General Isaac Stevens

born: March 28, 1818
died: 1862 at the battle of Chantilly, Virginia

He was killed in action in 1862 at the Battle of Chantilly in Virginia while picking up the fallen regimental colors of the 79th N. Y. Highlanders, shouting "Highlanders, my Highlanders, follow your general!" Charging with his troops while carrying the banner of St. Andrew's Cross, Stevens was struck in the head by a bullet and died instantly.

Isaac Stevens was born on March 28, 1818, in North Andover, Massachusetts. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1839, the first in his class. In 1840 he was commissioned second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Between 1840 and 1853, he worked on coastal defenses in Newport, Rhode Island, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Portland and Bucksport, Maine. He married Margaret Lyman Hazard of Newport on September 8, 1841. They had five children: Hazard, Virginia, Kate, Maude, and Susan.

Stevens spent most of 1847 with the engineer corps in General Winfield Scott’s Mexico campaign. After the siege of Vera Cruz, he was made adjutant to Major John L. Smith, commander of the engineer corps attached to Scott’s army. The nine-member engineer corps selected sites for fortifications, constructed field works, and provided information about unfamiliar terrain and enemy positions. The contributions of corps members Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, and George B. McClellan to the success of the Mexican campaign are well known, but Stevens’s contributions have received less attention. Stevens saw action at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, where he was seriously wounded on September 13. He was promoted to brevet captain for gallant and meritorious conduct at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco and brevet major for the wound he took at Chapultepec.

After the war, Stevens returned to Bucksport, Maine, where he continued supervising construction of Fort Knox. In 1849, he moved to Washington, D.C., to become assistant in charge of the U.S. Coast Survey under survey director Alexander Bache, a fellow army engineer. As Bache’s assistant, Stevens ran the Washington office of the survey from 1849 to 1853. He reorganized the office into eight divisions, increased staff and improved efficiency, and served as the liaison between the survey and Congress and the public.

While he was living in Washington, Stevens also lobbied Congress on behalf of the army and the Army Corps of Engineers. In this capacity, he oversaw passage of the Fourteen Year Bill, which sped promotions for young officers. In 1851, he subsidized publication of 1,000 copies of a short book, Campaigns of the Rio Grande and Mexico, a defense of General Scott’s role in the war.

Frustrated with his prospects for advancement in the army during peacetime, Stevens decided to seek his future in politics and the West. He campaigned for Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Pierce in 1852, writing a series of letters to the Boston Post and a pamphlet defending Pierce’s war record. He also stumped for Pierce during the final weeks of the campaign. In return, Pierce named Stevens governor of the Washington Territory on March 17, 1853. Stevens also lobbied for the job of organizing and leading a government survey party to explore a northern route for a transcontinental railroad. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis appointed Stevens superintendent of the survey in March 1853. Stevens spent the next three months organizing the expedition, which set out from St. Paul in June. The party traveled west through the Dakotas, Montana, and Idaho and arrived at Ft. Vancouver on November 19, 1853. The survey identified the first rail route from St. Paul to the Puget Sound and gathered information about the region’s topography, geography, flora, and fauna, identifying several previously unknown species. Survey artists John Mix Stanley and Gustavus Sohon created a pictorial record of the expedition that included some of the first graphic representations of the regions explored. The survey report was published in 1859.


When the Civil War began, Stevens entered the Union Army as colonel of the 79th Regiment of New York Volunteers, known as the Highlanders. His success in bringing discipline to the mutinous regiment contributed to his commission as brigadier general from Washington Territory in September 1861. Assigned to the command of General Thomas W. Sherman, Stevens spent the first year of the war in coastal South Carolina and took part in the bombardment of Port Royal, near Charleston, in November 1861. On June 16, 1862, he commanded the main assult force in the Battle of Secessionville, fought on St. James Island. In August 1862, he joined General John Pope's forces at Culpeper Courthouse, Virginia, passing through Newport News and Fredericksburg on his way. He commanded a division at the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Chantilly, where he was killed on September 1, 1862. Stevens is buried in Newport, Rhode Island.