Hugh Judson Kilpatrick

Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (14 January 1836 near Deckertown, New Jersey – 4 December 1881 in Santiago, Chile) was a officer in the Union army during the American Civil War achieving the rank of Brevet Major General, the United States Minister to Chile, and a failed political candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and Governor of New Jersey.

Triviata

Quotes regarding Kilpatrick

All during the night of the second, the 4th had several scouts out...one advanced sufficiently close to overhear loud talking between the two Union cavalry Generals, Kilpatrick and Farnsworth. The former was in command of a division occupying the front of our right flank, which was defended by a thin line of our infantry skirmishers.... It appears from what our scout caught of the heated conversation that Kilpatrick had ordered Farnsworth, a brave and ambitions young brigade officer, but recently promoted, to charge over our picket line and turn our right flank. Farnsworth earnestly protested against such a fools errand, whereupon Kilpatrick angrily remarked, "Then, by God, if you are afraid to go I will lead the charge myself." Farnsworth then without further protest determined to make the effort. This was immediately reported to General Law, and preparations made during the 3rd to meet it.

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:::::::: —from Robert T. Cole, History of the 4th Regiment, Alabama Volunteer Infantry

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Trivia

• Artist and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt (1920–present) is Hugh Judson Kilpatrick's great-granddaughter.
• A member of General George G. Meade's staff, wrote in his diary that it was hard to look at Kilpatrick without bursting into laughter. Described as short in stature, with red hair and stringy sand-colored side burns, he spoke in a shrill voice and walked in a rolling gate. Others described his lack of physical attractiveness in that he was "A wiry, restless, undersized man with black eyes a lantern jaw." Despite these aesthetic limitations, Kilpatrick earned a steady reputation as a philander.
• Kilpatrick is the author of two plays, Allatoona: An Historical and Military Drama in Five Acts (1875) and The Blue and the Gray: Or, War is Hell (posthumous, 1930).