Warren County Local
History by Dallas Bogan |
Contributor: |
Dallas Bogan on 28 July 2004 |
Source: |
Dallas Bogan, Warren County, Ohio and Beyond (Bowie Maryland: Heritage Press, 1979) page 275 |
Return to Index to see a list of other articles by Dallas Bogan |
General Ormsby McKnight Mitchel astronomer, renowned lecturer,
engineer, teacher and Civil War General, was born in Morganfield, Ky., July
28, 1809. At the age of four, General Mitchel moved, with his widowed mother,
to the village of Miami in Clermont County, and shortly after to Lebanon in
Warren County, Ohio.
Ormsby, during his youth devoted himself to books. At the age of 12 he thought
it was time to support himself. He moved to Xenia, Ohio, and was placed in a
country store as errand boy and clerk. He worked for twenty-five cents a week.
After an incident in the clerking trade, he talked his way into becoming a teamster.
Teamster life was not for a boy who had read Virgil at the age of nine and knew
something of Greek at the age of twelve.
His mother was a relative of Judge
McLean of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was at the
time a resident of Lebanon. Through the pressure of his mother, Judge
McLean and John Ross of Lebanon secured an appointment
to West Point for young Ormsby, not yet fifteen.
Mitchel graduated in the class of 1829, ranking fifteenth. Among this class
was Robert E. Lee, second; Joseph E. Johnston,
thirteenth; both who would become famous Confederate generals. Our subject was
also a very good friend of Jefferson Davis, who later became
President of the Confederate Nation.
In 1833, he moved to Cincinnati and began the practice of law with Edward
D. Mansfield, the vocation paying very little at that time. Arriving
in Cincinnati, he was appointed professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy,
and Astronomy in the College of Cincinnati.
At the age of 26, Mitchel was called upon for his engineering expertise. A railroad
was needed to open up a path from Cincinnati to the North. With a loan of $200,000
secured from Cincinnati, the Little Miami Railroad was underway; professor Mitchel
was its chief surveyor.
Through his teachings of astronomy, his mind wandered in the direction of an
observatory. No one had at that time in the United States an observatory; why
should a back-woods town like Cincinnati have one? Through his endless lectures
and speeches, he was at last able to organize a company, a joint stock company
in which the shareholders would buy at twenty-five dollars each share a part
of the venture.
Professor Mitchel traveled the world finding parts and lenses in which to build
his controversial telescope. In March 1845, this giant venture was finalized.
Only the Russians had this caliber of telescope.
The spring of 1861 was the end of a career for the man of genius. His days of
lecturing, railroading and oratorical skills as a civilian were over. The fall
of Fort Sumter aroused the patriotic pride in a man that was really too old
to endeavor in a war. However, he felt the freedom of the country was at stake.
The ninety days war was not a reality. Bull Run was a tragedy to the North.
This was a major setback for the Union troops.
On August 8, 1861, Mitchel was appointed
Brigadier General of volunteers. He was assigned to command the Department
of the Ohio, with headquarters in Cincinnati. Gen. Mitchel was first assigned
to the Cumberland Gap area. With this order countermanded he was relieved of
his position, and the Department was put under the command of Gen. Buell.
Gen. Mitchel was then put in the command of a division in the
army then organizing at Bacon Creek, between Louisville and Bowling Green, Ky.
Working with raw recruits, he worked frantically to bring his command into shape.
His nervousness and eagerness to confront the enemy was a pitfall as jealousy
sprung up amongst his superiors. Mitchel was the opposite of Gen. Buell
who had replaced him. This instilled jealousy in the latter.
Gen. Mitchel was not in any major battles, but his raiding
parties in Alabama, in which he seized the Memphis and Charleston Railroad at
Huntsville, cut Confederate lines of communication, and harassed secessionists
in northern parts of the State, were fore-runners of the strategies of Sherman
and other generals of note. Two years before Sherman, Mitchel
showed how armies might depend on single lines of railroad through great tracts
of the enemy's country for supplies. Eighteen months before Rosecrans,
he secured the essential point of the whole central half of the Southern States.
He was ordered from his command in Alabama on the 2nd of July 1862. He was assigned
to command the Dept. of South Carolina on the 12th of Sept. 1862. Gaining success
in this venture was a reward for the Union troops. Confederate railroads were
destroyed, salt works were burned at Bluffton, and the general instilled confidence
in all.
Five weeks after his arrival in the Department, on the 26th of October 1862,
General Mitchel contacted yellow fever. He died October 30,
1862.
General Mitchel is probably best known in the circles of war
as the man who gave the O.K. to the "Andrew's Raid" or in literary
circles, "The Great Locomotive Chase."
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This page created 28 July 2004 and last updated
19 April, 2009
© 2004 Arne H Trelvik
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