Blaine Lamb - The Extraordinary Life of Charles Pomeroy Stone: Soldier, Surveyor, Pasha, Engineer

ON the morning of January 28, 1988, in the East Room of the White House, President Ronald Reagan welcomed thenEgyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his wife to the United States. The bulk of President Reagans public remarks centered around the ongoing quest for peace in the Middle East and the key role played by Egypt in the process. In his conclusion, however, he referenced an extraordinary former American military officer who served in that country over a century earlier. The president declared General Charles Pomeroy Stone to be a fitting symbol of our enduring relationship. He went on to mention that Stone later designed and constructed the base of the Statue of Liberty, and likened that solid base to the solid friendship between the two countries.

But just who was this fitting symbol, and what made his life extraordinary? Certainly Charles Pomeroy Stones early years did not mark him as extraordinarya comfortable middle-class upbringing, followed by an education at the United States Military Academy. He did well there, but did not finish at the top of his class. His early military career also differed little from the experiences of many of his fellow junior officers. He joined the Ordnance Department of the antebellum army, which promised steady employment, but slow advancement and little excitement. The Mexican War brought a short respite from the routine, and afterward he was handed substantial command responsibilities, although these alone did not make his life extraordinary. Nor did the personal and professional defeats and challenges he encounteredbefore, during, and after the Civil War. Rather it was his steadfastness and resilience in meeting and overcoming those challenges and defeats that lifted his life well above the ordinary.

Over the course of his sixty-two years, Stone developed into one of those archetypical extraordinary characters of the mid-nineteenth century: distinguished veteran of the war with Mexico, scapegoat of the Civil War, failed banker, controversial diplomat, pasha in the court of the khedive of Egypt, and engineer for the Statue of Liberty. Physical testaments to his engineering skill and ingenuity still stand in California and New York. Yet, outside of a single battle and its aftermath, his exploits are not nearly as familiar as those of other characters of the era, such as George Armstrong Custer and Charles Chinese Gordon. Perhaps had he died under a shower of Sioux and Cheyenne arrows or Mahdiist spears, instead of in a bed in Flushing, New York, he would not have drifted into postmortem obscurity.

As it stands, the Battle of Balls Bluff in October 1861 is the only episode in Stones extraordinary life that has received much more than a passing nod from historians. Russell Beatie discusses Stones activities in Washington, DC, during and after the secession crisis, as well as the Battle of Balls Bluff, in the first two volumes of his history of the Army of the Potomac, as does William Marvel in his revisionist history, Mr. Lincoln Goes to War. Both portray him as a competent general, faithful to the Union, who falls victim to his own trusting nature and political intrigue on the part of the War Department and the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. The politicians unjustly punish him for the defeat at Balls Bluff, question his loyalty, and destroy his reputation. Similar opinions of Stones misfortunes are offered by Byron Farwell, James A. Morgan III, and Kim Holien in their books on the battle, and by T. Harry Williams in his American Heritage article, Investigation, 1862. As a result, he has come down in history as the ultimate scapegoat, wrongly accused and incarcerated, a man whose life was pretty much a cipher both before Balls Bluff and after his release from prison.

When Stone appears elsewhere in historical texts, it is usually in a supporting role. In his biography of Mexican caudillo Ignacio Pesqueira, Sonoran Strongman, Professor Rodolfo Acuna describes Stoneduring his short but tumultuous time before the Civil Waras a surveyor and consul in northern Mexicoas a troublemaker and likely filibusterer. In later years, Stone served almost as long in the Egyptian military as he had in the American army. William B. Hesseltine and Hazel C. Wolf, in their book The Blue and the Gray on the Nile, relate a number of incidents from this period of his life, concentrating on his role as leader of the contingent of ex-Civil War officers who went to serve the Khedive of Egypt. A less flattering view is found in John P. Dunns more recent Khedive Ismails Army, in which he refers to Stone and his colleagues as often incompetent mercenaries, or neo-mamelukes. Several citations in Patrick Richard Carstenss Encyclopedia of Egypt During the Reign of the Mehemet Ali Dynasty deal with Stones service to Ismail and Tewfik, but more than occasional factual errors require the reader to verify the authors statements. Although Stone produced no published account of his time in Egypt, reminiscences by William Wing Loring, William McEntyre Dye, Charles Chaille-Long, James Morris Morgan, and others who served there under his command present both positive and negative opinions of the general. Chroniclers of the Statue of Liberty usually include brief mentions of Stones role on that project, although Elizabeth Mitchell in her Libertys Torch offers a more detailed, if not very complimentary, account of his work as the statues chief engineer.

One likely reason for the lack of a comprehensive look at the life of Charles Pomeroy Stone is that he left no substantial body of letters or journals, at least none which have so far come to light or found their way into research institutions. Evidence indicates that he was a prodigious correspondent who kept meticulous journals. When he was arrested in 1862, reports mention that his letters and diaries were gathered up and sealed pending a court-martial, which never materialized. Later his personal correspondence was returned to him, but what became of this is unknown. Similarly, his daughter recorded that the familys baggage upon departure from their home in Cairo included journals kept by Stone during his time in Egypt, but they, too, are missing. As a result, it has been necessary to piece together Stones story largely from the collections and accounts of the people who knew him, as well as from published sources such as The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, the Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, and his own publishedrecollections of events in Washington, DC, during the early months of 1861. Perhaps this introduction to Stones life and adventures will bring more sources to light.

Despite his relative obscurity, Stone has appeared as a character in twentieth-century popular fiction. The final episode of the 1961 historical drama television series