Captain Montgomery Harrison Ritchie

From: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies:

Montgomery Ritchie. Vol. A. D. C. (rank of Captain), June, 1861; (rank of Major), July, 1861; Captain and Commissary of Subsistence U. S. Vols., December, 1861; Captain 1st Mass. Cavalry, November 25, 1862; discharged, on resignation, May 6, 1864; died of disease contracted in the service, November 7, 1864.

Montgomery Ritchie was a man of marked character. He was modest, even to the degree of self-distrust; his manners were reserved, his impressions slowly received, but, when once received, ineffaceable. His nature, like that of many others, was liable to be mistaken, partly because it was veiled, partly because it was made up of various and even opposite qualities; but to those who penetrated it, it constantly tended towards transparency and harmony.

His self-distrust was a prominent trait. His standard was too high to be easily attained or easily approached, and he was not wont to think himself as near it as he actually was. He constantly scrutinized his own motives and actions, and often held himself back, when others, less self-questioning than he, would have pressed forward. His friends valued him the more for his humility. It was to many of them an example which he was quite unconscious of setting, and which is not the less persuasive now that it is set only by his memory.

He was self-distrustful, but he was also self-relying. He did not hesitate to decide when the hour for decision came, or shrink from action when it was time to act. He had some grave difficulties to meet, and he met them steadily; some serious trials to bear, and he bore them firmly. His resolution was often tested, and seldom, if ever, failed to stand the test. He was a man whose principle sustained him when those who were quicker than he to begin were also quicker than he to end their efforts. His modesty never paralyzed, never weakened him.

With all his reserve, he was full of ardor. His temper was hot, and it was one of the great successes of his life to bring it [109] under control. He was warm-hearted, fervent in his affections, enthusiastic in cherishing the friends and pursuing the paths he preferred. He struggled, when he had to struggle, with zeal and fire, until he came off conqueror, either by achieving triumph, or by accepting failure in a spirit that turned failure into triumph.

His bravery was as perfect as any human quality can be. It was partly physical, the result of unusual bodily powers, developed in boxing, fencing, rowing, and gymnastic exercises. But it was chiefly moral, the growth of noble characteristics,— determination, earnestness, and magnanimity. The nearest companion of his boyhood says that he never struck a hasty blow, but would treat with scorn the provocations he received from such as he knew to be unable to stand up before him. The high courage of the boy ripened into the yet higher courage of the man. No one was ever readier to confess and to repair a wrong, if he had committed any; no one ever gave a fuller measure of honor to those whom he thought honorable, or of sympathy to those whom he considered as meriting it at his hands. Courage and high-mindedness met and mingled in him.

He was also remarkable for his integrity. Not only unwilling, but one may say unable to do a dishonorable action, he turned from anything like corruption or knavery, whether great or small, open or hidden, with sickness of the soul. He could not bear even the conventional irregularities of every-day affairs. Better, he thought, be unsuccessful in business, with a sense of unstained honor, than be successful at the slightest risk of dishonor. ‘There are not,’ he once wrote, ‘many trials of character, good and bad, which in my varied life I have not seen. It has been only from experience, gained, I fancy, very much later in life than is usual, that I have appreciated the fact that men are far less restrained by considerations of conscience than I supposed. . . . . I find, in all money transactions, that the great mass do not even pretend to honesty, or what is real honesty.’ Whether he was right or wrong in this opinion, he was resolved to be honest, and really honest himself, and his resolution was unbroken from first to last. [110]

His integrity sprang from his truthfulness. He loved the truth, and the more he understood it, the better he loved it, the more unreservedly he gave himself to it. He shrank from what was false, not only in circumstances or persons of slight importance to him, but in such as were almost a part of his being. He wanted to get at the truth wherever it lay, in science, or commerce, or life, and it was often touching to see with what strong desire he labored to inform himself, wherever he was in doubt, rather than be ignorant, consciously, of that which was alone true.

Such are the mere outlines of his character. If they have been sketched with any distinctness, they show a man who would be among the first to spring to the defence of his country the moment it was assailed. No self-distrust would deter him, while his decision, his fervor, his courage, his integrity, and his truthfulness would all urge him on. Whatever his previous career, whatever his actual position, such a man as this was marked out for instant and for persevering service to the Union. Fort Sumter fired on, he went at once to Washington.

