General
Ethan Hitchcock’s Shoulder Boards. From a
family grouping in the Bob Trownsell Collection. Hitchcock was wearing these
boards during his time in St Louis as evidenced by the photo taken by Thomas
Easterly (In the collection of the Missouri Historical Society and not included).
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Hitchcock,
Ethan A., major-general, was born in Vergennes,
Vt.,
May 18, 1798. He was graduated at West
Point in 1817 and
saw
continuous service in the United States army until 1855,
when
he resigned on account of personal differences with
Jefferson
Davis, then secretary of war. He
served during this
period
on frontier duty, as instructor and later commandant at
West
Point in the Seminole war and in the Mexican war, where
he
won the brevets of colonel and brigadier-general for
gallantry. At the beginning of the Civil war he
re-entered
the
army, was made major-general of volunteers and stationed
at
Washington, where he served on the commission for the
exchange
of prisoners and on that for the revision of the
military
code. He was a warm personal friend
and the military
adviser
of President Lincoln. After the war he
served on the
Pacific
coast, but resigned in 1867 on account of ill health
and
died in Sparta, Ga., Aug. 5, 1870.
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