Theodore Winthrop

Theodore Winthrop.

Theodore Winthrop (1828 - 1861), novelist, lawyer, and world traveler, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, USA, and wasdescended through his father from Governor John Winthrop, and through his mother from Jonathan Edwards. He was educated at Yale University (Class of 1848), travelled in Britain and on the Continent, and far and wide in his own country. After contributing to periodicals, short sketches, and stories, which attracted little attention, Winthrop enlisted in the 7th Regiment, New York State Militia, an early volunteer unit of the Federal Army that answered President Abraham Lincoln's call for troops in 1861. He wrote a popular essay about the experience titled "Our March to Washington." He later became an aide-de-camp to General Benjamin Butler, commander of the Department of Virginia headquartered at Fort Monroe. At the Battle of Big Bethel on June 10, 1861 he volunteered for General Ebenezer Pierce's staff and drew up a crude plan of battle. After a Federal attack to the enemy right flank was foiled, Major Winthrop lead an ill-fated assault on the Confederate left held by four companies of the 1st Regiment North Carolina Infantry, under the command of Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Daniel Harvey Hill. Winthrop leaped onto the trunk of a fallen tree and yelled, "One more charge boys, and the day is ours." Soon thereafter he was killed by a musket ball to the heart and became the premier casualty for the northern side in what history regards as the first pitched land battle of the American Civil War. Winthrop's novels, for which he had failed to find a publisher, appeared posthumously--John Brent, founded on his experiences in the far West, Edwin Brothertoft, a story of the Revolution War, and Cecil Dreeme. Other works were The Canoe and Saddle, and Life in the Open Air. Though somewhat spasmodic and crude, his novels had freshness,originality, and power, and with longer life and greater concentration hemight have risen high.