George Crook
(September 8, 1828 – March 21, 1890)
 George Crook
was a career U.S. Army officer,
most noted for his distinguished service during the Civil War
and the Indian Wars.
Contents
Crook was born to Thomas and
Elizabeth Matthews Crook on a farm near Taylorsville, Ohio (near
Dayton).
He was graduated from the West
Point in 1852 ranking near the bottom of his class.
He was assigned to the 4th U.S.
infantry as brevet 2d lieutenant, serving in California, 1852–61.
He served in Oregon and northern California, fighting against
several American Indian tribes. He commanded the Pitt River
Expedition of 1857 and in one of the several engagements was
severely wounded by an Indian arrow. He established Fort Ter-Wer
in what is now Klamath, California. His promotion to the rank of
1st lieutenant was received in 1856, and to that of captain in
1860. He was ordered east and in 1861 was made colonel of the 36th
Ohio volunteer infantry.
He married a Virginian, Mary
Tapscott Dailey.
When the U.S. Civil War broke
out, Crook accepted a commission as Colonel of Ohio's 36th
regiment and led it on duty in western Virginia. He was promoted
to the rank of brigadier general on September 7, 1862. He
commanded a brigade of Ohio regiments in the Kanawah Division
(attached to the IX Corps, Army of the Potomac) in the Maryland
Campaign. Crook saw action at the battles of South Mountain and
Antietam. He developed a life-long friendship with one of his
subordinates, Col. Rutherford B. Hayes of the 23rd Ohio Infantry.
General Crook commanded a cavalry
division in the Army of the Cumberland at the battle of
Chickamauga, and then returned to the eastern front as chief of
the Kanawah Division.
To open the spring campaign of
1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant ordered a Union advance
on all fronts, minor as well as major. Grant sent for Brigadier
General Crook, in winter quarters at Charleston, West
Virginia,
and ordered him to attack the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad,
Richmond's primary link to Knoxville and the southwest, and to
destroy the Confederate salt works at Saltville, Virginia.
The 35-year-old Crook, the most
magnificently whiskered Civil War general on either side, reported
to army headquarters at City Point, Virginia, where the commanding
general explained the mission in person. Grant instructed Crook to
march his force, the Kanawha Division, against the railroad at
Dublin, Virginia, 140 miles south of Charleston. At Dublin he
would put the railroad out of business and destroy Confederate
military property.
He was then to destroy the
railroad bridge over New River, a few miles to the east. When
these actions were accomplished, along with the destruction of the
salt works, Crook was to march east and join forces with Major
General Franz Sigel, who meanwhile was to be driving south up the
Shenandoah Valley.
After long dreary months of
garrison duty, the men were ready for action. Crook did not reveal
the nature or objective of their mission, but everyone sensed that
something important was brewing. "All things point to early
action", the commander of the second brigade, Colonel
Rutherford B. Hayes, noted in his diary.
On April 29, 1864, the Kanawha
Division marched out of Charleston and headed south. Crook sent a
force under Brigadier General William W. Averell westward towards
Saltville, then pushed on towards Dublin with nine infantry
regiments, seven cavalry regiments, and 15 artillery pieces, a
force of about 6,500 men organized into three brigades. The West
Virginia countryside was beautiful that spring, but the
mountainous terrain made the march a difficult undertaking.
The way was narrow and steep, and
spring rains slowed the march as tramping feet churned the roads
into mud. In places, Crook's engineers had to build bridges across
wash-outs before the army could advance.
The column reached Fayette on May
2, and then passed through Raleigh Court House and Princeton. On
the night of May 8, the division camped at Shannon's Bridge,
Virginia, 10 miles north of Dublin.
The Confederates at Dublin soon
learned the enemy was approaching. Their commander, Colonel John
McCausland, prepared to evacuate his 1100 men, but before
transportation could arrive, a courier from Brigadier General
Albert G. Jenkins informed McCausland that the two of them were
ordered by General John C. Breckenridge to stop Crook's advance.
The combined forces of Jenkins and McCausland amounted to 2,400
men. Jenkins, the senior officer, took command.
Breaking camp on the morning of
May 9, Crook moved his men south to the top of a spur of Cloyd's
Mountain. Before the Union troops lay a precipitous, densely
wooded slope with a meadow about 400 yards wide at the bottom. On
the other side of the meadow, the land rose in another spur of the
mountain, and there Jenkins' rebels waited behind hastily erected
fortifications.
Crook dispatched the third
brigade under Colonel Carr B. White to work its way through the
woods and deliver a flank attack on the rebel right. At 11 am, he
sent Hayes' first brigade and Colonel Horatio G. Sickel's second
brigade down the slope to the edge of the meadow, where they were
to launch a frontal assault on the Confederates as soon as they
heard the sound of White's guns.
The slope before them was so
steep that the officers had to dismount and descend on foot. Crook
stationed himself with Hayes' brigade, which was to lead the
assault. After a long, anxious wait, Hayes at last heard cannon
fire off to his left and led his men at a slow double time out
onto the meadow and into the rebels' musketry and artillery fire,
which Crook called "galling". Their pace quickened as
they neared the other side, but just before the up-slope they came
to a waist-deep creek. The barrier caused little delay and the
Yankee infantry stormed up the hill and engaged the rebel
defenders at close range.
The only man to have trouble with
the creek was General Crook. Dismounted, he still wore his high
riding boots, and as he stepped into the stream, the boots filled
with water and bogged him down. Nearby soldiers grabbed their
commander's arms and hauled him to the other side.
Vicious hand-to-hand fighting
erupted as the Yankees reached the crude rebel defenses. The
Southerners gave way, tried to re-form, then broke and retreated
up and over the hill towards Dublin.
