William J. Palmer: Forgotten Union General of America’s Civil War

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Clio is a fickle mistress. The muse of history grants undying fame to feckless bumblers such as George Pickett and Ambrose Burnside while extinguishing the lamp of William J. Palmer, a man who merited enshrinement on a cigar box in 1900 but a decade later found himself dropped into a pit of oblivion.

Palmer first gained notice in 1853 as a 17-year-old railroad enthusiast who joined the engineering department of Penn­syl­vania’s Hempfield Railroad. Within two years the fiercely ambitious and abolitionist Quaker had impressed Pennsyl­vania Rail­road President J. Edgar Thomp­son so much that he sent Palmer on a sabbatical to Europe to study mining and railroading. On his return, Palmer was appointed Thompson’s private secretary.

Early in the Civil War, the 25-year-old Palmer raised a mounted contingent of elite scouts known as the Anderson Troop. The unit so impressed Union Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell that he encouraged Palmer to return to Pennsylvania and recruit an entire regiment. The result was the 15th Pennsyl­vania Cavalry.

In September 1862, while the 15th was training, Confederate General Robert E. Lee moved north through Virginia and Maryland toward a showdown with the Federal Army of the Potomac at Sharps­burg. On September 11, six days before the Battle of Antietam, Palmer and a few handpicked men were sent to scout Lee’s advance and telegraph reports to Penn­sylvania Gover­nor Andrew G. Curtin and his “intelligence” officer Alexander K. McClure, a Chambersburg politician who was basking in the temporary rank of major. Vital to Palmer’s mission was William B. Wilson, an experienced telegrapher capable of tapping into any line in order to intercept reports and relay them to Curtin and McClure. The two politicians would analyze the information Wilson sent and decide which portions to forward to the Army.

Palmer and the advancing Rebels were never far apart. On the first night of his mission, he stopped at a farmhouse in Hagers­town, Md., only moments before a Confederate cavalry unit arrived. Palmer, wearing civilian clothes, ate supper in the farmhouse with the Rebel officers. At 3 the next morning he slipped away, joined Wilson in Green­castle, Pa., and informed McClure that infantry, not just cavalry, was moving north. Six hours later Palmer sent warning that Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, with 50,000 soldiers and 75 cannons, had crossed the Potomac River at Williams­port, Md. The citizens of Green­castle had also heard that the Confederates were coming and proposed to haul down the Stars and Stripes—until they were admonished by the outraged Wilson.

Palmer and Wilson’s risky intelligence gathering was almost for naught. The Keystone State governor, acting more like a Keystone Cop, passed on to the Army only a summary of Palmer’s detailed information—in a form so brief that it was all but useless to Maj. Gen. George McClellan. In fact, because Curtin clearly was unable to distinguish between useful and useless intelligence, he also relayed two full but false reports from citizens. One claimed that 440,000 Confederate soldiers were headed for Pennsylvania; the other asserted that Lee’s invasion was only a feint—the real blow would be struck in a direct assault on Wash­ing­ton led by General Joseph E. Johnston.

Enter Lee’s historic Special Orders, No. 191, the general’s detailed plan for dividing his numerically inferior army during the invasion. A Confederate officer had used the order as a cigar wrapper and allowed it to fall into Union hands. McClellan knew he was in possession of an important document, but he failed to comprehend that in the four days which had elapsed since the order had been written the Confederates already had changed their plans. Perhaps McClellan would have been less confused if he had received Palmer’s report of September 13 stating that a highly reliable observer had confirmed that Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s entire corps was in Hagerstown. As relayed by Curtin, the report read, “Longstreet’s division is reported to have reached Hagerstown”—a significant mistake, given that a division is quite different from a corps. Nor did Curtin attribute any of these reports to Palmer. Since McClellan personally had requested Palmer’s services, he might have been more willing to accept their accuracy.

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