An Overlooked Union General, in War and Reconstruction

Prof. Megelsh (Blue Mountain) gives a good biography of Adelbert Ames (1836-1933), among the youngest of the “Boy Generals” of the Civil War, revealing him to have been quite a talented commander and a supporter of Reconstruction and the rights of the newly freed, who became the last surviving general of the war when he died at 97.

Megelsh covers Ames’ background and early life and his time at West Point from 1856 (during a five-year program), to his graduation in May 1861, even as the country plunged into Civil War. We see Ames forming, training, and leading a battery from Bull Run through Malvern Hill, with brevets for major and lieutenant colonel, while we learn a good deal about the workings of an army.

In August of 1862 Ames, 26, received command of his home state’s newly formed 20^th Maine. Megelsh shows us how he turned some very unpromising recruits into excellent soldiers. Held in reserve at Antietam, the regiment took part in some serious fighting at Fredericksburg, and then had to miss Chancellorsville due to a smallpox outbreak. Soon after, Ames was promoted to brigade command, replaced by Joshua Chamberlain.

Megelsh gives some good blow-by-blow accounts of Ames’ role commanding a brigade, and then a division, and at times a corps, from Gettysburg, where he earned a brevet for colonel, in Florida and South Carolina, and in the Army of the James under Benjamin Butler (his future father-in-law) during the Bermuda Hundred campaign. There follows a good account of Ames’ finest moment in the war, leading the division that stormed Fort Fisher in January of 1865.

Megelsh then covers Ames’ activities during Reconstruction, first as Military Governor of Mississippi, then as the elected senator and governor, under contentious circumstances, as he tried to promote the reform of the state’s institutions and establish the rights of the newly freed. Of course, white racist rule returned. The “Lost Causers” would brand him a corrupt “Carpetbagger,” a reputation that only dismantled in the mid-twentieth century.

Megelsh concludes with a look at Ames' later life, as a businessman, his belated award of the Medal of Honor, and even back in uniform leading troops in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America is an excellent biography of a man whom we ought to know better.

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Note: Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America is also available in e-editions.

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