Constable: New book aims to give one-armed Civil War general from Illinois his due

By Burt Constable

bconstable@dailyherald.com

A July Fourth celebration with his family in a cemetery ignited a spark in young James T. Huffstodt. In a corner of the Utica Oak Hill Cemetery, a Civil War monument overlooked a few weathered white gravestones.

"My mother pointed at a gravestone and said, 'That's my grandfather,'" recalls Huffstodt, 68, an author and former Arlington Heights resident. "That afternoon, I sat on the porch in Utica and grandma proceeded to tell me in detail about what her father (Martin Baker) had done in the war," Huffstodt says.

Instead of spinning glorious tales of heroic victories, his grandmother stuck to the facts.

"It was about mud, cold, misery and fear," Huffstodt remembers. Huffstodt's latest book, "Lincoln's Bold Lion: The Life and Times of Brigadier General Martin Davis Hardin," sticks to facts, but also tells an astounding story of an Illinois native whose life intersects with those of Abraham Lincoln, Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, John Wilkes Booth, and local legends such as Gen. Philip Sheridan, the namesake of Fort Sheridan, and William Rainey Harper, for whom Harper College is named.

Huffstodt's fascination with Hardin began after he read "Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders," by Ezra Warner, a historian who was born in Lake Forest. Warner noted that Hardin "embarked upon a combat career which has few parallels in the annals of the army for gallantry, wounds sustained, and the obscurity into which he had lapsed a generation before his death."

When Hardin died of stomach cancer in 1923, his death barely rated a mention in local newspapers. Even in the last decade, Hardin's home in Lake Forest has been advertised incorrectly as "built in the 1890s by a retired Confederate general."

"Somebody ought to write a biography on that man," Huffstodt remembers thinking. "It took a long time, but I finally got around to it."

Born in downstate Jacksonville in 1837,

Hardin was the son of John J. Hardin, a good friend of Abraham Lincoln. The elder Hardin swore in a young Lincoln as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War of 1832, rode the lawyers' circuit alongside Lincoln, served with the future president in the Illinois legislature and even introduced him to Mary Todd, who would become the president's wife, Huffstodt writes. John Hardin and Lincoln carved reputations as bold young political leaders in the Whig party, but Hardin was the first to win a seat in Congress.

Hardin was killed in 1847 in the Mexican-American War. "We have lost our best Whig," noted Lincoln, who won election to Hardin's old Congressional seat.

"You go off to Congress and one of your best friends goes off to war and gets killed. That could cause some guilt," Huffstodt says. "Hardin's mother worked that pretty good."

The late Hardin's son became a protégé of Lincoln, who, even as president, continued to receive letters from Hardin's mother, seeking promotions for her son. After attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point under Superintendent Robert E. Lee with an array of students that included George Armstrong Custer, Hardin served under Lee's command fighting John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

After a tour of duty in the far West, Lt. Hardin was just 24 years old when the Civil War began. Commanding Union soldiers during the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 in Virginia, Col. Hardin was wounded by a musket ball that ripped through his chest and permanently robbed him of the use of his left arm. Rejecting a medical discharge, Hardin returned to duty seven months later.

He won praise for leading his regiment at Gettysburg, his left arm hanging limp and useless. In December of 1863 in Catlett Station, Virginia, Hardin came upon a band of disguised Rebel guerrillas wearing Union overcoats. They ambushed him, killing his horse. One shot hit his dangling left arm, forcing an <URL destination="#photo6">immediate amputation.

</URL>"I have but little hope of his recovery," his distraught mother wrote to her second husband. She also wrote a letter to Lincoln, seeking a promotion for her son.

When Hardin returned to battle in 1864 as a one-armed commander, he earned praise and the rank of brigadier general, leading the Union forces defending Washington, D.C., from Rebel forces.

His

stepbrother was a Confederate soldier who was wounded, hid in their sister's home and fled to Canada dressed as a woman when it became clear that Hardin was going to visit. The sister also would be involved in a sensational murder trial later when her teenage son shot her abusive husband.

"That's the joy, unearthing these little bits and pieces," Huffstodt says.

His research revealed that one of the Rebels who ambushed Hardin was Lewis Thornton Powell, also known as

Payne, who later was hanged for his knife attack on Secretary of State William Seward as part of the plot in which Booth assassinated Lincoln.

At Lincoln's second inauguration, Hardin stood just a few feet from Booth, Huffstodt discovered. In the hours after the shooting of the president, Hardin led a group searching for the assassin.

After the war, Hardin and his wife, Estelle, built a home in Lake Forest. He became a lawyer in the same firm as his good friend<URL destination="#photo4"> Robert Todd Lincoln.

</URL>Hardin helped comfort Mary Todd Lincoln, who lived in Chicago, during the illness of her son, Tad, who died in 1871. Hardin also was a good friend of Fred Grant, son of the famous general and president. During the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Hardin lost his home and a prized ceremonial sword presented in his father's memory.

After the death of his first wife, Hardin married Chicago coffee heiress Amelia McLaughlin and became a regular in society groups in Chicago and St. Augustine, Florida, where he spent winters. Robert Lincoln sponsored Hardin's membership in the prestigious Chicago Historical Society, whose members included Marshall Field and millionaires with names including Pullman, Palmer, Armour and Deering.

Hardin also belonged to the Chicago Literary Society, whose members included the educator Harper, reaper manufacturer Cyrus McCormick, Gen. Sheridan and other movers-and-shakers.

"Truth is stranger than fiction is the cliché, and it is cliché because it's true," says Huffstodt, who notes that he began his military writing career in 1967 while serving with the Army in Vietnam. The author has a bachelor's degree in American history from Southern Illinois University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois.

Huffstodt and his wife, Judy, live in Florida, where he spent much of his career writing for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission after leaving a similar job in Illinois.

Bringing to light the life of Hardin restores the man's rightful position as an American hero, Huffstodt says, concluding, "He lived an incredible life."