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Rating: 
Summary: A Life of Duty, Honor, and Country
Review: "No Disgrace To My Country" is the story of John C. Tidball, an Ohio farm boy
who, by good fortune, got into West Point in 1844 at the age of 19 and graduated in 1848 as the
Mexican War ended. He elected the artillery arm of the service, where his love of the big guns
kept him, to the detriment of his advancement in rank, until he retired as the Army's premier
artillerist in 1889 after 45 years of service. He was promoted after retiring to the rank of
brigadier general.General Tidball was himself an excellent writer and this story is substantially based
on his journals and letters, excerpts from which are cogently interspersed. Tidball was in or at practically every major engagement of the Army of the
Potomac from First Bull Run to Petersburg and his perspectives on the actions and the Union
commanders and officers are unfailingly interesting. He was, as were so many in that army, an
admirer of McClellan and suspicious of Lincoln and his administration and of the war aims of the
North. But on less traveled tracks and of particular interest are the pre-war stories of Tidball's
life as a plebe at West Point (where French almost did him in), his assignments in the Old Army,
including brushes with some of its notorious characters, postings to Savannah and Augusta,
participation in the 35th Parallel Pacific Railway Survey (to the report of which he contributed
several accomplished sketches), standing guard at Lincoln's inauguration, his first marriage and
widowerhood with two small sons (who were raised by his father while Tidball followed the flag). Pensacola Harbor, in 1861, one of the best and most strategic ports on the Gulf
Coast between Florida and New Orleans, was guarded and controlled by Fort Pickens on Santa
Rosa Island. As the war began, Lincoln determined that Fort Sumter would have to be
surrendered but that Fort Pickens should be reinforced, defended and saved if possible. Tidball was in charge of a battery of artillery that was part of the relief expedition dispatched in haste and
great secrecy in April 1861 from New York on the steamship "Atlantic" to save Fort Pickens. The
success of the effort denied the Confederacy the use of Pensacola Harbor and Naval Yard
throughout the war. At the end of the war, while holding brevet ranks of brigadier general in the regular
service and major general of volunteers (in all he was breveted five times for gallant and
meritorious service), Tidball reverted to his permanent rank of captain. He had turned down
several opportunities for rapid advancement in the regular service during the war that would have
entailed his leaving the artillery service. The limited opportunities for advancement in the artillery
service, and what he perceived to be substantial defects in its organization, rankled and at times
depressed Tidball throughout his career. He, with, particularly, Henry Hunt and William Barry,
two of the great artillerymen who were Tidball's superiors, did have some success during the war
in restructuring the organization and use of artillery, including the creation of true horse artillery
units of which Tidball was one of the first commanders. Eventually, the insistence of these
officers and others that the artillery should be organized and commanded as a separate corps bore
fruit when Congress so provided in 1901. Just as his activities before the war that were on ways less travelled are of
particular interest, so too are his activities during his 25 years of service after the war. In 1868,
the year after the purchase of Alaska, Tidball was sent there to set up and command the Military
District of Kenai, a principal element of the newly created Department of Alaska. In 1870, while
back in the states on leave, he married a younger woman (with whom he had five more children)
after a suit that was not wholly pleasing to her father, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, an
1842 graduate of West Point who finished the war as a major general of volunteers and had
returned to civilian life. The newlyweds set up housekeeping in Kodiak which they departed
without regrets in the fall of 1871 when Tidball was given a new assignment. He served as an
aide-de-camp on General Sherman's staff from 1881 to the end of Sherman's term as general-in-
chief in 1883, and accompanied Sherman on the General's valedictory 11,000-mile tour of the
West with two Supreme Court justices in tow as the General's guests. In 1879, Sherman had ordered the publication of Tidball's magnum opus the
"Manual Of Heavy Artillery Service." It was published in 1883 and for many years thereafter was
the definitive work on the management and use of artillery. Toward the end of 1883, Tidball took
over as commandant of the Artillery School and commandant of the post at Fort Monroe. He
held these commands until he retired from the Army on January 25, 1889, his sixty-fourth birthday. Applying in 1842 to the Secretary of War to be admitted to West Point, Tidball
wrote that it had not been his good fortune to receive as liberal an education as he desired and
that he "embrace[d] this opportunity to if possible gain admission to that institution to gain a
better education, and be an honor to my friends and no disgrace to my country." He clearly
accomplished these aims summa cum laude. By any measure, his was an extraordinary and
remarkable life personifying the tenets of duty, honor, and country. "No Disgrace to My Country," by a distant relative of General Tidball, is a valuable
contribution to understanding an obviously intelligent and highly motivated and performing
second-level Union commander in the Civil War. It adds substantially to our understanding and
appreciation of that extremely important species which supplies the backbone of armies. The
story is well told and is read with great pleasure as well as profit.
Rating:
Summary: Most enjoyable read this year
Review: I can't remember why I ordered this book from the library a year ago, but it turned out to be one of the more interesting reading experiences of recent years. John Tidball was graduated from West Point in 1848, and while his life was packed with adventure, so were others of this period. But few recorded their observations with as much interest and clarity with a voice that still resonantes. Anyone interested in military and social biography is bound to share my views of this remarkable book.
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