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Ohio

Madison County Mlitary Data

            THE BARRACKS AT NEWPORT

Newport Barracks, toward which the eye of desire of all pcts of the army appears to be turned at the present moment, and from which it is a misdemeanor even not to want to go away, is the official headquarters of the Department of the South, whose geographical limits include the States of Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas.     
  The Commanding General  is Brev. Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, Colonel of the 5^th U.S. Artillery, and one of the most distinguished artillery officers in the service. An old Mexican veteran, he was brevetted for gallantry on nearly every field of honor in the Mexican war. He kept the same pace during the rebellion, which found him Major of the 5^th Artillery, and saw him as Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac in every fray from the first Bull Run to the capitulation of Lee at Appomattox, and always at the post of danger. His personal staff are:  First Lieut. E. S. Dudley, of the 3d Artillery, and First Lieut. John M. Baldwin, of the 5^th Artillery, a brilliant young Louisianan, who ranked twelfth in a class (1875) which numbered forty-three. The officers composing the department staff are Maj. J. H. Taylor, Adjutant General; Lieut John M. Baldwin, A. D. C., Acting Judge Advocate and in charge of the Inspector’s office; Lieut. Col. James F. Dana, Chief Quartermaster; Capt. Wm. H. Bell, Chief Commissary of Subsistence; Lieut. Col. John Campbell, Surgeon and Medical Director; Maj. George E. Glenn, Paymaster; Lieut. Ira MacNutt, Chief Ordinance officer. The post is garrisoned at present by one battery of dismounted artillery, officered by Capt. C. A. Woodruff and Lieut. Tallie Thompson, Maj. J. M. Brown is Post Surgeon. This was the roster on Saturday, but the military man is a living illustration of the Scriptural “here to-day and gone to-morrow,” and its accuracy to-day is not vouched for. These officers, after the routine of the day which fills the hours from 9 to 3, take their constitutional around the charming parade ground, and loiter under den linden, or, rather, under den pappel, to be botanically exact, and are supposed to ponder much on the uncertainty of life and staff detail.   The young officer cometh up like a flower, and just begins to spread his gold laced petals in the sunshine of society, and he is cut down by an order to report at Key West or Tampa . The veteran officer, after a quarter of a century of raging up and down the continent, settles himself to a bit of quiet ease in his pretty quarters and presto! he is wanted  in Montana , or at the gulf, and so the whirligig goes round. Col. Taylor, Adjutant General, whose name appears in the above roster, was relieved from duty at the barracks Monday, and ordered to report to Gen. Howard, commanding Department of the Platt, headquarters at Omaha , and is en route to his new post. The duties of the Adjutant General’s office are important. There is, of course, but one Adjutant General, as there is but one prophet, and he is located at Washington , and swallows up all the Assistant Adjutant Generals, as Aaron’s serpent swallowed up all the others. But in order to facilitate the business of the Adjutant General’s  Department there exists a  corps of Assistant Adjutant Generals in which no officer ranked below a Major. Vacancies in this corps are painfully infrequent, for, in the language of Mr. Jefferson, few die and none resign, but when there is a vacancy it is filled by the appointment of a Captain of the line. Col. Corbin who relieves Col. Taylor, has been on duty at Washington since ’76, is one of the junior officers in the corps, and was appointed at the request of President Hayes. No political influence is ever brought to bear to secure these positions, of course, because that would be prejudicial to good order and military discipline, and very naughty, besides, but the maneuvering by which these plums fall into the mouths of line Captains who are solid at the National Capital is one of the things no fellow on the frontier can find out by any tactics laid down in Hardee or Upton. The Department Adjutant General’s Office is a busy one. To him all the mails from all the posts in the department are addressed, the mails from higher headquarters only being addressed to the Commanding General. All these communications are acted upon, telegrams are sent, papers forwarded, and any inspections necessary ordered. The Commanding General knows every day, through his Adjutant, what is going on in every corner of his department, and by wire or post directs, even in matters of minutiae, its affairs. It may be stated for the benefit of those who never hear its sunrise gun or see the “grid-iron” float lazily above its clustering trees, that Newport Barracks lies just opposing Cincinnati , at the mouth of the Licking, on the Kentucky side of Ohio , in the picturesque little town of Newport . The location, on a broad bend of the river, is a lovely one. The ivy mantled homes of Newport are built up to its gates on the east, to the west the spires of Covington rise up out of her forest of trees, and across the tawny river stretches for miles away the Queen City with her encircling belt of hills. This military post is one of the oldest in the country. The site comprises about six acres, and was purchased by the government of Gen. James Taylor in 1803, and the buildings erected under his superintendence. The work was finished in 1804, personally inspected by Gen. Scott, approved and accepted. The original buildings consisted of a capacious oblong two story armory of brick, a fireproof conical magazine, a stone house for the keeper, and wooden barracks for the accommodation of two or three regiments of men, the whole inclosed in a stockade. Cincinnati at that time was a place of 700 inhabitants, which, in 1805, had swelled to 960. It was the ill wind of war in 1812 which paralyzed the industries of the Atlantic States, that filled the barracks with soldiers, and sent a tide of immigration westward that made Cincinnati a city in less than a single decade. The brick portion of the barracks buildings was made in ’43 and ’48, and there have been various improvements since. There was a chapel one, but the sword proved to be mightier than the gown, for the place knows it no more. Tradition preserves the memory of one Cromwellian old commandant who used to march the whole garrison over to Christ Church for Sunday service, and woe betide the trooper whose gennflexions and responses were not up to the army standard.
    However dull “the cankers of a calm world and a long peace” may make the barracks to-day, its early social history is full of interest. Whoever writes it will record no annals of a quiet neighborhood, for the story is full of drum beat and war’s alarms, and of summons to bridal, banquet, and burial.
                                            Biddings to wine that long has ceased to flow,
                                            Gay meetings with good fellows long laid low.  
   In the early days the assignments were for long periods.  Col. Thomas Martin, a distinguished revolutionary soldier, was the first Commandment of the barracks, and also Military Storekeeper.  Mrs. Col. Thomas Martin, in her admirable history of Campbell County, read at the Centennial says of him: “Col. Martin possessed extraordinary physical powers and infinite humor;” he was exceedingly popular in dispensing his hospitalities and good cheer to the officers, and it is related that their parting toast over the flowing bowl was ‘Col. Martin, may the war last as long as he lives, and the troops always lie at the mouth of the Licking.’ In 1811-12 Newport Barracks was an important depot for military stores. From here were sent supplies of arms, ammunition, and provisions to Gen. Harrison at Vincennes . Here, in 1811, Gen. Boyd came with the gallant 4^th Infantry, and for six months their white tents ranged from the mouth of the Licking to Taylor ’s Creek, and from here they marched to the battle of Tippecanoe . Zachary Taylor, when Captain, was stationed at this post. We have in hand the original order from Col. Wm. Russell (the property of Ms. Col. Jones, of Newport) directing Capt. Taylor to take command of certain recruits at Newport, “Sincinnatta,” and ‘Louis Ville,’ and proceed at once to Fort Harrison, and warning him, in ceremonious phrase, of the importance of the command, because the troops are ‘new and consequently raw as to their duty.’ During the war of 1812  800 British soldiers at one time were confined in a pen made of stout palings in the barracks yard, and 500 Indian prisoners lay in boats upon the river. Mr. Richard Southgate, himself of English birth, did much to relieve the discomforts of the English prisoners. He secured the release on parole of many of the better sort among them, and set them to work building the house on Taylor street now occupied by his daughter, the venerable Mrs. Dr. Parker. They repaid him by breaking into his store and robbing him, and several were sent to jail. Years afterward, when Mr. Southgate was in the Senate, he found one of the culprits was a member of the lower house—an instance of the ‘queer bed-fellows’  politics made even in the good old days.”
      Col. Martin, who, by the way, was the grandfather of Mrs. Gov. Stevenson, was succeeded by his son-in-law, Col. Richard Oldham, and by Capt. James W. Bryson, also a son-in-law of Col. Martin. In 1818 Capt. Rob Richard became commandant, and from then till 1830 peace and an Ordnance Sergeant reigned at the barracks. Then the quarters were put in order, and the trolling of the drum sticks and the blare of bugles began again.
