Stoneman, George, Jr.

Life Span
to
    Full name
    George Stoneman Jr.
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    4
    Family
    Mary Oliver Hardisty (wife)
    Education
    West Point (US Military Academy)
    Occupation
    Politician
    Military
    Political Parties
    Democratic
    Government
    Governor
    Other state government
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Union Army
    US military (Post-Civil War)

    George Stoneman (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Commissioned a second lieutenant in the First Dragoons, during the Mexican War he served as quartermaster for the "Mormon Battalion" in Brigadier General Stephen Watts Kearny's expedition to California. Following the war he was stationed at various army posts in the Southwest, rising to the rank of captain in the Second Cavalry.

    In April 1861, while commanding Fort Brown, Texas, Stoneman refused a surrender demand from his departmental commander, Brigadier General David E. Twiggs, who had gone over to the Confederates, and then managed to escape with his company to New York City by means of a steamboat that he seized. After remounting his company at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, he took it to Washington, D.C., the first cavalry to reach the capital after the outbreak of the Civil War. Promoted to major, he served on the staff of his West Point classmate General George B. McClellan (1826-1885), during the latter's campaign in western Virginia in the early summer of 1861. After McClellan received command of all Union forces in the Virginia theater, Stoneman became a brigadier general and chief of cavalry of what would become known as the Army of the Potomac. During the Peninsular campaign (Apr.-July 1862), however, he accomplished little owing to McClellan's practice of attaching the mounted forces to infantry corps instead of employing them as a consolidated unit. Perhaps for this reason Stoneman in the fall of 1862 transferred to the infantry, where at first he headed a division in the III Corps.
    Albert Castel, "Stoneman, George," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00750.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Stoneman, George, Jr.," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/12208.