He was at that time thirty-five years old, having been born March 20, 1826. His birthplace was Boston; his parents were Andrew and Sophia Harrison Ritchie, his mother being the daughter of Harrison Gray Otis. His education was conducted by various teachers until 1839, when he went abroad with his brother under the charge of Mr. T. G. Bradford, with whom he spent between two and three years in France and Germany, acquiring the languages of those countries and carrying on his preparation for Harvard College, which he entered in 1842. After taking his degree in 1846, he began his commercial career in the counting-house of the late Samuel Austin, Jr., and there remained till 1849, when he sailed for Calcutta. His business there being transacted, he crossed to Bombay, and thence took the overland route, returning home through Europe in 1850. He continued in the East India trade at Boston till 1857, and afterwards engaged in the grain commission business at New York, from which he retired some time before the outbreak of the war. [111]

He married, in 1857, Cornelia, the eldest daughter of the late General Wadsworth, of Geneseo, and was residing with his father-in-law when the cannon at Charleston called them both to the field. Ritchie left a wife and two young sons behind him when he entered the service.

It was some weeks before he obtained a position as Volunteer Aid on General Blenker's staff, and was engaged in active duty. Just before the battle of Bull Run, he was transferred to the staff of General Miles, whose warm commendation he received for the part he bore in the trying scenes that followed. He did not yield to the panic which overcame many of his comrades, but remained at his post with the rear-guard, and on the sad morning after the rout joined with General Wadsworth in caring for the wounded and directing the stragglers at Fairfax Court-House, which he and his father-in-law were among the last, if not themselves the last, to leave before the entrance of the enemy. Circumstances for which he was entirely irresponsible deprived him of the military appointment he had held, and he returned to Geneseo.

But it was only to labor ‘night and day,’ as he is described to have done, in recruiting for the Wadsworth Guards, the Geneseo or Hundred and Fourth New York Volunteers, of whom he was to have been Lieutenant-Colonel. Before the regiment was organized, however, in December, 1861, he received a summons to join the expedition then on the eve of departure, under the command of General Burnside; and, always eager for active service, he hastened to Fortress Monroe. A grievous disappointment befell him there, for, instead of the position to which he had looked forward, the post of Commissary of Subsistence proved to be awaiting him. Strong as the impulse must have been to decline the appointment and return to the Geneseo regiment, he decided, as generously as became him, that his duty was to go on with the expedition, and he began his work as Commissary, with the rank of Captain, on General Reno's staff. He was soon in battle, commanding a gunboat at Roanoke Island, and braving, at Reno's side, the hottest of the fire at Newbern. A little later, he was in action [112] at Camden, and wrote with deep feeling of the dead and wounded that were left upon the field at night when our troops were ordered to retire. But his duties were chiefly at Newbern and Beaufort, N. C., where he was stationed as Commissary for several months, occupied, as he jestingly said, in the grocery business of those posts. It was a hard, a very hard service for him, and one that fretted his spirit so much as to demand all the determination of which he was capable, to hold him fast. He persevered until ill health compelled him to go home in the summer of 1862.

As soon as he regained his strength, he obtained a commission as Captain in the First Massachusetts Cavalry, to qualify himself for duty on the staff of General Augur in the expedition under General Banks to the Mississippi. Fatigue and exposure, with the added effects of the climate, brought on during that winter another illness, far more serious than the attack of the preceding summer. His physicians attempted to dissuade him from continuing in the service, but his self-devotion was stronger than their counsels, and he resumed his staff duties at New Orleans, then at Baton Rouge. A letter from this place, one of the very few of his letters which are now within reach, speaks of the experiment about to be tried in the opening campaign. ‘For my part,’ he writes, ‘I consider the success or failure of the negro troops the great problem of the day. We have now some thousands of blacks officered by whites. They resist the climate, keep their regiments one thousand strong, while white regiments get reduced to three or four hundred. They do all the drill, etc. Query, Will they fight? If they will, then Master South is beaten with his own weapons. It cannot be long before some ten thousand of these men will be led under fire. What momentous results centre in that event! If, as some predict, they fly like sheep, we are far from conquest, and from holding our conquests. If they stand, then, unless want of military genius is an incurable trait of our government, the South, from that day, is whipped. . . . . It will be poetic justice, should the cause of all our evils, Slavery, be turned to avenge our wrongs.’ [113]

