More Solace For Those Who Weren't First in their Class

I blogged the other day on Maurice who?—who is one of three triple-star firsts in the history of Cambridge University (link). Here’s a followup: Charles Seaforth Stewart.

Charles who? The answer is that he was first in the West Point class of 1846, the subject of John C. Waugh’s The Class of 1846 From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan and their Brothers (1994) the fascinating history of the officers who formed so much of the top tier of the officer corps in the Civil War. McClellan was #2; Jackson, #17. Most of the others are less famous, though we do have—oops—George Edward Pickett (#59--last) he of Pickett’s charge, the Confederate “great almost” at Gettysburg in 1862.

Waugh recounts that Stewart came to West Point well prepared for distinction: he was the son of a Navy chaplain, and he had a top-notch prep school background. For all his distinction as a student, Stewart seems to have accomplished substantially nothing in his combat career. He served as a major of engineers under McClellan in the Peninsular campaign, and didn’t even make colonel until after the war.

For whatever it may be worth, it might be useful to remember that McClellan, the much more notorious #2, is in the end more notorious than famous. His main distinction is that he is the man who couldn’t bring himself to fight at the beginning of the war, and then tired to unseat Lincoln as Democratic candidate for president at the end. His skills, such as they are, seem much more academic than practical.