Ethan Allen Hitchcock (May 18, 1798 – August 5, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and author who had War Department assignments in Washington, D.C., during the American Civil War, in which he served as a major general.
Hitchcock was born in Vergennes, Vermont. His father was Samuel Hitchcock (1755-1813), a lawyer who served as United States District Judge for Vermont, and his mother was Lucy Caroline Allen (1768-1842), the daughter of American Revolutionary War hero General Ethan Allen; though no likeness from life of the revolutionary is extant, Lucy said that he strongly resembled Ethan Allen Hitchcock.[1] Hitchcock's siblings included Henry Hitchcock, a Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. Henry's son Ethan Hitchcock served as United States Secretary of the Interior under William McKinley. Another of Henry's sons, Henry Hitchcock, was a prominent attorney in St. Louis.
Ethan A. Hitchcock graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1817 (17th out of 19) and was commissioned a third lieutenant of Field Artillery.
Career
He was promoted to captain in 1824. From 1829 to 1833, he served as commandant of cadets at West Point and was promoted to major in 1838. By 1842 he achieved the rank of the lieutenant colonel in the 3rd Infantry Regiment, in command of Fort Stansbury.[2]
He served in the Seminole War in Florida, in the Pacific Northwest, and in the Mexican–American War, where he served as Gen. Winfield Scott's inspector general in the march on Mexico City. He received a brevet promotion to colonel for Contreras and Churubusco and to brigadier general for Molino del Rey.
In 1851, became the colonel of the 2nd Infantry. From 1851 to 1854, he commanded the Pacific Division and then the Department of the Pacific.
In October 1855, he resigned from the Army following a refusal by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to extend a four-month leave of absence that he had requested for reasons of health. He moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and began a presumed retirement, occupying himself with writing and studies of general literature and philosophy.
Hitchcock was a diarist, and his journal entries from this time have served as a crucial source of evidence for Howard Zinn's reinterpretation of United States history, Voices of A People's History of the United States.
Civil War
After the start of the Civil War, Hitchcock applied to return to the service, but was rejected. It was only after the intervention of Winfield Scott that he was commissioned a major general in February, 1862 and became special adviser to the Secretary of War. From March 17 to July 23, 1862, he served as the chairman of the War Board, the organization that assisted President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in the management of the War Department and the command of the Union armies during the period in which there was no general-in-chief. (Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had been relieved of his responsibilities as general-in-chief and Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck had not yet replaced him.)
Hitchcock sat on the court-martial of Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter which convicted the general of disobedience and cowardice. From November 1862 through the end of the war, he served as Commissioner for Prisoner of War Exchange, and then Commissary-General of Prisoners.
Hitchcock was mustered out in 1867 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, then to Sparta, Georgia.