 10, 1862, he was notified by General Scott that he had been appointed a major general, and it was intimated to him that he would be sent to Tennessee to replace U. S. Grant in the campaign against Forts Henry and Donelson. Hitchcock entered an immediate and energetic protest against the plan to supersede Grant, and was still debating whether to accept or decline the proffered commission when Stanton invited him to come to Washington for a "personal conference." Having arrived in Washington on March 10, Hitchcock had a severe hemorrhage. On the morning of the following day Stanton called on him at his hotel. In the ensuing conversation, as Hitchcok recorded it in his diary (W. A. Croffut [ed.], Fifty Years in Camp and Field [New York, 1909], pp. 432 et passim): He told me that he wanted me in the service. I replied that I was not fit for service, and appealed to his own eyes. He . . . went on to say that he and President Lincoln wanted the benefit of my experience—that they wanted me here, close by, where they could have the opportunity of consulting me. They did 'not wish me in the field but in Washington'; they 'would put no more upon me than I could bear,' and a multitude of other assurances of the kind. He even offered to remove the Adjutant-General and put me at the head of the staff. However, Hitchcock resisted Stanton's importunities on...