‘SUCH A SPLENDID SOLDIER’
Fitz John Porter’s arrival at the U.S. Military Academy in 1841 gave him a perfect opportunity to erase the black mark his alcoholic father had left on his family’s name, and he made the most of it. Only a quarter of the young men who reported to West Point alongside Porter would graduate with their class, with the New Hampshire native ranking eighth out of 41 cadets in the Class of 1845.
Less than a year later, Porter landed on the coast of Texas, and in the spring of 1847 his regiment joined Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott for the U.S. Army’s campaign against Mexico City during the Mexican War. Porter helped guide artillery into position for the assault at Cerro Gordo, took part in the 4th Artillery’s epic bayonet charge at Contreras, and was even knocked unconscious by spent grapeshot at the Garita de Belén in the final assault on Mexico City.
Porter ended the war as a first lieutenant, with brevets as captain and major. Assigned to the West Point faculty in early 1849, he remained at his alma mater more than six years as an instructor of “natural and experimental philosophy,” artillery, and cavalry tactics. Toward the latter part of his sojourn there, he stood in as acting adjutant for the academy’s superintendent, Robert E. Lee.
Frustrated, however, by the glacial pace of promotion, Porter relinquished his seniority as a line officer in 1856 to accept an appointment in the adjutant general’s office, which would take him to Kansas Territory during the hunt for abolitionist John Brown. Then, in the autumn of 1857, he served as chief of staff to Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston during the Utah Expedition. After a brutal winter in the mountains on short rations, Johnston’s force marched into Salt Lake City in 1858, establishing a military post and spending the next two years amid a covertly hostile Mormon population.
After returning to New York via California and Panama in 1860, Porter played a part in some of the more renowned preludes to the Civil War. As secession loomed that November, he inspected federal facilities in Charleston, S.C., and recommended a more energetic officer to command it—which led to the assignment of Major Robert Anderson. Early in 1861, Porter sailed to the mouth of the Rio Grande to help bring home hundreds of U.S. troops trapped by the secession of Texas.
With the war’s outbreak in April, Scott, serving as Lincoln’s chief military adviser, sent Porter to Harrisburg, Pa., to organize volunteers. On April 22, while in the Pennsylvania capital, Porter intercepted a telegram indicating that the Army’s department commander in St. Louis, a suspect Southerner, had impeded the mustering of volunteers to protect the U.S. arsenal there. Audacity had always been part of Porter’s personality. On his own initiative, he issued orders in Scott’s and Secretary of War Simon Cameron’s names to muster in those volunteers.
Through the summer of 1861, Porter served as chief of staff to Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson, whose missteps as a commander in the Shenandoah Valley contributed to the Federals’ stunning defeat at
