Military
Henry Jackson Hunt
1819–1889 · Union general, chief of artillery
Detroit-born chief of artillery of the Army of the Potomac, whose placement of guns at Gettysburg helped shatter Pickett's Charge.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan Territory- Died
Washington, D.C.
aged 69- Also known as
- Henry J. Hunt
- Detroit years
- 1819–1820s
- Field
- Military
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Henry Jackson Hunt was born in 1819 in the frontier garrison town of Detroit, the son of Army infantry officer Samuel Wellington Hunt, and was named after his uncle Henry Jackson Hunt, an early mayor of the city. As an army child he followed his father's postings west, and after his father's death in 1829 he entered West Point, graduating in 1839. He served as an artillery officer in the Mexican–American War and in 1860 co-wrote the Army's manual on field artillery. In the Civil War he commanded the artillery reserve at Malvern Hill, where massed Union guns broke Confederate attacks, and as chief of artillery of the Army of the Potomac he directed the batteries at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg. On July 3, 1863, his careful conservation of ammunition and positioning of guns on Cemetery Ridge helped repulse Pickett's Charge. Contemporaries considered him the war's finest artillerist. After the war he commanded Fort Adams and later governed the Soldiers' Home in Washington, where he died in 1889.
Highlights
- Chief of Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, 1862–1865
- Directed Union artillery at Gettysburg against Pickett's Charge (1863)
- Massed guns decisively at Malvern Hill (1862)
- Co-author of the Army's field artillery manual (1860)