George Crook





George Crook, (1828-1890). United States Army officer.

A native of Ohio, Crook graduated from West Point in 1852, ranking near the
bottom of his class. His first assignment was with the 4th Infantry, serving
in Oregon and northern California.

When the Civil War broke out, Crook accepted a commission as colonel of
Ohio's 36th regiment and led it on duty in western Virginia. Crook was
promoted to the rank of brigadier general in August 1862 and commanded a
brigade of Ohio regiments in the Maryland campaign, including the battle of
South Mountain and Antietam.

General Crook commanded a cavalry division in the Army of the Cumberland at
the battle of Chickamauga, and then returned to the eastern front as chief
of the newly-formed Kanawah Division.

To open the spring campaign of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant
ordered a Union advance on all fronts, minor as well as major. Grant sent
for Brigadier General Crook, in winter quarters at Charleston, West
Virginia, and ordered him to attack the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad,
Richmond's primary link to Knoxville and the southwest, and to destroy the
Confederate salt works at Saltville, Virginia.

The 35 year old Crook, the most magnificently whiskered Civil War general on
either side, reported to army headquarters at City Point, Virginia, where
the commanding general explained the mission in person. Grant instructed
Crook to march his force, the Kanawha Division, against the railroad at
Dublin, Virginia, 140 miles south of Charleston. At Dublin he would put the
railroad out of business and destroy rebel military property. He was then to
destroy the railroad bridge over New River, a few miles to the east. When
these actions were accomplished, along with the destruction of the salt
works, Crook was to march east and join forces with Major General Franz
Sigel, who meanwhile was to be driving south up the Shenandoah Valley.

Crook returned to Charleston and set his force in motion. After long dreary
months of garrison duty, the men were ready for action. Crook did not reveal
the nature or objective of their mission, but everyone sensed that something
important was brewing. "All things point to early action," the commander of
the second brigade, Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, noted in his diary.

On April 29, 1864, the Kanawha Division marched out of Charleston and headed
south. Crook sent a force under Brigadier General William W. Averell
westward towards Saltville, then pushed on towards Dublin with nine infantry
regiments, seven cavalry regiments, and 15 artillery pieces, a force of
about 6,500 men organized into three brigades. The West Virginia countryside
was beautiful that spring, but the mountainous terrain made the march a
difficult undertaking. The way was narrow and steep, and spring rains slowed
the march as tramping feet churned the roads into mud. In places, Crook's
engineers had to build bridges across wash-outs before the army could
advance.

The column reached Fayette on May 2, and then passed through Raleigh Court
House and Princeton. On the night of May 8, the division camped at Shannon's
Bridge, Virginia, 10 miles north of Dublin.

The Confederates at Dublin soon learned the enemy was approaching. Their
commander, Colonel John McCausland, prepared to evacuate his 1100 men, but
before transportation could arrive, a courier from Brigadier General Albert
G. Jenkins informed McCausland that the two of them were ordered by General
John C. Breckenridge to stop Crook's advance. The combined forces of Jenkins
and McCausland amounted to 2,400 men. Jenkins, the senior officer, took
command.

Breaking camp on the morning of May 9, Crook moved his men south to the top
of a spur of Cloyd's Mountain. Before the Union troops lay a precipitous,
densely wooded slope with a meadow about 400 yards wide at the bottom. On
the other side of the meadow, the land rose in another spur of the mountain,
and there Jenkins' rebels waited behind hastily erected fortifications.

Crook dispatched the third brigade under Colonel Carr B. White to work its
way through the woods and deliver a flank attack on the rebel right. At 11
am, he sent Hayes' first brigade and Colonel Horatio G. Sickel's second
brigade down the slope to the edge of the meadow, where they were to launch
a frontal assault on the Confederates as soon as they heard the sound of
White's guns.

The slope before them was so steep that the officers had to dismount and
descend on foot. Crook stationed himself with Hayes' brigade, which was to
lead the assault. After a long, anxious wait, Hayes at last heard cannon
fire off to his left and led his men at a slow double time out onto the
meadow and into the rebels' musketry and artillery fire, which Crook called
"galling". Their pace quickened as they neared the other side, but just
before the up-slope they came to a waist-deep creek. The barrier caused
little delay and the Yankee infantry stormed up the hill and engaged the
rebel defenders at close range.

The only man to have trouble with the creek was General Crook. Dismounted,
he still wore his high riding boots, and as he stepped into the stream, the
boots filled with water and bogged him down. Nearby soldiers grabbed their
commander's arms and hauled him to the other side.

Vicious hand-to-hand fighting erupted as the Yankees reached the crude rebel
defenses. The Southerners gave way, tried to re-form, then broke and
retreated up and over the hill towards Dublin.

The Yankees rounded up rebel prisoners by the hundreds and seized General
Jenkins, who had fallen wounded. At this point the discipline of the Union
men wavered, and there was no organized pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
General Crook was unable to provide leadership as the excitement and
exertion had sent him into a faint.

Colonel Hayes kept his head and organized a force of about 500 men from the
soldiers milling about the site of their victory. With his improvised
command, he set off, closely pressing the rebels.

While the fight at Cloyd's Mountain was going on, a train pulled into the
Dublin station and disgorged 500 fresh troops of General John Hunt Morgan's
cavalry, which had just defeated Averell at Saltville. The fresh troops
hastened towards the battlefield, where they soon met their compatriots
retreating from Cloyd's Mountain. The reinforcements halted the rout, but
Colonel Hayes, although ignorant of the strength of the force now before
him, immediately ordered his men to "yell like devils" and rush the enemy.
Within a few minutes General Crook arrived with the rest of the division,
and the defenders broke and ran.

The battle of Cloyd's Mountain cost the Union army 688 casualties, while the
rebels suffered 538 killed, wounded, and captured.

Unopposed, Crook moved his command into Dublin, where he laid waste to the
railroad and the military stores. He then sent a party eastward to tear up
the tracks and burn the ties. The next morning the main body set out for
their next objective, the New River bridge, a key point on the railroad, a
few miles to the east.

The Confederates, now commanded by Colonel McCausland, waited on the east
side of the New River to defend the bridge. Crook pulled up on the west
bank, and a long, ineffective artillery duel ensued. Seeing that there was
little danger from the rebel cannon, Crook ordered the bridge destroyed, and
both sides watched in awe as the structure collapsed magnificently into the
river. McCausland, without the resources to oppose the Yankees any further,
withdrew his battered command to the east.

General Crook, supplies running low in a country not suited for major
foraging, now entertained second thoughts about his orders to push on east
and join Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley. At Dublin he had intercepted an
unconfirmed report that General Robert E. Lee had beaten Grant badly in the
Wilderness, which led him to consider whether the Confederate commander
might not soon move against Crook with a vastly superior force.

Having accomplished the major part of his mission, destruction of the
Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, Crook turned his men north and after
another hard march, reached the Union base at Mountain Bluff, West Virginia.

The following August, Crook took command of the Department of Western
Virginia and soon after of a corps of Major General Philip Sheridan's Army
of the Shenandoah. In October he was promoted to major general of
volunteers.

In February, 1865, General Crook was captured by Confederate raiders
atCumberland, Maryland, and held prisoner in Richmond until exchanged a
month later.

At the end of the Civil War, George Crook received a brevet as major general
in the regular army, but reverted to the permanent rank of
lieutenant-colonel, serving with the 23rd Infantry on frontier duty. After
years of campaigning in the Indian Wars, Crook won steady promotion back up
the ranks to the permanent grade of major general. He died in service as
commander of the Division of the Missouri.