Edward E. Cross stood
out in a crowd. There was a lot of vertical to him, not much horizontal. He was keen-eyed, fidgety, more graceful on horseback than on foot. Prematurely bald on top, he grew a tawny beard nearly as long as his
face. Growing up in Lancaster north of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, he
imbibed Shakespeare, went to work for the local newspaper, and took a keen
interest in all things military.
Edward E. Cross, ready for the wars. |
He considered white
Protestants superior and thought their values should rule the country. No
friend of slavery but no friend of black people or abolitionists either, he
also looked down on Mexicans and Irish Catholics. He thought American Indians
should either be confined to reservations or wiped out to make room for
national expansion. A powerful writer and blunt speaker, he loved to bluster,
skewer, and romanticize, but a substantial core lay beneath his posturing and
political cant.
Cross was a self-made
man in the American mold. Born and raised in a far corner of the United States,
he took to the road before he was 20. Curiosity and wanderlust pointed him
west, but even as he established himself as a journalist in Cincinnati, he found
ways to travel to neighboring states, to the South and to Washington and the
other political centers in the East. Eventually he took the
first printing press to the Arizona Territory.
In an age of horses and
trains, Cross saw far more of the continent during his short life than most
Americans do in today's much more mobile society. He was no idle tourist.
Without a safety net he had to make his own way wherever he went, in
Cincinnati, in Washington, in the Arizona Territory, in Mexico.
By the time the Civil
War came, he had made and remade himself several times. He had been a crack
political reporter, travel writer, editor, trail hand and silver mine
supervisor. He had chased Indians in Arizona with Richard Ewell, the future
Confederate general. Experience and study had made him a keen military analyst.
For Cross, the war was
the opportunity of a lifetime. He was just 29 when he came home to command the
Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers, but everything he had done in life had prepared
him for the task. He was a leader – all-seeing, demanding, knowledgeable,
fearless, and confident. He understood what it took to make a regiment work. He
was quick to root out shirkers, malingerers, drunks and men who thought they
deserved commissions or promotions on the basis of their fathers’ prominence
and political connections.
Because he had
conquered difficult challenges as a young man, Cross eagerly chose men of 19 or
20 for positions of authority and trained them to lead. His regiment had the
advantage of months in the field before it faced its first battle, and Cross
used this time to prepare the officers and men. When the Fifth New Hampshire
had to fight, it was ready.
Preparation did not
protect Cross’s men from harm, but it gave them their best chance on the
battlefield. As he knew, the ability to act as a unit made the whole more
powerful than the sum of its parts. The colonel’s response to being in a tight
spot was to attack. After the Fifth’s many battles under Cross had reduced its
number from a thousand men to a hundred, its corps commander referred to these
survivors as “refined gold.” It was no exaggeration.
That commander was
Winfield Scott Hancock, and he made the comment at Gettysburg, where the Fifth
New Hampshire fought with valor at great cost on July 2, 1863. This was also,
as Cross had predicted, his last battle.
[This post is adapted from my foreword to a new biography of Cross, Colonel Edward E. Cross, New Hampshire Fighting Fifth, a Civil War Biography, by my friend Robert Grandchamp.]
Just the man for the new NH Civil War liquor bottles!
ReplyDeleteJust as long as they don't call it GENERAL Cross Whiskey.
ReplyDelete