This & That 2025 Middle Tennessee
By Gould Hagler · Originally published March-April 2026 · pp. 46–49
& I
This & That
A Closer Look at the Cast
n my last column, I wrote about events at Fort Sumter between South Carolina’s secession and April 12, 1861, when the shooting started. In this issue and the next I will take a closer look at some of the men who played a role in these events. Their names will be familiar to most readers, but the details of their biographies may not be so well known. I will cover two in this column and two others in the following column.
U.S. Maj. Robert Anderson (Brig. Gen. from May 15, 1861). (Library of Congress)
The Commandant
Let’s start with Maj. Robert Anderson, the Kentuckian whose decision to move his garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter on Dec. 26, 1860, increased the tension in an already-tense situation. Anderson was the scion of a prominent Virginia family. His father was Richard Clough Anderson, an officer in the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. The senior Anderson participated in one of the most famous events in American history, crossing the Delaware River with Washington’s force in the final days of 1776. He fought in the war to the finish and, as a lieutenant colonel, served as aide-de-camp to LaFayette at the war-ending Battle of Yorktown. His first wife was the sister of George Rogers Clark and William Clark. His second wife, Robert’s mother, was the cousin of Chief Justice John Marshall. The Andersons moved to Kentucky, where Robert was born in 1805 at “Soldier’s Retreat,” the family plantation. Anderson graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1825. Upon graduation, he was assigned to the artillery. However, his military service was delayed while he acted as private secretary to his half-brother, Richard Clough Anderson Jr., a diplomat negotiating a treaty with Gran Colombia. In 1832, Lt. Anderson fought in the Black Hawk War. Among the men in this brief conflict was one of the volunteers from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.1 Following the war, Anderson formed a friendship with Jefferson Davis when they officered the escort that took Black Hawk and other prisoners from Wisconsin to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. For two years, Anderson served as an assistant instructor of artillery at the Academy. He was brevetted captain in 1838 for his service in the Second Seminole War. Later that year, as aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, Anderson served in the force that removed the Cherokees west to Indian Territory. Next came the Mexican War, where Anderson was severely wounded in the Battle of Molino del Rey. He was later brevetted major for his “gallant and meritorious conduct” in that bloody assault.2
By 1860, after a decade of peacetime duties, the 55-yearold major would have been, in ordinary times, nearing a quiet end to his long years of service in the United States Army. That was not to be: Anderson was assigned to command in Charleston in November. The commander was, in outlook, a Southern man. His wife was the daughter of Duncan Lamont Clinch, a brigadier general in the War of 1812 and the owner of a rice plantation in coastal Georgia. Mrs. Anderson inherited a number of slaves from her father, and the couple continued to own slaves until they sold them in 1860. In a letter to a friend, written from Fort Sumter, Anderson expressed his views on the national crisis. “Like yourself,” he wrote, “my sympathies are in the matter of the sectional controversy all with the South, but I must confess that I have lost all sympathies with the people who govern this state. They are resolved to cement their secession with blood.” Anderson’s home state remained loyal to the Union, as did he. He had fervently hoped for a peaceful solution to the crisis. He was a quiet and religious man, not seeking fame, but fame was thrust upon him. The much-acclaimed Hero of Fort Sumter was made a brigadier general the month following the surrender. In poor health, he remained on active duty for only a short time. On Feb. 3, 1865, Anderson was brevetted major general “for gallant and meritorious service in defence of Fort Sumter, South Carolina.”3 On April 14, 1865, Anderson returned to Sumter and, just hours before Lincoln’s assassination, ceremoniously raised the flag he had lowered four years earlier. It is interesting to note that while Anderson occupied Sumter, one of the Confederate boats patrolling the harbor to keep an eye on the garrison was the General Clinch, named for the major’s late father-in-law. Like many other families, the Andersons were divided by the conflict. Mrs. Anderson had two brothers who served in the Confederate army. As is well-known, the war also divided many friendships among the professional officers in the small, prewar army. One of Anderson’s close friends was a former student who later became a colleague teaching artillery at West Point, P.G.T. Beauregard, the very man who commanded the guns that reduced Fort Sumter in April 1861. Anderson retired from the army in 1863, “for disability resulting from long and faithful service, and wounds and disease contracted in the line of duty.”4 In 1870, the Andersons moved to Europe. Anderson died in Nice in 1871.
