FRANKLIN COUNTY OHIO - BIOS: MCDOWELL, Gen. Irvin 
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Submitted by: LeaAnn
Email: leaann1@bellsouth.net
Date: August 13, 1999
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In Franklinton is now standing the birthplace of Gen. Irvin McDowell, 
who in the period of the war of the rebellion,  as Whitelaw Reid says, 
"was one of the best military scholars of the army and one of the most
successful of its officers.  ...His place in the sure judgement of
coming times is secure.  He will not be reckoned brilliant or great; 
but his ability and devotion will be recognized.  His manifold
misfortunes,  the amiability with which he encountered personal
reverses,  the fortitude with which he endured calamity will be
recounted.  Men will do justice to the services he rendered us in our
darkest hours,  and he will leave an enduring and honorable fame."

Irvin McDowell was of Scotch-Irish descent,  and the branch from wence
he sprang were early immigrants to Kentucky.  He was born in 1818,  was
educated at West Point,  served in the Mexican war,  and died in San
Fransisco in 1885,  having been retired in 1882 from the army and the
position of major-general,  in command of the Division of the Pacific.

The great misfortune of his career was,  that it fell to his lot to
command the Union troops at the first great battle of the war,  that of
Bull Run,  and he was made the scapegoat of that mortifying disaster. 
Of his generalship there Mr Reid says, " His plan was excellent,  and
though there were innumerable faults of execution,  they arose more
because of the materials with which he had to work than from his own
inexperience or lack of judgement.  After all the display of ability
which the war has called out,  we would be puzzled today if called upon
to name any officer who,  if then put in McDowell's pplace would have
done better.  We may doubt, indeed, if there are any who would have done
so well.

The long and full narrative of his career, as given by Mr Reid,  is a
pitiful tale of cruel wrong against a high-minded and patriotic soldieer
made the victim of calumny.  It is one of the peculiarities of war that
while it often develops the most noble and heroic qualities of
patriotism and self-sacrifice the diabolical and atrocious has its
fullest scope.  No "jealousies," wrote the late Colonel Charles
Whittlesey,  "are equal to those between military men,"  and history
records innumerable instances of multitudes slain through the exercise
of this passion against a brother officer.



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