The man who went all the way: Alpheus Williams

Alpheus Williams was born into a well-to-do Connecticut family in 1810. Orphaned at the age of seventeen, he inherited the modern-day equivalent of $1,700,000. He used it to attend Yale College, tour Europe, where he met the “Citizen King,” Louis Philippe, and, (after sailing on a Navy ship to Mexico with his brother), resettling in the new boom town of Detroit, Michigan, where he spent the rest of his life.

Williams was active in the civic life of early Detroit, serving as a member of the school board, judge and postmaster, publisher and banker. He was also active in the local militia, serving as a lieutenant colonel of a Michigan regiment in the Mexican War, and leading a reorganized militia company in the late 1850s. His prominence in such matters led to his early appointment as a brigadier general in the volunteer army of the United States shortly after the Civil War began. The facts that he did not politic in army circles, failed to seek publicity for his efforts on the battlefield, was relegated to serve with Nathaniel Banks, and not in the Army of the Potomac, coupled with the fact that he was a Democrat known to have a taste for whisky, meant that he would never muster the support in Congress needed to advance in rank to major general, despite the recommendations of most of the men he served under, including Henry Slocum and William T. Sherman.

Williams began the war sleeping in comfortable homes. But he quickly learned to be with his men, sleeping on the ground just as they did. He was a familiar sight in all the camps of the regiments who served under him, chewing on unlit cigars, peering from under the brim of his hat through reading glasses at his maps, always attentive to the things his men needed.

At the battles of First Winchester and Cedar Mountain, riding literally in the company of Nathaniel Banks, he could only respond to orders, and never had the opportunity to show any initiative. At Antietam, he was saddled with several regiments that were so green they could not advance over a fence, a situation made far worse when their field officers were killed. When the corps commander, Major General Joseph Mansfield, fell early in the fighting, Williams succeeded to corps command, and he did a credible job maintaining the pressure of the attack on the Confederate left, and building a line that withstood the last Confederate counterattacks.

Perhaps Williams’ finest hour came at Chancellorsville, when his division stopped the advance of Jackson’s Corps on May 2, after the Eleventh Corps had collapsed, and held that line during the entire morning of May 3, until he was forced to retire for want of ammunition.

He and his men were sent west to relieve Chattanooga in September 1863, and stayed there for the rest of the war, fighting with Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea, and the Campaign in the Carolinas. During much of that time, he again led the corps. The severest fighting they saw was on July 20, 1864 at Peach Tree Creek, just north of Atlanta. After riding at the head of the corps all through the Carolinas in 1865, and during the battle of Bentonville, he was replaced by Major General Joseph Mower, whom Sherman preferred for his aggressive shows of initiative.

Williams returned, at the request of all of the brigade commanders, to lead his old division for the little that was left of the war: Johnston’s surrender of his army, the march back to Washington, and the Grand Review of Grant’s and Sherman’s armies. He finally received his second star, by brevet (honorary), at long last having the rank of major general. His post-war career included stints as a military supervisor in Arkansas, minister to San Salvador, gubernatorial candidate in Michigan and finally as an elected congressman from Michigan’s first district, and the state’s only Democrat in Congress. He died of a stroke in the US Capitol on December 21, 1878.

He is the only corps commander at Gettysburg without a statue standing in his honor. Williams Avenue, near Culps Hill, is named for him, but it is a pathway with no monuments along it. No Union general appears to be more forgotten or ignored by the historians and students of the Civil War Era than “Ol’ Pap” Williams. His hometown, on the other hand, did not forget him, although the push to erect a proper memorial did not begin until he had been gone for thirty years, and the centennial of his birth approached. The magnificent equestrian statue pictured above, was designed and built in 1921 by Henry Shrady, who also did the monument to General Grant in front of the US Capitol. Williams’ statue stands in Belle Isle Park in the middle of the Detroit River, in the city he called home, far away from the battlefields where Williams and his men fought and won the American Civil War.