Shortly after Sherman's army entered North Carolina, Kilpatrick endured perhaps the most embarrassing hour in his career. It came about because of his old fondness for female companionship.

Despite his raccoon-like face and slight build, Kilpatrick had always considered himself a ladies' man. When his wife Alice died in 1863, his passionate nature apparently turned into licentiousness. While in Virginia he had been intimate with a pretty camp follower who had also been a good friend of his subordinate, Custer. And in North Carolina he travelled with another companion, a "tall, handsome, well-dressed lady."

Presumably it was she who, clad only in a nightgown, was routed from Kilpatrick's headquarters near Fayetteville, North Carolina, when Hampton's cavalry attacked it one night in March 1865 "Kilcavalry" himself, wearing nightshirt and boots, was nearly captured when a Confederate swooped down on him and demanded to know General Kilpatrick's whereabouts. Realizing that in his sleepwear he had been taken for an ordinary soldier, Kilpatrick pointed to a passing horseman and said, "There he goes!" The Rebel spurred his mount and was off, and Kilpatrick wasted no time finding a horse of his own and riding to safety. His lady friend, meanwhile, had to hide in a ditch until the fighting was over. When the Confederates learned these facts, they laughed heartily at Kilpatrick's expense.

But the Rebels' merriment could not last. In subsequent weeks Sherman proceeded to back Johnston into his final corner, and Kilpatrick's men bagged scores of prisoners–Confederates who sensed the futility of waging a doomed campaign. On April 26 Johnston was forced to surrender his army to Sherman near Durham Station, North Carolina, and the war was over. After the Rebel army disbanded, Kilpatrick was promoted major general of volunteers and won a brevet major generalship in the Regular Army.

Kilpatrick's postwar life was varied and colorful if ultimately tragic. Resigning his commission, he was appointed minister to Chile by President Andrew Johnson. In South America, his libertine days at an end, he married the niece of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Santiago and settled comfortably into domestic life when he was recalled to the United States in 1868.

Kilpatrick later became a director of the Union Pacific Railroad, tried his hand at playwriting, and spoke to numerous veterans' associations. He switched his politics to vote for Democrat Horace Greeley in 1872, but afterward returned to the Republican fold and was reappointed minister to Chile in 1880. He served there until his death the following year from a kidney ailment.

He never achieved his most cherished goals. Though in February 1864 he had envisioned himself a future governor and President, he made only one bid for elective office–a rather modest one, as a congressional candidate from New Jersey, in 1880. But he was soundly defeated.

Though it may seem a minor defeat, Kilpatrick never quite got over it; he always longed for the adulation of the electorate. For a man who had seen many hopes destroyed during his lifetime, this was perhaps the cruelest disappointment of all.

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Edward G. Longacre's article first appeared in the April 1971 issue of Civil War Times Illustrated.

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