HUNT Henry Jackson 181989
Henry Hunt (see Plate C3) was born in Detroit on 14 September 1819. A third-generation regular army officer, Hunt was graduated from West Point in 1839. He served as a lieutenant of artillery in Winfield Scott's audacious advance on Mexico City in August 1847, earning brevets to captain and major for gallantry At Chumbusco he galloped his gun up to the walls of the capital; as the gun nil limbered almost eveiv man and horse was hit, but the survivors got the piece into position only yards from a Mexican gun. Both crews were loading with desperate haste, but in the end it was Hunt's gun that fired first. After the Mexican War, Hunt was named to a board of three artillerymen who were to revise the system of light artillery tactics then in use. Their manual was adopted by the army in 1860 and became the standard system for both sides in the Civil War.
Hunt served at First Bull Run (Manassas - 21 July 1861) and was then named chief of artillery for the Washington defenses; he was also given responsibility for training the artillery reserve of the Army of the Potomac; Hunt pioneered massed artillery use in the Union annv, assembling at Malvern Hill (I July 1862) some 100 guns, which almost alone broke up the Confederate attacks. He served with distinction at Antietam (17 September 1862), being named a brigadier-general of vc-> 1 initeers two days before the battle.
Although a regular army man, and known for dressing down batters' commanders for wasting expensive ammunition, Hunt was informal with his staff. Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick, himself somewhat stiff-necked, noted in his diary' on 31 December 1862 - New Year's Eve - that he went to bed at a quarter of ten, "but was again roused by the Card players at Hunt['sl Tent — 1 remained awake an hour, then wrote a note & sent ii, a little after !2 o'clock, requesting the noise to be stopped."
At Gettysburg (1-3 July 1863) Hunt placed 77 guns along the Union front, withdrawing several batteries there during the counter-battery fight with the Confederate guns given the job of softening up the Union center for Pickett's Charge, He got them back, with enough ammunition for the job, in time to help stop the attack: and was breveted major-general of volunteers for his service. However, Hunt, a Democrat, stayed in contact with George McClellan, who ran for president against Lincoln; and in September 1864 Hunt wrote to McCleltan that an armistice with the South could lead to peace, and the Democratic Party platform was aimed at the South "to detach the people from their leaders," and should be supported by McClellan.
In June 1864, Ulysses S.Grant placed Hunt in charge of all siege operations at Petersburg. At the end of the war he was named a majorgeneral in the regular army, but reverted to his permanent rank of
Henry Hunt, the brilliant and highly successful Army of the Potomac artillery commander, with Maj. James Duane, the army's chief engineer, In the lines at Petersburg, as shown in an engraving in the 15 October 1664 issue of Harper's Weekly. In March 186S a subordinate. Col. Charles Wain wright, recalled a ride along Union lines in Hunt's company: "The General was in the most excellent spirits, and amused me very much as weH as filling me with wonder at his memory.,, quoting page after page; and then aimost whole volumes of comic poetry, interspersed with stories. Stilt he saw everything as we rode along and was just as much alive to the object of his visit to the lines as if he had been thinking and taikfng of nothing else. He Is certainly one of the most wonderful men i have ever met. With a very retentive memory, he is always forgetting; most original and practical In all his ideas, he is most impractical In carrying them out.,. Nevertheless, Hunt had shown heroism and energy as a young officer of the "flying artillery" in the Mexican War.
lieuteriant-colonel in the 3rd US Artillery. He was named colonel commanding the 5th US Artillery in 1869, serving nntil he retired in 1883. He was appointed governor of the Soldiers" Home in Washington in 1885, dying there on 1Î February 1889,
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