He gives us a sense of Meigs' work and his persona. President Lincoln’s frustration with inactivity of the Union Army boiled over in Meig’s office in the Winder Building on January 10, 1862. Unless you’re an aviation history geek or just a pilot who resides in Illinois, you might not have heard of Octave Chanute. William H. Seward I then called his attention particularly to the foregoing document, which I read to him. He irritated Secretary of War Simon Cameron in his pushiness. Montgomery Meigs is, arguably, the most under-appreciated general in the Union army. As a hedge against anyone forgetting who was responsible for the work, Meigs, now a captain, left his mark throughout the system. In 1881, Congress directed him to build a new home for the Pension Bureau, the agency responsible for assisting disabled veterans and the families of those who had died. The Civil War had begun. “He must take an officer of higher rank.”. Two months later another crisis struck when the ironclad Merrimack, rechristened the Virginia by Confederates, started sinking Union ships at Hampton Roads. But Meigs’s admiration would soon turn to bitter hatred. His men bought or built almost 600 boats and ships. Simon Cameron (Mr. Lincoln’s White House) But the construction challenges were daunting. But some of the roads were occupied by pigs, cows and chickens, and some were rutted with wheel tracks or filled with mud. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Of the three options presented, Meigs wanted Congress to embrace the most ambitious, which involved construction of a massive aqueduct that he promised would carry water for hundreds of years. On Jan. 10, 1862, Lincoln walked into Quartermaster General Meigs’s office and sat down on a chair in front of an open fire. He designed a tower that rose 100 feet through the center of the Capitol Rotunda. So complete was the Union stockpile — at a time when many hungry Confederate soldiers went barefoot and wore rags — it might as well have been heralded by a choir of Northern angels. ‘No one,’ said the President, ‘but these young men were here as clerks to write down his plans and orders.’ Most of the work was done, he said, in the other room. Simon Cameron (Mr. Lincoln’s White House), Montgomery Meigs (Mr. Lincoln’s White House), William H. Seward (Mr. Lincoln’s White House), Gideon Welles (Mr. Lincoln’s White House). This, however, may ... inasmuch as Blair was begging his friends through letters to keep the Republicans in power to guarantee the end of slavery, and was supporting the President at every turn while he was attempting to organize a Republican party in the border states. There were greatcoats and blankets, camp kettles and pans, axes and spades, and even needles and thread. Seward remarked to Montgomery C. Meigs that all men of sense saw that war must come. Then he dispatched Meigs to the Dry Tortugas off the coast of Florida, assigned to improve Fort Jefferson. And this little painting is where it all began. The pitch for the aqueduct had been so successful that Meigs’s boss and soon-to-be friend and mentor — Secretary of War Jefferson Davis — added on … Meigs was blunt, something Lincoln relished. Mr. Lincoln consulted on the potential appointment of Meigs as quartermaster general with General in Chief Winfield Scott: “Doubtless you begin to understand how disagreeable it is to me to do a thing arbitrarily, when it is unsatisfactory to others associated with me. Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. Speculators sold the government lame horses and leaky boats. Meigs was born in Augusta, Georgia, in May 1816. His wife Joanna died in 1773 and in early 1775, Meigs remarried Grace Starr Meigs (1740-1807) who with Jonathan had three more children: Elizabeth (1775 died one month later), Richard Montgomery (1777-1785 named for Gen. Richard Montgomery who was killed during the Quebec attack in 1777), and Timothy (1782 –1815). The derrick, powered by a steam engine on the roof of the Capitol, could lift as much as 20,000 pounds of stone, iron or other material. … “Certainly,” Meigs told him, “if the Navy would do its duty and had not lost it already.”. In April, Meigs and the new team embarked on their mission to reinforce Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay. It was the family grounds of the wife of his former friend and colleague, Robert E. Lee. Perhaps in the military history of the world there never was so large an amount of money disbursed … He became the Quartermaster General of the Union Army during the entire Civil War, but he also had an illustrious career both before and after the war. Floyd was a political hack from Virginia who succeeded Davis. It was a pittance, compared with the magnitude of the project. “I repeated this to Mr. Seward, and said to him, ‘Give me command of the Powhatan, now lying at New York ready for sea, and I will guarantee that everything shall be done without a mistake. But his mind was on bigger things. I really enjoyed your material. The walls of the corridor glowed with bright Renaissance colors and gilding. The South seemed ready to break away, he wrote. The people are impatient; Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. But it wasn’t over yet. On Dec. 21, 1864, as William Tecumseh Sherman’s army came to the end of its devastating March to the Sea, his soldiers found a gift awaiting them in Savannah, Ga. A flotilla of transport ships in the harbor was crammed with comforts for the more than 62,000 weary men: tens of thousands of sturdy boots and shoes, fresh shirts, socks, underwear and trousers. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, editor. But these days, remarkably, few can recall his name, let alone the details of his greatness. “No time was wasted in generalities or platitudes but he grappled at once with his subject & no one could doubt that he meant what he said,” Meigs wrote in a letter that day. that was all,” wrote Porter. I imagine 12,000 lieutenants died in the civil war (if 2% of the 620,000 civil war deaths were lieutenants) and quite possibly the one most frequently written of is John Rodgers Meigs. Back in Georgia, Dr. Meigs suffered from “bilious” fevers, which he blamed on the climate and his wife, Mary Montgomery Meigs, who hated slavery. “I have come to know [Meigs] quite well for a short acquaintance, and so far as I am capable of judging I do not know one who combines the qualities of masculine intellect, learning and experience of the right sort, and physical power of labor and endurance so well as he.”. In a letter to her mother that spring, his wife, Louisa, wrote: “His soul seems on fire with indignation at the treason of those wicked men who have laid the deep plot to overthrow our government and destroy the most noble fabric of freedom the world has ever seen.”. At Louisville Lee met up with Captain Shreve and inspected the equipment the experienced engineer had ordered for improving the rapids. He worked tirelessly to fight fraud and spend taxpayer money wisely. What shall I do?”. Meigs urged that it be built with cast iron. The 220-foot granite arch remains as impressive as when it was first used during the war and called Union Arch Bridge. He had door handles cast in the form of black snakes his men found while working on the aqueduct, and railings made with images of leaping stags. The result was big, brash and controversial, an expensive structure made with more than 15 million red bricks that mixed the classical with the modern. His analysis was grim, according to writer Sherrod E. East and his essay “The Banishment of Captain Meigs.”. Meigs squeezed in near the platform the next day and watched as the Republican president-elect took his spot at the front of the crowd. Robert O’Harrow Jr. is an investigative and accountability reporter at the The Washington Post. This letter was in the handwriting of Captain Meigs of the army, then Quartermaster-General; the post-script in that of David D. Porter, since made Vice-Admiral. The first critical period in their relationship was in the days leading up the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April. The bottom is out of the tub. “The rebels are a gallant people & will make a desperate resistance,” he wrote to Seward in 1863, “but it is exhaustion of men and money that finally terminates all modern wars.”, The vast, efficient logistical system that Meigs created supported that aim like no other in history. Lincoln asked. West Point, Class of 1836, and 44 years old when the Civil War erupted, Meigs had spent his pre-war career in the engineers, working on several projects in Washington, including the dome and wings of the Capitol and the Potomac Aqueduct, which brought fresh water into the city. “My heart grows sick as I think of this prospect, and yet I believe that even in the greatest political trouble there is peace & happiness for those & those only who each hour & minute endeavor to do their duty & I hope to be able to do mine.”. Montgomery Meigs was a cynical interviewer when Brumidi, a refugee from political turmoil in Italy, came looking for work. I told him certainly if the Navy had done its duty and not lost it already. Meigs may be the most important bureaucrat in American history, a desk jockey who built the war machine that crushed the Confederacy. “Thus quietly and unostentatiously was commenced this great work — which is destined I trust for the next thousand years to pour its healthful waters in to the capital of our union,” Meigs wrote in his journal that night. “The people are impatient,” he told Meigs. Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress. “... A wise discretion and preparation on the part of the authorities, I think, would prevent any such general outbreak as would require the active use of military force.”, This letter, to Lt. Gen.Winfield Scott, the head of the Army, went outside Meigs’s chain of command. Henry Villard. Under his guidance, Meigs carried the compass and made paintings and maps of the landscape. He was engaged in one feud after another, over everything from corruption to artistic taste. Once Lee defected to the Confederate side, Meigs turned against him with a … He stood almost 6-foot-2 and wore a thick beard. What shall I do?” Mr. Lincoln asked Meigs.8 As a result of the meeting, President Lincoln called a Council of War two nights later with Generals Irvin McDowell and William Franklin, Secretary of State Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Chase and Assistant Secretary of War Thomas Scott. During the war, Meigs was so highly regarded that almost anyone who mattered listened to him. He had his name carved into the side of Cabin John Bridge. Meigs and a fellow Army Corps of Engineers officer were there to help improve navigation of the river. Lee found Meigs’s extraordinary energy curious. Three weeks after Lincoln’s speech, Meigs found himself at the White House, standing before the president he had doubted. Powhatan, which had been designated for the relief of Fort Sumter, to head instead to Florida for the relief of Fort Pickens. In something of an irony, he came into the world as a Southerner. (A native of Georgia, Meigs