David Hunter: President Lincoln's Gadfly

Major General David Hunter

One of my favorite unknown characters in history was briefly in the environs of Savannah. He was Major General David Hunter. Hunter was a West Point Graduate but comes into the historical narrative when he writes a letter in 1860 while he was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas befriending the new President Abraham Lincoln. Their letters usually consisted of the need to abolish slavery. Hunter would warn Lincoln of rumored assassination plots when he rode to go DC to be sworn in for the first time. And indeed there were many rumors of people organizing to stop Lincoln from ever being sworn in. We know now that there was a plan to assassinate him in Baltimore.

Lincoln and his party were afraid for his safety. So Lincoln called upon some of his trusted friends to accompany him to DC to provide him security. Hunter was one of the men he chose. In Buffalo the crowd was huge and out of control and while trying to protect the President from being stampeded by the crowd, Hunter was thrown against the railroad station wall and dislocated his shoulder. His arm would remain in a swing for the rest of the trip.

In 1861 Hunter fought in his first battle of the Civil War. He was wounded in the neck and cheek while commanding a division under Irvin McDowell at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. This sacrifice would lead to his being promoted in August to major general of volunteers.

In 1861 he was moved to serve under General John C. Fremont the head of the Western Department of War. Fremont would make an order freeing the slaves in the states out west. President Lincoln who was concerned with keeping the border states within the Union was not ready to take this step. So Fremont who had overstepped his authority by making this declaration was removed and Lincoln rescinded the order. Hunter was then placed in charge of the army of the West. Later, Hunter too was found to be too ‘independent’ and was removed from this post.

In March of 1862 he was transferred to command the Department of the South.  Hunter arrived at Hilton Head, South Carolina, in March 1862. Preparations to retake Fort Pulaski in the Savannah River from Confederates were already underway. Hunter sent a flag of truce to the Fort that was immediately ignored. Union troops opened fire on Fort Pulaski on April 10, 1862, and within 30 hours had forced the surrender of the massive fortress. This battle would prove to be the demise of the masonry forts as the new guns used by General Q. A. Gillmore made a rubble of a wall of the fort.

Fort Pulaski was now back under Union control. A blockade of Savannah could now be secured. One may wonder why Hunter did not consider capturing Savannah. It could have been that between 1828 and 1831 he was stationed at Fort Dearborn in Chicago. It was here that he met his wife who was part of the family that first settled Chicago. Her name was Maria Kinzie. The last name for Savannahians should be familiar. Maria Kinzie was the sister of Nellie Kinzie the mother of one of Savannah’s most famous citizens, the founder of the Girl Scouts Juliette Gordon Low, who were in Savannah at the time.

Two of his next acts would be radical and caused much stress in the Union and Confederacy. He declared just as Fremont did in the West an order emancipating the slaves in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida:
‘The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.’
This order much as Fremont’s order was remanded by President Lincoln who would not make his own emancipation proclamation until January 1, 1863.

The second act would be of lasting effect on the Union Army. Hunter again flouted orders from the federal government and enlisted ex-slaves as soldiers in South Carolina without permission from the War Department. This action incensed border state slave holders, and Kentucky Representative Charles Wickliffe sponsored a resolution demanding a response.

‘I reply that no regiment of "Fugitive Slaves" has been, or is being organized in this Department. There is, however, a fine regiment of persons whose late masters are "Fugitive Rebels"--men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National Flag, leaving their servants behind them to shift as best they can for themselves. . . . So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing this regiment from seeking to avoid the presence of their late owners, that they are now, one and all, working with remarkable industry to place themselves in a position to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous proprietors.’

President Jefferson C. Davis would put a price on his head and declare him to be hung on the spot if captured. Despite disapproval from the Confederacy and Union governments Hunter began enlisting black soldiers from the occupied districts of South Carolina and formed the first such Union Army regiment, the 1st South Carolina (African Descent). Though Congress ordered him to disband, they eventually came around and he got approval from Congress for his action. This earned him the nickname of "Black Dave."

He would eventually be relieved of his position as head of the Department of the South and moved back to the Virginia army under General Grant. Grant ordered him to conduct a scorched earth policy similar to Sherman’s March to the Sea. He did just that burning down the colleges of VMI and Washington College (later Washington and Lee). He also burned down the Governor’s mansion. These acts would make him a persona non grata in the South. He also in his efforts to punish the South left Washington DC open to attack by Gen. Jubal Early. This would cause once again his removal from the front lines.

Hunter would finish his career with two duties. He would serve as a pallbearer at Lincoln’s funeral and he would serve as one of the judges of the trial of the conspirators who executed the assassination of Lincoln. In the movie directed by Robert Redford filmed in Savannah The Conspirators, he was played by Colm Meaney.

Hunter’s connections to Savannah through his wife, the movie made here, and his time as head of the Department of the South make him worthy of knowing. He was a man probably ahead of his time but also with his appearance in all of the major sites of Lincoln’s presidency and death and the various fronts of the Civil War a Forrest Gump of his time.
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Hunter's gravesite