The Yankees rounded up rebel
prisoners by the hundreds and seized General Jenkins, who had
fallen wounded. At this point the discipline of the Union men
wavered, and there was no organized pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
General Crook was unable to provide leadership as the excitement
and exertion had sent him into a faint.
Colonel Hayes kept his head and
organized a force of about 500 men from the soldiers milling about
the site of their victory. With his improvised command, he set
off, closely pressing the rebels.
While the fight at Cloyd's
Mountain was going on, a train pulled into the Dublin station and
disgorged 500 fresh troops of General John Hunt Morgan's cavalry,
which had just defeated Averell at Saltville. The fresh troops
hastened towards the battlefield, where they soon met their
compatriots retreating from Cloyd's Mountain. The reinforcements
halted the rout, but Colonel Hayes, although ignorant of the
strength of the force now before him, immediately ordered his men
to "yell like devils" and rush the enemy. Within a few
minutes General Crook arrived with the rest of the division, and
the defenders broke and ran.
Cloyd's Mountain cost the Union
army 688 casualties, while the rebels suffered 538 killed,
wounded, and captured.
Unopposed, Crook moved his
command into Dublin, where he laid waste to the railroad and the
military stores. He then sent a party eastward to tear up the
tracks and burn the ties. The next morning the main body set out
for their next objective, the New River bridge, a key point on the
railroad, a few miles to the east.
The Confederates, now commanded
by Colonel McCausland, waited on the east side of the New River to
defend the bridge. Crook pulled up on the west bank, and a long,
ineffective artillery duel ensued. Seeing that there was little
danger from the rebel cannon, Crook ordered the bridge destroyed,
and both sides watched in awe as the structure collapsed
magnificently into the river. McCausland, without the resources to
oppose the Yankees any further, withdrew his battered command to
the east.
General Crook, supplies running
low in a country not suited for major foraging, now entertained
second thoughts about his orders to push on east and join Sigel in
the Shenandoah Valley. At Dublin he had intercepted an unconfirmed
report that General Robert E. Lee had beaten Grant badly in the
Wilderness, which led him to consider whether the Confederate
commander might not soon move against Crook with a vastly superior
force.
Having accomplished the major
part of his mission, destruction of the Virginia and Tennessee
Railroad, Crook turned his men north and after another hard march,
reached the Union base at Meadow Bluff, West Virginia.
The following August, Crook took
command of the Department and Army of Western Virginia, the forces
of which became the VIII Corps in Major General Philip Sheridan's
Army of the Shenandoah. Crook led his corps in the Valley
Campaigns of 1864 at the battles of Opequon (Third Winchester),
Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek. On October 21, 1864 he was
promoted to major general of volunteers.
In February, 1865, General Crook
was captured by Confederate raiders at Cumberland, Maryland, and
held as a prisoner of war in Richmond until exchanged a month
later, when he took command of a cavalry division in the Army of
the Potomac during the Appomattox Campaign.
At the end of the Civil War,
George Crook received a brevet as Major General in the regular
army, but reverted to the permanent rank of Lieutenant-Colonel,
serving with the 23rd Infantry on frontier duty in the Pacific
Northwest. He campaigned against the Paiute Indians where he won
the recognition of President Ulysses S. Grant. Grant placed Crook
in command of the Arizona Territory. Crook's use of Apache scouts
brought him much success in forcing the Apache Indians, under
chief Cochise onto reservations. In 1872 the Arizona Territory was
at peace and Crook was appointed brigadier general in the regular
army, a promotion that passed over and angered several full
colonels next in line for promotion to general. He next served
against the Sioux in the 1876 Powder River Expedition. He fought
the Lakota at the Battle of the Rosebud, as well as at the Tongue
River.
By 1882, Crook was back in
command in Arizona. The Apaches had once again taken up arms
against the U.S. army under the leadership of Geronimo. Crook
repeatedly forced the surrender of the Apaches but saw Geronimo
escape. The Apache, as a mark of respect, nicknamed Crook Nantan
Lupan, which means "Grey Fox". Nelson A. Miles
replaced Crook in command of the Arizona Territory and brought an
end to the Apache Wars when he sent Geronimo, the Chiricahua
Apache tribe and the Chiricahua scouts serving in the U.S. Army
into exile in Florida. (Crook was reportedly furious and appalled
that the scouts, who had faithfully served the Army against their
own tribe, were sent as well and telegrammed numerous protests to
Washington.) After years of campaigning in the Indian Wars, Crook
won steady promotion back up the ranks to the permanent grade of
Major General, and President Grover Cleveland placed him in
command of the Department of the West in 1888.
He spent his last years speaking
out against the unjust treatment of his former Indian adversaries.
He died suddenly in Chicago while serving as commander of the
Division of the Missouri. Crook was originally buried in Oakland,
Maryland, but was moved to Section 2 of Arlington National
Cemetery on November 11, 1898.
The Indian chief, Red Cloud said
of Crook when he died, "he never lied to us. His words gave
us hope."
Crook County, Wyoming, and Crook
County, Oregon is named in George Crook's honor.
Crook Walk in Arlington National
Cemetery is near George Crook's gravesite. He was interred in
1898.
Fort Crook (1857 – 1869) was an
Army post near Glenburn, California, used during the Indian Wars,
and later for the protection of San Francisco during the Civil
War. It was named for then Lt. Crook by Captain John W. T.
Gardiner, 1st Dragoons, as Crook had been injured and was
recovering there. California State Historical Marker 355 marks the
site in Shasta County.
Fort Crook (1890 – 1946) was an
Army Depot in Bellevue, Nebraska, first used as a dispatch point
for Indian conflicts on the Great Plains, then later as an
airfield for the 61st Balloon Company of the Army Air Corp. It was
named for Brig. Gen. Crook due to his many successful Indian
campaigns in the west.
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