      The military academy, which had been suggested by Col. Thomas Pickering at the close of the revolution, and dawdled along until Madison took it in hand, was now firmly established and turning out every year batches of brand new and beautiful “Lieutenants.” The barracks became a depot for recruits and for years almost all the young officers were sent here on leaving the Point to wait assignments to their commands. Thus it happens that almost every infantry man of prominence in the old army has at some period of his career been stationed at Newport Barracks. The beauty and hospitality of the ladies made the gayety of Newport , as a garrison town, proverbial in the old army. Here a stolid old fellow by the name of U.S. Grant lounged around the parade ground for a season. Phil. Sheridan learned his first lesson in Cupid’s primer loitering with a fair Kentuckian up and down the long popular walk, and young Lieut. W. S. Hancock, handsome as Achilles and brave as Hector, awaited orders from the Texan border.
     From 1841 to ’52, gayety at the barracks reached its zenith. The 3d Regiment Band made music, and balls, masques, and dinners were the business of life. During these years Maj. Nat. C. Macrae was Commandant. He was a typical Virginian and an old Indian fighter, who had lost his left leg in the wars. His tales of battles fierce and warriors big, of how his heroes slashed and slew, were a military education in themselves. Major Macrae had a charming family, and the barracks headquarters blossomed with pretty girls and was in a constant state of sentimental siege. It was no longer a desire to write their names in glory’s page, but the marriage register that fired the souls of these young sons of Mars. The sharpest matrimonial engagement on the record at the barracks was that of a gallant Kentuckian, Lieut. J. O. McFerran, and Miss Rose Green, a charming niece of Maj. Macrae in the year of grace 1844. The “Leftenant” met his fate on Monday, wooed and won on Tuesday, the wedding was on Wednesday, and they were off to the wars on Thursday! It should be mentioned, too, that McFerran fought with the same clan with which he wooed. The wedding was like a page out of Charles O’Malley, and was the first bridal in the old Episcopal Church at Newport . The garrison was full of young fellows praying that the cloud on the Texan border would gather into a storm of war. President Van Buren and Waddy Thompson had been making faces at Mexico for a year, and Boca-negra and Almonte had been calling upon God and the Mexican nation to defend its just cause. So the situation was most encouraging. There were a half dozen groomsmen from the barracks, among them Lieut. W. S. Hancock and Walker, who won a name as the “Texas Ranger,” and died in his boots. He was a horseman without a rival—could pick up a glove or a coin from the back of his flying steed—and was—cela va sans dire—adored by the ladies.
    Ingalls, Lieut. Grant, McClelland , Judah , Franklin were classmates of McFerran, and they won their spurs together in the campaign which followed this wedding. A soldier’s bridal, to which a mournful interest attaches, was that of Lieut. Alex. Montgomery, who married the beautiful Elizabeth, daughter of Griffin Taylor, about 1839-40. They left at once for Florida , where, a few weeks later, the pretty bride, venturing beyond the fort, was killed by Indians, almost under her husband’s eyes.  Gen. Sidney Burbank was in command of 1859 to 1861, and again from 1864 to 1866, and now lives in Newport , a few rods from his old headquarters.  He is a son of Col. Sullivan Burbank, a gallant officer of the war of 1812, and is a man of high courage, fine intellect, and a great student. This makes his affliction—rapidly approaching blindness—all the more cruel.
    From 1863 to 1864 Col. J. T. Foster, of the Engineers, an officer of great attainment, was in command. Col. Foster married Miss Kilgour, and was (he died at Nashua in 1874) a brother-in-law of Mr. Reuben R. Springer. From 1873 to 1874 Gen. J. N. G. Whistler, son of old Col. Whistler, of revolutionary fame, was commandant. From 1878 to 1880 Gen. C. C. Augur was a charming woman and was much sought in Cincinnati society, and the barracks circle was very gay under her regime. Col. Thompson, who married a granddaughter of Richard Southgate, Julia, daughter of Mrs. Dr. Parker, commanded the batteries at Newport during the war. His son, Lieut. Thompson, who married the other day Miss Juliet Hagans, is spending his honeymoon in pretty quarters at the barracks. Col. Hoffman is another name associated with the early days of the arsenal. There are many besides, mention of whom, even, lack of space forbids. Some are “enskied and sainted,” some have made a name in glory’s page, but none alive or dead answer the roll call for common men.                              

Submitted by Rachel Eustache

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