He graduated with the class of 1815 and was assigned to the artillery. In 1827, while he was in Washington with the 3rd Artillery, Cooper married Sarah Maria Mason, a granddaughter of Founding Father George Mason. Her brother James M. Mason was a prominent Virginia politician who represented the state in the United States Senate from 1847 until 1861.5 Another brother, John, was the son-in-law of Gen. Alexander McComb, the army’s commanding general from 1828 to 1841. Soon after his marriage, Cooper was assigned to McComb’s staff, where he remained until 1836. He then served as assistant adjutant general in the War Department. The New Yorker benefited socially and professionally from his connection to the prominent Virginia family into which he married. Samuel and Sarah resided in Alexandria, across the river from Washington, where the officer was to spend most of his career. In William C. Davis’s words, Cooper’s professional life was that of a “desk soldier” operating on a “paperwork battlefield.” There were two assignments far from the capital and its desks and paperwork. In 1841 and 1842 Cooper left Washington for Florida and the Second Seminole War, where he was Gen. William Worth’s chief-of-staff. A decade later, Gen. Winfield Scott, McComb’s successor, dispatched Cooper on an inspection tour of the army’s western forts, during which Cooper traveled 5,000 miles on a two-year trek. Not exactly desk duty, but also not combat.
The Adjutant General While at Moultrie and Sumter, Maj. Anderson regularly reported to his superiors in Washington. Between Nov. 23, 1860, and March 19, 1861, Anderson sent over 60 reports to Col. Samuel Cooper, Adjutant General, U.S. Army. Cooper did not see the last ten: he resigned on March 7 to join the Confederacy. Samuel Cooper’s father was a Revolutionary War veteran who fought from the very start, at Lexington and Bunker Hill. After the war, Capt. Cooper moved from Massachusetts to New York, where he married. Samuel was born in 1798. He entered West Point in 1813, just shy of his 15th birthday.
Col. Samuel Cooper, ca. 1856. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
Back in Washington in 1852, Cooper was named adjutant general of the U.S. Army when his predecessor died in office. He continued in this position during the presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. He resigned three days after Lincoln took office. The decision to resign and join the South was probably not a hard decision for Cooper. As William C. Davis wrote, “He had married a Virginia woman and had ties to a distinguished Old Dominion heritage. As a longtime resident of Washington, a predominately Southern city in its social caste, his associations for decades had been Southern.” Cooper switched sides, but he did not change jobs: he was named adjutant general of the Confederate Army and held that position for the entire conflict. On April 2, 1865, he was in the same church service as Jefferson Davis when the message came from Lee informing the president that the army could no longer defend Richmond. “That evening,” wrote William Davis, “the adjutant general boarded the train loaded with most of the cabinet, and along with his clerks, books, and records set off for Danville.” The short-lived government-in-exile moved from Danville to Greensboro, N.C., then to Charlotte. On April 26, tired, unwell and far from young, Cooper advised the president he could go no farther. He stayed in the North Carolina city and preserved the records of the War Department. As ordered by Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge, Cooper surrendered the archive to Federal authorities when they arrived.
How good was Cooper at his job? Some were critical of his performance, but Cooper maintained the support of the person who mattered most. After the war, in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis wrote that Cooper was “as pure in heart as he was sound in judgment.” Postwar life was not an easy one for Samuel and Sarah Cooper. After a year in the Charlotte area, they returned to Alexandria to a home as ruined as their finances. They were still living in near-penury when Samuel died in 1876. Sarah lived until 1890. In the next issue we will have a look at a Federal general who managed to dodge two (metaphorical) bullets and a senator (U.S. and C.S. both) with a wild streak. Sources: William C. Davis, “General Samuel Cooper” in Leaders of the Lost Cause, edited by Gary W. Gallagher and Joseph T. Glatthaar, 2004; David Detzer, Allegiance, 2001; Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest, 2024; David Silkenat, Raising the White Flag, 2019; Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org; Officers of the Army and Navy (Regular) who Served in the Civil War, https://archive. org/stream/officersofarmyna00powe/officersofarmyna00powe_djvu.txt; David Heiby, https://gravestonestories.com/samuel-cooper-confederategeneral,“Samuel Cooper: From Respected Army Officer to Confederate General”; OR, Ser. I, Vol. I; Endnotes: 1. 2.
Ulysses S. Grant
According to Detzer it is unlikely the two ever met. Officers of the Army and Navy (Regular) Who Served in the Civil War Ibid. Ibid. James Mason was one of the two Confederate envoys who, in 1861, were taken from a British vessel in the famous Trent affair.
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Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail.com.
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