Originally aired on June 05, 1998 - In part 197 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the checkered career of General David Hunter, of whom one observer said was a good house burner but nothing else.
#197 – David Hunter
David Hunter was a Civil War general whom everybody came to hate. A dark cloud of evil seemed always to be hanging over his head. Many citizens of the Shenandoah Valley considered him the personification of Satan. He surely belonged to the same class as Generals Franz Sigel and Benjamin Butler. In that no one ever accused any of them of being qualified soldiers.
Hunter descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in 1802 in Washington. He graduated from West Point and spent almost two decades on the western frontier. His occupations fluctuated from army paymaster to speculator in Chicago real estate. Late in 1860, Hunter initiated a correspondence with President-elect Lincoln. This got him appointed Chief of the White House Guard.
Civil war came. Lincoln displayed little foresight in naming Hunter the North’s fourth ranking general. By then, Hunter was fifty-nine, surly and petulant. His sagging cheeks, stringy mustache and always angry expression matched his habit of writing ill-tempered letters to anyone. His war career could not have been more checkered.
Hunter was wounded in the first battle. Then his rasping personality got him transferred from one distant military post to another. In March, 1862, while commanding Union toeholds along the Atlantic coast Hunter on his own issued an Emancipation Proclamation for all slaves in his department which included the sea coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Such an edict was premature and extremely embarrassing to the Lincoln Administration. The President rescinded it without delay.
Hunter’s 1863 activities consisted of a failed effort to seize the Port of Charleston. In the spring of 1864, he was given command of Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley because Lincoln thought anyone would be better than bumbling Franz Sigel. Lincoln was mistaken.
One Union general on hearing of the appointment declared, “Mr. Lincoln certainly does hold on to his fourth rate men.” The aging Hunter waged a short disastrous campaign. He burned the Virginia Military Institute and the Lexington home of Governor John Letcher. His soldiers looted and set fires in indiscriminate fashion.
A Valley native surveying the damage Hunter’s men inflicted said, “it was hard to admit that vengeance belonged solely to the Lord”. Confederates under General Jubal Early stopped Hunter at Lynchburg and sent him fleeing for safety into the West Virginia Mountains. Hunter’s flight left the Confederacy in better shape as far as the Shenandoah Valley was concerned than it had been for two years.
After the war, Hunter had the effrontery to write General Lee and ask if Lee did not think Hunter’s withdrawal from Lynchburg was militarily sound. A deadpan Lee answered, that while he cannot judge the soundness of the move, it was of great help to the Confederate cause.
For the remainder of the Civil War, Hunter gained a notorious reputation presiding over stacked military courts. Hunter led the court-martial of General Fitzjohn Porter. “A case,” said one observer, “that was organized to convict”. An appeals court overturned Hunter’s verdict.
Hunter’s irascible nature climaxed when he presided over the trial of the four Lincoln Assassination conspirators. The general ignored any attempt at fairness or impartiality. He squashed evidence, overturned points of law and consistently denied all attempts by the defense to have both sides of the case heard. The four defendants were quickly herded to the gallows.
At Hunter’s death in 1886, everyone conceded that the general had been an excellent house burner, but not much else. His legacy of hate was such that Confederate general John McCausland, who lived until 1927, always referred to the man as “Hunter the hyena”.