Thomas Turpin Crittenden

Thomas Turpin Crittenden (born October 16, 1825 in Huntsville , Alabama , † September 5, 1905 in East Gloucester , Massachusetts ) was a general of the Northern States in the Civil War .

Childhood and youth

Crittenden was born in Huntsville and moved to Texas with his parents as a child . His uncle was the politician John J. Crittenden , who represented Kentucky in the United States Senate. His cousins ​​were the Confederate General George B. Crittenden and the Union General Thomas L. Crittenden . He grew up in Texas and attended Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky . He then practiced as a lawyer in Missouri until the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846, where he enrolled in a volunteer regiment of the State of Missouri. He was promoted to second lieutenant. A year later he moved to Madison, Indiana , where he continued his legal career.

Civil war

Five days after the civil war broke out, he returned to the Union Army and was made a captain . He led a company in the 6th Indiana Infantry Regiment . A week later he was already a colonel and led a regiment. Crittenden led his regiment to what would later become West Virginia and took part in several small battles. On August 2, 1861, the regiment was disbanded. Crittenden reorganized his regiment and led it for the next two years. On September 20, 1861, he led his men to the officially neutral state of Kentucky. They spent the winter near Bowling Green and marched on the site of the Battle of Shiloh , Tennessee . They arrived there on the second day of the battle. Later that month, in April 1862, Crittenden became a brigadier general .

On July 13, 1862, just a few weeks after he had been given command of the Union Garrison in Murfreesboro , it was captured by Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry. Crittenden's career was ruined. In early 1863 he was given command of an insignificant brigade. He realized that he was no longer trusted. He resigned from the army in May 1863 and did no further military service.

After the war, Crittenden moved to Washington, DC , where he practiced as a lawyer, including before the United States Supreme Court . In 1885 he moved to distant San Diego , California , where he worked as a real estate developer. Thomas Crittenden died at the age of 79 while visiting East Gloucester, Massachusetts. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

family

• John Jordan Crittenden Sen. (1754-1806), American Army officer, American politician (great-uncle)
• Robert Crittenden (1797–1834), American politician (second uncle)
• John J. Crittenden (1786–1863), American politician (uncle)
• George Bibb Crittenden (1812–1880), American general (first or second cousin)
• Thomas Theodore Crittenden (1832-1909), American politician (cousin)
• Thomas Leonidas Crittenden (1819-1893), American general (brother)
• Thomas Theodore Crittenden, Jr. (1863-1938) was Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri between 1908 and 1909 (son of his cousin)

literature

• Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J. , Civil War High Commands , Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3 .
• Eubank, Damon R. In the Shadow of the Patriarch: The John J. Crittenden Family in War and Peace . Macon, Georgia : Mercer University Press , 2009, ISBN 978-0-88146-151-0 .

Web links

• Thomas Turpin Crittenden in the database of Find a Grave (English)