Samuel Ryan Curtis (February
3, 1805 – December 26, 1866) was an American
military
officer, and one of the first Republicans elected to
Congress. He was most famous for his role as a
Union Army general the
Trans-Mississippi
Theater of the American Civil War.
Biography
Born near
Champlain, New York
, Curtis
graduated from the United States Military Academy
in 1831. He moved to Ohio
, where he
was a lawyer and took several other civilian jobs. During
the
Mexican-American War, he
served as military
governor of several
occupied cities.
After the
war, he moved to Iowa
, and became
the mayor of Keokuk
in
1856. In 1856 he was elected as a
Republican to represent
Iowa's 1st
congressional district in the
United States House of
Representatives. Curtis and
Timothy Davis (elected the same day to
represent
Iowa's 2nd
congressional district) were the first Iowa Republicans elected
to serve in the U.S. House. Curtis was re-elected in 1858 and 1860.
He was a supporter of eventual
President Abraham Lincoln, and was considered for a
cabinet position in the Lincoln
administration. However, after the Civil War broke out, Curtis was
appointed
colonel of the
2nd Iowa Infantry on June 1, 1861,
prompting him to resign his congressional seat. He was subsequently
promoted to
brigadier
general, effective May 17, 1861.
After
organizing the chaos in St. Louis, Missouri
, Curtis was given command of the Army of the Southwest on December 25,
1861, by Maj.
Gen. Henry W. Halleck.
Curtis moved his headquarters south to
Rolla,
Missouri
, to solidify
Union control in Arkansas
. In
March 1862, his army won the
Battle
of Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas. His success made him
pensive rather than triumphant. A few days after the battle he
wrote, "The scene is silent and sad. The vulture and the wolf now
have the dominion and the dead friends and foes sleep in the same
lonely graves." He was promoted to major general for his success,
effective March 21, 1862.
Tragically, on the same day in late March
that he heard about his promotion, he also found out that his
twenty year old daughter Sadie died of typhoid fever in St. Louis
.
After Pea
Ridge, Curtis' small army moved east and invaded northeast
Arkansas, capturing the city of Helena, Arkansas
in July. In September, Curtis was given
command of the District of Missouri, but Lincoln was soon forced to
reassign him, after Curtis's
abolitionist views led to conflict with the
governor of Missouri. He was reassigned to command the Department
of Kansas & Indian Territory.
In October 1863, his son
Major
Henry S. Curtis,
adjutant to
Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt,
was killed by
Quantrill's
Raiders. In this surprise attack at the
Battle of Baxter Springs,
Quantrill's men wore Federal uniforms and gave no quarter.
In 1864, Curtis returned to Missouri, fighting against the
Confederate invasion led by Maj.
Gen.
Sterling Price. Curtis gathered
the forces of his department together, including several regiments
of Kansas State Militia, calling his force the
Army of the Border.
Price's incursion was
halted by Curtis' victory at the Battle of Westport
. Curtis was then reassigned to a completely
different armed conflict, commanding the Army's "Department of the
Northwest," which was in the closing phase of a military response
to uprisings in southern Minnesota
and Dakota
Territory by Native Americans against
settlers.
After the
wars, he returned to Iowa where he was involved with the Union
advances in railroads until his death in
1866 in Council
Bluffs, Iowa
. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery, in
Keokuk.
See also
References
- Shea & Hess, p 275
- Shea & Hess, p 290
- National Park Service Biography
- Boatner, p 51
- Boatner, Mark M. III. The Civil War Dictionary. New
York: David McKay, 1959. ISBN 0-679-50013-8
- Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David
J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University
Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3
- Shea, William & Hess, Earl, Pea Ridge: Civil War
Campaign in the West. University of North Carolina Press,
1992. ISBN 0-8078-4669-4
- National Park Service Biography
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