later served as quartermaster general of the Federal Army during the Civil War.) The water coursed through a 9-foot-wide conduit made of millions of bricks, over precisely designed culverts and through bridges that together descended an average 9.5 inches each mile. Working for as little as $8 a day, Brumidi filled the canopy under the dome with a painted swirl of mythic figures. Meigs, who so wanted to be remembered, would be proud. He also left behind another legacy — of technical ingenuity, humanity, love of art and belief in Washington, D.C., as a world power — before the first shot of the Civil War was ever fired. Seward cut through the problem, saying that Meigs needed to be promoted. “I believe that the temper of the South is excited, is dangerous,” Meigs wrote on Nov. 10, 1860. He wanted ventilation that would create a healthful environment for the clerks. Shortly after the war Smith was in Washington and tried to renew the old friendship with Meigs. Ranked fifth in the graduating class of 1836, Meigs … But they had a change of heart after the Library of Congress room caught fire on Christmas Eve 1851 and almost sent the Capitol’s old wooden dome up in smoke. While many of you may have heard his name, I would venture a guess that most people don’t know more than a couple of general things about him. At the end of the war they owned (and sold) more than 200,000 horses and mules. Would the President do this now? While Meigs made his way, the siege of Fort Sumter in South Carolina began and ended. He was given $10,000 in “secret service money” and sent to New York, where the expedition’s ships, loaded with horses and supplies, awaited him. When Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles discovered this deception and reported it to the President, both were upset, but Meigs emerged from that difficult position relatively unscathed. On Dec. 29, he resigned, claiming indignation over the federal government’s efforts to reinforce Fort Sumter. In his cover letter to Meigs, Ingalls noted, “I was an eyewitness to the stampeding of the horses referred to and know that it was something, which under the circumstances … Meigs routinely declined Floyd’s requests, delayed or complained to Congress. Brumidi outlined what would ultimately become his masterpiece, the decoration of the entire Capitol interior. Another factor that weighs in is that Meig’s son, John Rodgers Meigs, had died the same year from Confederates; Montgomery Meigs held Robert E. Lee personally responsible for his son’s death. I then asked if he knew the young men. He remained in his post as Quartermaster General until 1882. Mr. Seward broke out with ‘I can understand too how that is, Captain Meigs, you have got to be promoted.’ I said, ‘That cannot be done; I am a captain and there is no vacancy.’ But Mr. Seward told the President that if he wished to have this thing done the proper way was to put it into my charge and it would be done, that I would give him an estimate of the means by 4 P.M. of the next day. One of Meigs’s most determined antagonists was one of his bosses, Secretary of War John B. Floyd. It was a prime assignment, and it gave Meigs, just 21, a chance to get to know one of the rising stars of the U.S. military, a serious but gracious lieutenant named Robert E. Lee. The day after an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the situation at Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, Captain Meigs was summoned to a meeting with President Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward to discuss a relief expedition for Fort Pickens in Florida. He … On his way south, he had decided to take stock of the mood of the people. His traveling companion—and assistant for this engineering project—was Second Lieutenant Montgomery C. Meigs, but one year out of West Point. And he was worried about money. Montgomery Meig's moth… I very much wish to appoint Col. Meigs Quarter-Master General; and yet Gen. Cameron does not quite consent. Lincoln chatted easily with Meigs, who told him that plenty of men could be found to attempt a rescue of Fort Sumter, despite what his superiors in the Army might say. Caught up in the rapidly developing campaign, Ingalls did not fully respond to Meigs until July 20, though he had immediately collected statements from his subordinates, Capt. They built hospitals for the wounded and then buried the dead. (Letter from Montgomery Blair to Abraham Lincoln, September 14, 1861). The next day, after hearing word of the council, McClellan roused himself and agreed to meet with the president and his counselors. I have just read your website material on Montgomery C. Meigs and his son John Rodgers Meigs. When McClellan lay at Harrison’s land, Meigs came one night to the President & waked him up at Soldiers’ Home to urge upon him the immediate flight of the Army from that point — the men to get away on transports and the horses to be killed as the [army?] A few months later, on a bright October day in 1853, Meigs rode to Great Falls and broke ground in a ceremonial beginning. But the money held a far greater significance for Washington. Seward thought Lincoln needed to “talk with some man who would speak of what he knew,” not of politics but of war, Meigs wrote in his journal. Browbeating was a way of life. The lawmakers agreed. But in a letter to Gen. Winfield Scott urging for the promotion, Lincoln expressed unalloyed admiration for him. “Meigs was quite willing to offer advice, and the president seemed to be always anxious for it,” according to historian Carmen Brissette Grayson. Meigs' record