General Henry Lockwood of Delaware: Shipmate of Melville, Co-builder of the Naval Academy, Civil War Commander

by Lloyd J. Matthews

Overview

General Henry Lockwood of Delaware: Shipmate of Melville, Co-builder of the Naval Academy, Civil War Commander depicts the fascinating and accomplished life of nineteenth-century Delaware son, Brig. Gen. Henry Lockwood. Excerpt for a leave of absence to fight as a Union general during the Civil War, Lockwood was a U.S. Navy professor of mathematics from 1841–1876, serving on the USS United States in the Pacific, at the Asylum Naval School, at the U.S. Naval Academy, and the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Lockwood sailed aboard the U.S. Navy frigate United States, participating in Commodore Thomas Catesby Jones’s seizure of Monterey from Mexico and figuring importantly in shipmate Herman Melville’s novel White-Jacket. Later he was a co-builder of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. During the Civil War Lockwood pacified the slavery-bound Delmarva peninsula, and commanded a brigade at Gettysburg, the Maryland Heights at Harper’s Ferry, the Middle Department/8th Corps, and a division at Cold Harbor. All these accomplishments occurred in the face of Lockwood’s tendency to stutter which afflicted him throughout his life. This book also takes note of family members such as his son Lieut. James Lockwood, who died of starvation during the Greely polar expedition after having reached the furthest point north of any human; brother Navy Surgeon John Lockwood, whose essays in conjunction with Melville’s White-Jacket were major factors in outlawing punitive flogging in the Navy; and son-in-law Adam Charles Sigsbee, who was in command of the USS Maine when it blew up in Havana Harbor. Several pivotal events in Lockwood’s life have unjustly led to his historical neglect. Here Matthews finally gives Lockwood his due.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611494884
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	04/04/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	568
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lloyd J. Matthews is a retired Army colonel.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Author’s Preface

Acknowledgments

One: Bay Colony to Delmarva

Two: Henry Lockwood’s Early Years

Three: The Florida War Ordeal

Four: Life Aboard a Man-of-War

Five: The Asylum Naval School as Precursor to the Naval Academy

Six: Building the Naval School at Fort Severn

Seven: The Delmarva Pacification Campaign: An Untold Story

Eight: Gettysburg: To Preserve a Nation

Nine: Higher Commands, Rejoining the Army of the Potomac, and On Toward Richmond

Ten: Cold Harbor: The Darkest Day

Eleven: Final Years of Service and Retirement

Twelve: The Older Brother: Navy Surgeon John Lockwood and the Early Years

Thirteen: Surgeon Lockwood: The Later Assignments and a New Life

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Photographs follow page

Editorial Reviews

Much more than a typical biography of an engaging figure, this book is an absorbing reconnaissance of an entire era, told in prose often verging on poetic. Henry Lockwood was witness to and participant in a multitude of the most defining moments of nineteenth-century America, and the author adroitly places him squarely into that churning context. The result is a literary trifecta—a deeply insightful look into a fascinating personality, an artistic portrait of an extraordinary life, both framed brilliantly inside a seminal period in our national history, and in short, a classic.

Dave R. Palmer

Some biographies claim to be the last word on the subject. Lloyd Matthews’ General Henry Lockwood of Delaware is not only the LAST word on the obscure General Lockwood—it’s likely to be EVERY word ever written on Lockwood.. . .This. .. 469-page book is the product of almost 32 years of research by the author. It is clearly a labor of love, and well written.

Civil War Book Review

Lloyd J. Matthews’ meticulously researched and magisterially told nineteenth-century history will be welcomed by military historians as well as by the hundreds of Delaware and Chesapeake Bay families who will find here a prodigious record of long-lived members of a notable regional clan. By focusing on Henry Lockwood (with due attention to his brother, John Alexander), Matthews rewrites standard histories of the founding of the Naval Academy, tells for the first time how the slave-holding Delmarva Peninsula was pacified during the Civil War, and amends the prevailing orthodoxy concerning the battles of Gettysburg and Cold Harbor. In this far-ranging study the young ordinary seaman Herman Melville scrutinizes Henry Lockwood in the Pacific and Atlantic then much later seeks out John Alexander Lockwood as a boon companion in the Mediterranean. Melville said of a marvelous invention, the 'revolving Drummond light,' that 'everything is lit by it.' Like that Drummond light, Matthews’ monumental study illuminates both broad tracts and odd corners of nineteenth-century American life. This is a momentous achievement.

Hershel Parker