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Officer Down

www.civilwararchive.com

Originally aired on March 01, 1996 - In part 79 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson relates the events of September 29, 1862. On this date, General William Nelson was killed by one of his own officers.

#79 – Murder of a General (Officer Down)

Often lost in the big picture of the Civil War are untold little events: personal incidents that fluctuated between the startling and the unbelievable.

A case in point occurred September 29, 1862, when General William Nelson was killed. Nelson met his death in the lobby of the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky, in front of a large number of witnesses. His killer was one of his own officers.

“Bull” Nelson certainly deserved his nickname. A member of Kentucky’s elite class, he was loud and profane, stood six feet, five inches tall, and weighed over 300 pounds. Nelson was an ex-naval lieutenant whom President Lincoln in 1861 appointed a brigadier general for nothing more than helping to keep Kentucky in the Union. Less than a year later, after performing adequately at most, Nelson moved up to major general. The curly-headed and pompous Kentuckian soon found himself helping to defend his state from a Confederate invasion.

His only battle came at Richmond, Kentucky. There the gigantic Nelson led his men forward with the shout: “If they can’t hit me, they can’t hit anything!” Confederates did hit him – twice, as a matter of fact – and his forces fled the field in panic after a badly mismanaged fight.

Serving under Nelson was a brigadier with the pleasing but improbably name (for a Union general) of Jefferson David. He too was a Kentuckian, a professional soldier who had won fame early in the war at the head of Indiana troops. Unlike Nelson, Davis was unimpressive in appearance. A staff officer described him as “small, sallow, dyspeptic looking,” with only 125 pounds on a frame five feet, eight inches tall. Yet, an acquaintance said, Davis was “full of ambition, daring, endurance, and self-confidence”.

Nelson and Davis disliked each other from the start. One man was overbearing, the other insubordinate, and both were hot-tempered. That Davis chafed at serving under a political windbag was natural. That Nelson was contemptuous of subordinates and quick to anger was a dangerous frame of mind.

Confederate forces were still driving through Kentucky when the showdown between the two officers took place. Nelson started it by referring to Indiana soldiers as “uncouth descendants of ‘poor trash’ from the mountains of Kentucky…” Davis thereupon confronted Nelson in the hotel lobby and told him that he could not let the insult pass. “Go away, you damned puppy,” Nelson snorted. Davis threw a crumpled card at Nelson, who slapped Davis with the back of his hand. The brigadier thereupon grabbed a pistol and killed Nelson as the latter started up the hotel steps to his room.

“No one seemed to regret his death”, a Union colonel said, but “all deplored the shooting of one general by another”.

This was especially so when nothing happened to Davis. The War Department needed a proven soldier as badly as it did not need a troublesome general. Davis soon returned to duty. He subsequently distinguished himself as a division leader at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Atlanta. He was one of Sherman’s corps commanders on the “March to the Sea”. Throughout those campaigns, needless to say, junior officers were extremely careful not to offend General Davis.

In spite of his army duties and achievements, Davis was never promoted beyond brigadier general. As one officer concluded, “perhaps the (Lincoln) administration felt about him as Dr. Johnson did about the American colonists, that he ‘ought to be thankful for anything…short of hanging’”.

Davis performed postwar military duties in the West. In 1879 he died in Chicago at the age of fifty-one. His one monument is a plaque about the Nelson murder. It stands in Louisville at the site of the old Galt House.

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.