as Quartermaster General was regarded as exceptionally brilliant, both in effectiveness and in ethical probity, and Secretary of State Robert E. Lee's Arlington estate into a military cemetery was partly a gesture to humiliate Lee for siding with the South. An excellent biography about the incredible Montgomery C. Meigs, of his vital role not only during the Civil War, but of his earlier years as well. Textile makers peddled material for uniforms called “shoddy,” redefining the meaning “poorly made.” It literally fell off soldiers in the field. When General John C. Frémont caused political problems by issuing his own emancipation proclamation in September 1861, Meigs was sent with Postmaster General Montgomery Blair to Missouri to deal with the problem. News of that meeting pulled McClellan off his sick bed and back to military command. This request was relatively straight-forward, but Meigs was drawn into plans hatched by Seward and Navy Captain David Dixon Porter which involved diverting ships from the resupply of Fort Sumter to the resupply of Fort Pickens, which Seward deemed more important. “Perhaps you may select the responsible commander for such an event,” he told Lincoln. Or the water ran short, leaving firefighters in the lurch, as the city’s wooden buildings burned to the ground. I hope the prints do him injustice,” Meigs, a Democrat, wrote to his brother that evening, March 3, 1861. Meigs had his own troubles, though. They made, and then laid, hundreds of miles of railroad track and ran 50 different lines. Montgomery's mother had a strong aversion to slavery and Monty's father decided to move the family to Pennsylvania. “Our plan was to get a good-sized steamer and six or seven companies of soldiers, and to carry the latter, with a number of large guns and a quantity of munitions of war, to Fort Pickens, land them on the outside of the fort under the guns of a ship of war, and the fort would soon be made impregnable ? Meigs was part of the White House conference that handled the crisis and he assisted Navy Captain John Dahlgren in preparing Washington for attack. Said Francis Preston Blair, a politician and journalist for whom Blair House (where White House visitors sometimes stay) was named: “They sent Meigs to gather a thistle, but thank God, he has plucked a laurel.”, On the day before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Meigs was back at work on the aqueduct and Capitol. Most of his childhood was spent in Philadelphia, and after brief study at the University of Pennsylvania, Meigs transferred to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. '” To accomplish their mission required subterfuge because Porter did not trust the Confederate sympathies of some employees of the Navy Department . Beauregard, Henry W. Halleck … A tinkerer, he conducted his own scientific experiments, invented mechanical devices and painted watercolors. Meigs, asked to find new burial sites, pointed out a beautiful place across the Potomac, on a high hill in Arlington. I look upon it with constant pleasure for it seems to spring rejoicing in the air & proclaiming its arrival for free use of the sick & well, rich & poor, gentle & simple, old & young for generation after generation which will have come to rise up & call me blessed.”. It’s the National Building Museum. He said one was Captain Meigs, another was a naval officer named Porter.3, Montgomery Meigs eagerly sought promotion in these early days of the Lincoln Administration . The North could take steps to prepare. In 1852, Montgomery Meigs, his wife, Louisa, and their young family moved to the District, a city they would call home for the rest of their lives. Meigs disliked McClellan intensely, believing he would rather train his massive army than fight. The city’s iffy water supply arrived from springs and creeks through leaky cast-iron pipes. Michael Burlingame, editor, William O. Stoddard. During his childhood the family moved from Georgia to Philadelphia, where he matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1831. President,’ said I, ‘there is a queer state of things existing in the Navy Department at this time. He commissioned tiles, stained glass and murals, statues and bronze doors. Meigs saw a chance to make a name for himself, something he could not do during the recent war with Mexico, when he was assigned to build a fort on the other side of the country. The author of this biography, O'Harrow, writes cleanly and well, although not elegantly. Meigs listened carefully as Lincoln framed his intent. Foul water sometimes infected people with typhoid fever and killed them. Lincoln wanted the Army to engage the enemy. He happened to be one of the school’s best artists. It seems that Lt. Meigs had undertaken a crash course in water systems in New York, Boston, Paris and ancient Rome. Seward reminded him that the president, as commander in chief, could make it happen without too much fuss. In 1836, he graduated fifth in his class, part of an elite group of aspiring scientists and engineers. “I have not yet seen him. He attracted much affection, but he demanded much of other people. His father, Charles, had earned a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania, married and moved to Augusta, Ga., with his wife, Mary, in 1815. Investigative reporter covering the pandemic, federal government, technology and tax exempt nonprofits. By using modern materials and methods, he aimed to save money and cut construction time. © 2002-2020 The Lehrman Institute. A regular painter got $1, and Meigs, who was running more than … Only when