March 21, 1863---Edwin Vose Sumner (1797-1863)

MARCH 21, 1863:      

Edwin Vose Sumner (January 30, 1797 – March 21, 1863) was a career United States Army officer who became a Union Army general and the oldest field commander of any Army Corps on either side during the American Civil War. His nicknames "Bull" or "Bullhead" came both from his booming voice and a legend that a musket ball once bounced off his head. 

On March 12, 1861, Sumner was nominated by the newly inaugurated Lincoln as one of only three brigadier generals in the regular army. Sumner was thus the first new Union general created by the secession crisis. 

He was sent to command the Department of the Pacific in California, and thus took no part in the 1861 campaigns of the war. In November 1861, Sumner was brought back east to command a division, and on May 5, 1862 he was promoted to major general in the Union Army, under General McClellan. 

McClellan originally formed a poor opinion of Sumner. McClellan wrote to his wife, "Sumner had proved that he was even a greater fool than I had supposed & had come within an ace of having us defeated." At the Battle of Seven Pines, however, Sumner's initiative in sending reinforcing troops across the dangerously rain-swollen Chickahominy River prevented a Union disaster. He received the brevet of major general in the regular army for his gallantry at Seven Pines. He later led troops at Antietam (Sharpsburg) and Fredericksburg. 

Shortly after Fredericksburg, Sumner was relieved at his own request, and went on furlough. He was reassigned to a new command in Missouri effective in the spring of 1863. However, he never lived to assume his new command. He suffered a sudden heart attack and died on this day.