Port Hudson was the last scene of his service in the field. He took as prominent a part as one in his position could take, in the siege of that stronghold. Always untiring, always undaunted, always ready to expose and to exhaust himself, he here won largely upon the esteem of his commander and his comrades. One exploit illustrates the judgment as well as the gallantry which rendered him an efficient officer. He had been sent to station a regiment in support of a battery, and returned to report that the Colonel had lost his presence of mind, while the men were falling so fast that the regiment might break at any moment. The general told him to take any troops he could find, and carry them to the threatened position; and off he rode, bringing up two fresh regiments just as the one he had distrusted broke and fled.

One day, after carrying a despatch over a peculiarly difficult part of the field, he was in the act of reporting to his commanding officer, when he fell by a sun-stroke, and lay insensible for nearly twenty-four hours. This time the surgeons carried the day against him, and he was sent to Baton Rouge, then to New Orleans, and then by sea to New York, where he arrived in the summer of 1863,—‘almost a skeleton,’ as he was described, in the body, but in the spirit rounded and matured, as those who saw him that summer, and observed the development which he had reached through duty and suffering, can now take sad comfort in remembering.

Slowly rising from weakness and disease, but not restored to the health he had lost forever, he rejoined General Augur in the autumn, at Washington. There he remained through the following winter, at one time much harassed by the settlement of his accounts as Commissary, some items of which, for want of the necessary formalities, were questioned by the ‘executioners,’ as he playfully called them, ‘who sit upon our official papers.’ The needed vouchers were soon obtained, chiefly through the ready assistance of Dr. J. B. Upham, of Boston, who had been in charge of the Beaufort Hospital, for which, and for the hospital at Newbern, the Commissary had incurred the expenses considered unaccounted for at Washington. But [114] it was a keen trial to one of such integrity, when even the shadow of a doubt fell upon his accounts, and, however swiftly the shadow was lifted, the sense of unmerited questioning must have remained.

A month or two later he felt that he ought to leave the army. ‘It seems to me,’ he wrote, ‘one year more, and unless victory forsakes our flag, the South, as a great force in the field, will be no more. . . . . I begin to think it time to put my worldly affairs in order, and to let younger and single men take their turn.’ He resigned his commission in the spring of 1864. His last sight of battle-fields was in the terrible Wilderness, where he went to recover the body of his father-inlaw, after the death of that lamented general. It was a tragical close to the three years service of the father and the son.

‘I never had any adventures in the army,’ Ritchie was wont to say, when asked about his campaigns. If he had not, there were few who had a soldier's story to tell, and to tell with honorable satisfaction. But his modesty was strong to the last; and he ended his military career, as he began and pursued it, in self-retiring nobleness.

A few months passed, and the disease contracted in the service, and never expelled, returned with fresh violence. Week after week he lay suffering and emaciated, and no care of physician or kindred, no change of air or treatment, no remedy, no devotion, availed to prolong the life which was ripened for its close on earth. As death drew nigh, he was again in the field, his fellow-soldiers around him, the shell piercing the air, the horse pawing the ground. And so his battles ceased; his sufferings were over, and he entered into rest at Geneseo, November 7, 1864, in the thirty-ninth year of his age.

‘I can lay my hand on my heart,’ he said when he left the army, in a confidence which it is no wrong to violate now, ‘and say that I have not done a thing you would be sorry to know.’ One who knew him all his life, and knew him heart to heart, says he was ‘as true a Christian gentleman as ever breathed.’ Be this assurance the wreath we hang most gladly and most tenderly above his grave.

Sever and Francis, 1866.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

Montgomery Harrison Ritchie of Boston was a descendant of Federalist Party leader Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848).

Montgomery Ritchie fought in North Carolina in 1862 in the American Civil War under General Ambrose E. Burnside. In 1864, he entered a battlefield to retrieve his father-in-law, General James Samuel Wadsworth, who was mortally wounded in the head in the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. Ritchie brought Wadsworth's body to Geneseo for burial. Not long afterwards, Ritchie himself died of an illness contracted in battle and was buried in Geneseo.

He served in the Civil War.

Additional sources

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