GAMBIER — The Civil War tore the United States apart. Many families and friends were split on ideological lines, some supporting the North, others the South.
But there was one family that went down in legend for their unusual level of commitment and unanimity in the conflict: “The Fighting McCooks” contributed a total of 15 fighters to the war, four of whom died.
While their family name is still remembered, it is less known that two of those McCooks were Kenyon College students, and one of them was among the war’s battle victims.
The McCooks were a large family centered in eastern Ohio, in and around Carrollton, the seat of Carroll County, southeast of Canton. Two brothers, Daniel and John McCook, settled there in 1826.
Both raised large families destined to tangle with the nation’s crisis of inner turmoil as officers, soldiers, and surgeons.
Major Daniel McCook Sr. was the patriarch of what became known as the “tribe of Dan.” The “tribe of John” was led by Dr. John James McCook, Daniel’s younger brother. Eight of Dan’s sons saw action in the war, while five of John’s were in it. Dan had already lost a previous son, John James, who died at sea in the Navy, before the war.
The McCook family had connections to the prominent attorney Edwin Stanton, an alumnus of Kenyon College in Gambier. Daniel even named one of his sons after Stanton. Stanton, of course, went on to a massive role in U.S. history, serving as the Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln.
It may be because of Stanton’s influence that two of Daniel McCook’s sons, Charles and John James II (named after the older brother who had died years earlier in the Navy), ended up attending Kenyon Grammar School, then the gateway into the college.
Kenyon was a hotbed of radical Republicans in the 1860s, and it was quick to support the Union war effort, with college president Lorin Andrews notably being the first person to volunteer for service in the entire state. Charles Morris McCook, 17, was soon to graduate from Kenyon Grammar School when President Lincoln made the call to raise an army in response to the rebel attack on Fort Sumter in April of 1861.
Though guaranteed a space in Kenyon College that fall, Charles was eager to get involved in the war effort, especially after his 63-year-old father volunteered to serve as a nurse in the Army.
Charles’ mother, Martha McCook, was afraid to have all of her sons join the Army, and she tried to discourage Charles, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Martha finally wrought a compromise: she would give her blessing for Charles to join if, and only if, his 16-year old brother John James would stay in school at Kenyon and not try to join the Army. Charles agreed, and John was left behind, seething, at Kenyon.
Charles was offered the opportunity to take the track to become an officer, but he declined and enrolled as soon as he could as a private. Thus, Charles found himself on the battlefield at the first major clash of the war, the First Battle of Bull Run. It turns out a number of McCooks were on the field that day, with father Daniel having rode down from Washington D.C., where he was then serving as a probate judge, and brother Alexander commanding troops as a colonel.
The father had come down in the company of some congressmen, all planning to watch the battle as a spectacle. They came down in a carriage, packing their lunches. They expected the battle to be won and the war over by suppertime.
The day began well for the North, with a charge pushing back the Southern line. Daniel McCook and friends cheered as word came back to them from the front lines of the initial success of the Northern charge. Private Charles McCook received word of his father’s presence, and went and had lunch with him. Everything seemed to be going according to plan for a swift, easy Union triumph.
But Confederate Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson wasn’t interested in signing on to that narrative. While other Southern troops were falling apart under attack and retreating, Jackson displayed unflinching nerves of steel, and it inspired his soldiers to stubbornly hold their position.
One of the commanders whose troops had already been routed was Confederate General Barnard Bee. He rode among his scattered troops and pointed with his sword at Jackson, shouting, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!”
The troops reformed their line and began repulsing the Union charge, even as General Bee was fatally shot off his horse. The legend of Stonewall Jackson was born, and the tide of battle turned.
The battle suddenly sprawled in new directions. Colonel Alexander McCook found himself in the midst of the action before any command had come to his brigade. He hadn’t even put on his uniform yet. That may have helped him out, because his fellow commanders in the gaudy uniforms the North favored in the early part of the war were easy targets, and were falling right and left. Alexander fought in his shirtsleeves and pantaloons, and survived.
As the casualties mounted, nearby houses and people were pressed into service as field hospitals. As wounded were brought back from the line, Daniel McCook suddenly found himself working as an ad hoc nurse, tending to the sick and dying. His son Charles took off running across the field to rejoin his unit, which was suddenly under attack. The front line of the battle had come to them.
A troop of Southern cavalry suddenly broke through and came charging into the field Charles McCook was running across as his father watched. The hosemen spotted Charles and gave chase. They called on the young soldier to surrender.
Charles stopped, turned, and drew his pistol. Aiming at the lead cavalryman, he calmly said, “I will never surrender to a traitor,” and shot the man off his horse. The officer fell dead. The other cavalrymen were enraged and began circling Private McCook.
This was all happening within sight of the impromptu field hospital. The boy’s father bellowed at him to surrender as the horsemen surrounded him.
“I can never surrender to a rebel, Father,” Charles said.
One of the Confederates shot the young man in the back, then began striking him with the flat of his sword. Still he refused to surrender. When he finally fell, Daniel was able to reach him and get the rebels to fall back and let him tend to his son’s wounds.
He brought him back to his carriage and they rode off to find a surgeon in the Army hospital in nearby Fairfax, but it was too late. Private Charles Morris McCook died from his wounds the following day. In mourning and now personally involved, Daniel McCook Sr. joined the war effort as part of the Ohio Home Guard, protecting the state from Confederate General John Morgan’s raiding activities.
Charles’ younger brother, John James II, felt all the more called on to replace his fallen brother, but still his mother would not yield. In 1862, John was suspended at Kenyon, according to legend, for running away and attempting to join the Army. In the summer of 1862, another McCook brother, General Robert McCook, died in battle, and John made it clear that if his mother refused permission any longer, he would again run away and enlist.
He pointed out that even if that didn’t work, she couldn’t stop him anyway once he turned 18 in a few months. She finally yielded.
John served as an aide-de-camp to his brother, Daniel Jr., with the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. It was here that John made his most famous move of the war. When their regiment found some abandoned artillery that the Confederates had disabled, John asked his brother for permission to bring them along.
“What on earth for? They don’t work!” Daniel Jr. said.
“They’d make great moral support,” John said.
For the next several battles, the regiment set up the disabled guns, convincing the rebels they had extra firepower, deterring attacks on their part of the line.
Such ingenuity helped John McCook move up through the ranks to captain. Though later wounded, he survived the war and returned to Kenyon to finish his degree, later serving as one of the trustees of the college and serving prominently in the world of business. He declined a position in the administration of President William McKinley and was a good friend of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Unfortunately, the two Dans did not survive the Civil War. Major Daniel McCook Sr. was shot down in the Battle of Buffington Island on the Ohio River in 1863. General Daniel McCook Jr. died in Georgia during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864.
The home where Daniel and Martha McCook raised the “tribe of Dan” has been restored in Carrollton as a museum. It should reopen in the future, once the current pandemic situation has ebbed.