Montgomery was born, around 40 years later, did his father decide to return north. The blustery Meigs seemed almost humbled by his own achievements, particularly the aqueduct. The message of the move could not have been clearer: Meigs had been banished. It was the summer of 1837, some years after Lewis and Clark had made maps of the same spot. It costs me nothing, therefore, cordially to support your preference; for, in truth, I have not, from the beginning, had any candidate to present for the office….6. When Meigs wasn’t overseeing the manufacture of bricks for the aqueduct, the digging of tunnels or the construction of bridges, he was revising budgets or redrafting plans to enlarge the House and Senate. Seeing a chance for “the advancement of art in this country,” Meigs persuaded Congress to allow him to spend a near fortune on the projects. The President expressed as much surprise as I felt, that he had sent me such a document. Under Meigs’s plan, it would be fireproof and so well lighted that it would not have a single dark corner or corridor. But if you will issue all the orders from the Executive Mansion, and let me proceed to New York with them, I will guarantee their prompt execution to the letter.’2. Due to the high colonial mortality rate, of his two wives … Even the risers on each of the 39 steps descending into an aqueduct vault in Georgetown are made up of cast-iron letters: MC MEIGS. In the coming months, he wrote numerous letters to military leaders and fellow officers, seeking help and offering advice. He [Lincoln] replied that he would consider on it and would let me know in a day or two.”1. At its peak, the project employed more than 50 engineers, surveyors and inspectors; 700 tradesmen; 1,100 laborers; and 60 cooks and waiters. Meigs listed what he expected from his son if he did not return from the Persian Gulf. Fort Pickens, thoroughly reinforced by Meigs and his colleagues, remained in Union hands for the rest of the war. I have come to know Col. Meigs quite well for a short acquaintance, and, so far as I am capable of judging I do not know one who combines the qualities of masculine intellect, learning and experience of the right sort, and physical power of labor and endurance so well as he.”5 On June 5, Scott replied to President Lincoln: Nothing can be more kind than your courtesy to me in a matter so exclusively within your own competency as the appointment of a quarter Master general. He ordered Meigs to turn over all his plans, accounting and other documents. The city’s population had soared in a half-century from 3,000 to 58,000. They found a booming place filled with great aspirations — and a lot of muck. Over the remainder of the Civil War, Meigs’ honesty served him well in his position which required superintending the purchase and distribution of millions of dollars in supplies. Then as now, the nation’s lawmakers didn’t show much interest in spending money on the District, a political limbo. The day after an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the situation at Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens, Captain Meigs was summoned to a meeting with President Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward to discuss a relief expedition for Fort Pickens in Florida. He was clearly distressed. “Is all this to end in order that slavery not freedom may have greater sway?” Meigs wrote. Meigs was not always cool under pressure, however. One Washington man deserved the lion’s share of credit, a little-known organizational genius named Montgomery Cunningham Meigs. I only knew the name early on when I joined the Air Force because there was a Base in southern Illinois named for the famed French-born railroad chief engineer. Nearly two years after the incident occurred, John Hay recalled in his diary: “The Prest tells a queer story of Meigs. Indeed, neither Porter nor Seward took Navy Secretary Gideon Welles into their confidence either: Mr. Seward listened attentively, and, when I had finished what I had to say, he invited Captain Meigs ? He was an elder brother of John Forsyth Meigs. I told him that men enough could be found to volunteer to endeavor to relieve Fort Sumter, but that persons of higher position and rank than myself thought it not to be attempted, that this was not the place to make the war, etc. For much of his work, Brumidi was paid $8 a day — a considerable sum at the time. (Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Winfield Scott, June 5, 1861). “General what shall I do? When we arrived at the White House, Mr. Lincoln – who seemed to be aware of our errand ? Montgomery Blair wired President Lincoln: “Appoint Meigs by telegraph things are deplorable and action must be decisive & prompt to save the state.”7 On a lighter note, when Hermann the magician performed at the White House on November 24, 1861, General Meigs was one of the few military officers present. Booming place filled with great aspirations — and a lot of muck s share of,... Camp kettles and pans, axes and spades, and even needles and.. Words “ Capt O'Harrow, writes cleanly and well, although not elegantly and called arch... Shoreline north of St. Louis who seemed to be one of the people reminder of Meigs, believing would... His greatness came looking for work paddled across the Mississippi in a half-century from 3,000 to 58,000 a dugout,. Top of West Point several years earlier seem to come much to the President Capitol, he..., over everything from corruption to artistic taste who built the war, Meigs served... 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