T
he American Civil War has been called the war of brother against brother. That description was figurative and literal. Episodes of brother battling brother were too numerous to count if one considers soldiers who fought with each other in previous wars, as Shakespeare described in “Henry V”: “For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother!” One of the men who stood up with Ulysses Grant at his wedding in 1848 was James Longstreet. Both were veterans of the Mexican-American War. Longstreet was a cousin of Julia Dent, who became Grant’s wife. While Grant led Union troops during the Civil War, Longstreet served under Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Grant also fought opposite Simon Bolivar Buckner, a fellow West Point graduate. Buckner made a loan to Grant when he resigned from the U.S. Army in 1854 and needed money to return home to his wife, writes historian James McPherson. Eight years later, Buckner, at the head of a Southern army, sought terms from Grant after surrendering at Fort Donelson. Grant offered no deal but unconditional surrender.
Actual family members found themselves on opposite sides, too. Henry Wise was governor of Virginia and as such signed John Brown’s death warrant after the abolitionist’s raid on the armory at Harper’s Ferry. Wise was a member of Virginia’s Secession Commission and later a Confederate general. His brother-in-law, George Gordon Meade, was the victorious commander of Union forces at Gettysburg. U.S. Sen. John Crittenden, of Kentucky, a former U.S. Attorney General, had two sons serve as generals. Thomas Crittenden fought for the Union while his brother, George Crittenden, fought for the South – although the two never met in a battle. As late as December 1860, following Abraham Lincoln’s election, the elder Crittenden was still trying to work out a compromise to prevent war. Most famously, Lincoln’s own house was divided. Mary Todd Lincoln had multiple brothers and brothers-in-law fighting for the South, some of whom died in battle. At the Pamplin Historical Park in Virginia, along the Breakthrough Trail, a
historical marker was erected in honor of Maj. Clifton Prentiss, a 29-year-old Union soldier from Baltimore who was shot in the chest. Not far from away, his brother, a Southern private named William Prentiss, was shot in the leg. While stories abound of loyalties dividing families, tales of brothers actually killing each other appear to have been apocryphal. But in at least one instance, two brothers came close. Kentucky’s Breckenridge family sent its sons to opposite sides of the war. At the 1864 Battle of Atlanta, according to McPherson, one brother helped capture another.
Old Academic Building, West Point, N.Y U.S. National Archives’ Local
George Gordon Meade (left), who led Union soldiers at Gettysburg, was brother-in-law to Virginia Gov. Henry Wise (right), who later served as a general for the Confederacy
Library of Congress