Henry Hopkins Sibley

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Henry Hopkins Sibley in a photograph by Mathew Brady

Henry Hopkins Sibley (born May 25, 1816 in Natchitoches , Louisiana , † August 23, 1886 in Fredericksburg , Virginia ) was an officer in the armies of the United States of America, the Confederate States of America and the Khedive of Egypt. For the American armed forces he developed a tent and an oven, both of which bear his name. During the Civil War he planned and directed the failed New Mexico campaign of the Confederation, the troops he commands are often referred to as the Sibley Brigade.

biography

The Sibley family originally came from the Anglo-Scottish border area and traced their line of ancestors back to the time of the Norman conquest. She had come to the New World with the Winthrop Expedition in 1629 and settled in Massachusetts . Henry's grandfather, the physician John Sibley , was married to Elizabeth Hopkins for the first time, who owed the middle part of the name to son and grandson. After the death of his wife, he moved to Louisiana and in 1803 explored the west of the future state on behalf of the federal government.

John Sibley settled on the banks of the Red River not far from Natchitoches , his second son Samuel Hopkins Sibley followed him in 1811 with his wife Margaret McDonald and was a clerk at the district court of Natchitoches from 1815; Henry was born a year later. When he was seven years old, his father died. The boy was placed in St. Charles , Missouri , in the care of his uncle George Champlin Sibley, whose wife, Mary Easton, was a dedicated teacher. Henry then attended Miami University in Oxford , Ohio , before he was admitted to the United States Military Academy in West Point at the age of 17 through the protection of his grandfather . Although he had to repeat a year and was even arrested for an offense, he was able to graduate from the academy in 1838.

As a second lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoons Regiment, he took part in the Second Seminole War (1838–1842), a conflict in which more soldiers fell victim to malaria than combat operations. Sibley was promoted to lieutenant on March 8, 1840, and while on vacation that year he married Charlotte Kendall * in Governor's Island * on Governors Island, New York. The marriage had two children.

From 1846 to 1848 Sibley served with his unit in the war against Mexico. On February 16, 1847 he was promoted to captain and was given command of the 1st Company of the 2nd Dragoons Regiment. For his services during the siege of Veracruz, he was awarded the rank of major. In Mexico too, illnesses and poor hygiene resulted in more deaths than the battles. After the war, Sibley was stationed from 1850 to 1854 in various forts along the Texas border. During his stay at Fort Belknap, he visited a Comanche village. The teepees inspired his tent, which he developed and patented in the following years.

Starting in 1854, there were civil war-like clashes in Kansas between local abolitionists and supporters of slavery from Missouri. The 2nd Dragoon Regiment was assigned to restore public order. A similar task was performed by the unit in 1857, when it participated in the punitive expedition against the Mormons in Utah to enforce federal government directives. In Utah, Sibley was tried by court-martial over a feud with his regimental commander, but this had no effect on his career.

From 1860 on, the 2nd Dragoon Regiment was involved in the pursuit of the Diné in what is now Arizona and New Mexico . Sibley was last stationed at Fort Union , where he was promoted to major on May 13, 1861, but that same month he resigned from the Union Army and went to El Paso , Texas . There he entered the service of the Confederate Army, which accepted him with the rank of colonel. In Richmond , Virginia , he presented his plan to Jefferson Davis for the conquest of the Southwest and was entrusted as brigade general with the execution of the New Mexico campaign.

Sibley spent the rest of the year setting up his brigade and marching to the starting position. In late February 1862 he began the invasion of New Mexico. After initial success, however, he was crushed at the end of March 1862 and had to retreat to Texas. When he arrived in San Antonio in the summer of 1862 he had lost most of his men, most of them not to the enemy but to the desert. Sibley had to report the failure of his mission to Richmond, but was returned to command of his brigade. After the fighting for Fort Bisland in April 1863, he was tried by a court martial and relieved of his command, and he spent the rest of the war inactive.

In 1869 he was recruited by Colonel Thaddeus Mott for the army of the Khedive . Sibley was one of the first to arrive in Egypt in 1870. As brigade general of the artillery, he was supposed to supervise the construction of coastal fortifications. However, he was not up to his task and attracted negative attention due to alcohol problems, so he was dismissed in 1873 due to illness and inability.

Back in the USA, Sibley lived with his daughter in Fredericksburg, Virginia from 1874. He taught languages, wrote articles and worked on military inventions, while litigating the US government over outstanding payments on his patents. He died impoverished on August 23, 1888.

He is buried with five other officers in the Fredericksburg Confederate Cemetery in Fredericksburg. More than 3,300 soldiers of the Confederate States are buried here, 2,184 of them are buried as unknowns.

His grave was not marked until it was rediscovered in 1956. The tombstone that was then erected bears an incorrect date of death and indicates August 22nd.

The Sibley tent

The Sibley tent was a conical round tent made of canvas. It measured about six meters in diameter and about four meters in height. A sewn-in iron ring formed a round opening about 30 cm in size at the top, which had to be closed with a canvas cap in bad weather. The ring was hung with chains from a single pole, which was stuck at its lower end in an iron tripod and carried the whole tent. An approximately three meter high entrance on the front and an opening only half the size on the back provided the necessary ventilation. A first modification was the introduction of an approximately one meter high, all-round wall, which provided more headroom. It broke the purely conical shape and resulted in a more bell-like appearance, which is why the name bell tent is also used. Originally intended for twelve soldiers, it could also be occupied by up to 20 men if necessary. However, since it was quite heavy and bulky, it was not often taken along on marches and was primarily used in stationary camps such as winter camps. Almost 49,000 tents were produced and used by both armies in the Civil War. After that it was still used in campaigns against the indigenous population until the 1890s. Although Sibley had a patent on the tent and had agreed a license fee with the federal government, they stopped paying him when he joined the Confederation.

The Sibley oven

Sibley had developed his tent especially with regard to bad weather periods, as a logical addition he came up with a suitable stove, which was very similar to the tent in its outer shape. It consisted of a steel sheet connected by rivets, which formed a truncated cone open at the bottom, at the upper end it was provided with a wreath that held the stove pipe. The stove was fed through a rectangular door halfway up, and air was given through a semicircular opening on its lower edge, which was on the same line as the door. The assessments of the usefulness of the stove vary widely, and the information on fuel requirements also varies widely. A major disadvantage of the stove was the fire hazard it posed and which killed many tents. Nevertheless, due to its low weight, the furnace was a popular piece of equipment that was used in individual units until the end of the Second World War .

Others

Henry Hastings Sibley , the first governor of Minnesota, was a distant relative of Henry Hopkins Sibley.

In Sergio Leone's film Two Glorious Scoundrels ( Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo ) , the New Mexico campaign is the background. In one scene, Sibley is shown as a broken man, who is sitting on the driver's seat with a blank look and fleeing from the Union troops. There is no proof of this detail.

Various sources on the Internet incorrectly state that Sibley and Canby's wives were related. At most, contact between the two women is possible during Sibley's service in the US Army, when Canby was his superior.

Web links

• Henry Hopkins Sibley in the database of Find a Grave (English)