39 Facts About Isaac Stevens

1.

Isaac Ingalls Stevens was an American military officer and politician who served as governor of the Territory of Washington from 1853 to 1857, and later as its delegate to the United States House of Representatives.

2.

Isaac Stevens was killed at the Battle of Chantilly, while at the head of his men and carrying the fallen colors of one of his regiments against Confederate positions.

3.

Isaac Stevens was posthumously advanced to the rank of Major General.

4.

Isaac Stevens was a controversial and polarizing figure as governor of the Washington Territory, where he was both praised and condemned.

5.

Isaac Stevens was described by one historian as the subject of more reflection and study than almost the rest of the territory's 19th-century history combined.

6.

Isaac Stevens was the father of Hazard Stevens, the hero of the Battle of Suffolk and one of the first men to summit Mount Rainier.

7.

Isaac Stevens was born in North Andover, Massachusetts to Isaac Stevens and Hannah Stevens, a descendant of early Puritan settlers from a gentry family that had produced several distinguished members of the clergy and military.

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8.

Isaac Stevens was a cousin of brothers Moses Tyler Stevens and Charles Abbot Stevens.

9.

Isaac Stevens resented his father, described by historian Kent Richards as a "stern taskmaster", whose unrelenting demands on his son pushed the young man to his breaking point.

10.

Isaac Stevens graduated from the male prep school Phillips Academy in 1833 and was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point.

11.

Isaac Stevens graduated in 1839 at the top of his class.

12.

Isaac Stevens was again cited and breveted for gallantry at the Battle of Chapultepec, this time to the rank of major.

13.

Isaac Stevens participated in combat at Molino del Rey, and the Battle for Mexico City, where he was severely wounded.

14.

Isaac Stevens later wrote a book on his adventures, Campaigns of the Rio Grande and Mexico, with Notices of the Recent Work of Major Ripley.

15.

Isaac Stevens superintended fortifications on the New England coast from 1841 until 1849.

16.

Isaac Stevens was given command of the coast survey office in Washington, DC, serving in that role until March 1853.

17.

Isaac Stevens was rewarded by President Pierce on March 17,1853 by being named governor of the newly created Washington Territory.

18.

Isaac Stevens chose to add one more duty as he traveled west to the territory he would govern: the government was calling for a surveyor to map an appropriate railroad route across the northern United States, hoping that a transcontinental railroad would open up Asian markets.

19.

Isaac Stevens did not hesitate to use his troops for vengeance, and waged a brutal winter campaign against the Yakama tribe, led by Chief Kamiakin.

20.

Any opposition eventually died down, as most white settlers in Washington Territory felt that Isaac Stevens was on "their side", while they considered Meeker to be too sympathetic to Native Americans.

21.

Isaac Stevens is often charged with responsibility for the later conflicts in eastern Washington and Idaho, especially the war fought by the United States against Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, These events were decades in the future when Isaac Stevens left Washington State for good in 1857.

22.

In January 1856, Governor Isaac Stevens declared to the territorial House of Representatives in Olympia that "war shall be prosecuted until the last hostile Indian is exterminated", although there is uncertainty among historians about whether this was a call for genocide or instead for war crimes against certain "hostile Indians".

23.

Governor Isaac Stevens declared martial law in Pierce County in order to conduct a military trial of those settlers.

24.

Isaac Stevens was forced to repeal the declaration and fight subsequent calls for his removal.

25.

Isaac Stevens determined that the white population should be concentrated at specific strongly protected points.

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26.

Once completed, Isaac Stevens ordered the settler population to leave their claims and take temporary residence in these safer areas.

27.

Once Isaac Stevens proclaimed martial law, he raised a new and more significant issue.

28.

On May 11,1856, attorneys George Gibbs and H A Goldsborough sent a letter to the Secretary of State denying that the war situation throughout the territory, and especially in Pierce County, was as grave as Governor Stevens had declared at the time of proclaiming martial law.

29.

Isaac Stevens assumed his powers from his control of local volunteer troops, which had been organized to meet the necessities of the situation.

30.

On May 24,1856, following a legal opinion rendered by Judge Chenoweth, ruling that Isaac Stevens had no legal power to declare martial law, Governor Isaac Stevens rescinded his proclamation in Pierce and Thurston counties.

31.

Isaac Stevens led the Second Brigade of the Expeditionary Forces sent to attack the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina.

32.

Isaac Stevens was transferred with his IX Corps division to Virginia to serve under Major General John Pope in the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run.

33.

Isaac Stevens was buried in Newport, Rhode Island at Island Cemetery.

34.

Isaac Stevens survived and eventually became a general in the US Army and an author.

35.

When Isaac Stevens saw that yet another soldier who was carrying the regimental flag had been shot, he raced from his position in the rear, through the panicked body of his men, to wrench the flag from the wounded man's grasp.

36.

Isaac Stevens led his men over the abandoned Confederate ramparts, pursuing the retreating Confederate forces into the forest.

37.

Isaac Stevens was buried in Island Cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island.

38.

Ezra Meeker, a historian, settler, and contemporary opponent of Isaac Stevens, described him as one who would "take no counsel, nor brook opposition to his will".

39.

In Washington, Isaac Stevens County is named in his honor, as is Lake Isaac Stevens.