George B. Fitzgerald: Narrative
George B. Fitzgerald began life with every advantage, except perhaps too much pressure to succeed. By the time his life ended, he was a prisoner of war, dying in misery. After death he became a symbol of undeserved mistreatment and injustice. The facts weren't so simple, however.
He was born in 1828 and grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of Edward Fitzgerald Sr., a wealthy and respected life-long Navy purser, who had served in the War of 1812 and sailed with Admiral Perry. Though originally from Pennsylvania, Edward Sr. took well to the role of Virginia gentleman. His wife Mary was a native of Virginia, and the family kept a few slaves, though Edward lost one in a court case celebrated by Massachusetts abolitionists.
George's two older brothers followed their father into military careers, one in the army, one in the navy. George came of age just in time to receive a commission as a second lieutenant for the Mexican War, but his older brother Edward outshone him. By the end of the war, Edward was breveted a major for his service at Chapultepec, was hobnobbing with future presidents at the Aztec Club in Mexico City, and received a sword presented at a ceremony in their hometown.
Though George fought at Chapultepec as well, he managed none of that, gaining the rank of first lieutenant just before being mustered out at the close of the war. He followed his brother to San Diego, where Edward helped him get hired by the army as a civilian quarter master agent, and they stayed in the same barracks. Edward had grown wealthy by investing in western land, his property in Texas and San Diego worth $5,000, but George was still penniless.
In 1851, when the threat of Indian attacks arose, George tried again to follow in his family's military successes. Organizing a band of forty citizens into the "Fitzgerald Volunteers," he successfully captured two renegades, had them hung, then attended the trial of the outlaw Garra, who was tried and executed by a firing squad drawn from his ranks. Peace returned to San Diego, and the credit was mostly his. It would be the height of his personal military achievement.
Tragedy struck in 1855, when a devastating yellow fever epidemic hit George's hometown of Norfolk. The family still living there fled to Baltimore, too late. Of all his siblings and parents, only he, his brother Edward in California, his brother William in the Navy, and his married older sister survived. All his younger siblings and his parents died.
So far, George had apparently done well in life, even if he hadn't met with the success of his father and eldest brother. Now, things began to change. While his brother stayed in California fighting Indians, George returned to Norfolk and married Virginia Bowden, the daughter of a local banker who'd worked tirelessly for the relief of yellow fever victims. Still poor despite a small inheritance from his father, they moved to the Petersburg area, and in 1860 were living with her now-widowed mother and another couple.
When Edward made out his will in 1859 just before he died, he knew that George was becoming a drunkard and irresponsible with money. Edward split his property among his surviving siblings, but skipped George and instead conveyed his share to George's wife, to try to keep George from squandering it.
When the Civil War broke out, the only surviving family members were George, his older brother William, now a lieutenant in the Navy, and his older sister, now the wife of a successful Norfolk businessman.
William resigned and accepted a commission as lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. Wanting to do his duty also, George enlisted as a private in an infantry regiment forming locally in Petersburg, 2nd Co. G, 41st Virginia, the Ragland Guard. He was sent to his old hometown of Norfolk to drill, but less than four months later, before he could see any action, he received the ultimate humiliation. Once a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, once a self-proclaimed Major of the Fitzgerald Volunteers, he couldn't even succeed as a private. He was discharged for being a "chronic alcoholic" in the fall of 1861.
His life story now gets hazy. Many theories could be produced to explain the contradictory records, but in this narrative, I'll give one possibility that explains the known facts, as bizarre as it may seem. The raw facts are presented in the chronology linked below, but in this narrative, I'll take the liberty of presenting a guess.
Humiliated with his failure in the Confederate Army, George tried to join the Union Army when it occupied Norfolk in the winter of 1862-63, but his alcoholism and mental problems were too obvious, and he was rejected. He spent the spring and early summer of 1863 descending into madness, either from alcoholism alone, the stress of losing his family, other mental health problems, or some combination.
His brother William had died in the CS Navy in the summer of 1862, leaving only his older sister alive, so George was the last remaining male in a family that had been proud of long and meritorious military service. He was desperate to attain some military honor. If he couldn't succeed as a success, he could succeed as a failure. He realized that if he could be captured and take the oath, he could return home in the proud but humble situation of a Confederate officer ready and willing to serve his country, but unable to, due to the terms of his parole.
Somewhere in Virginia, in August of 1863, he carried out his plan. When prisoners were being gathered after the confusion of a battle, he stepped among the group, wearing some semblance of a Confederate uniform, and when names and regiments were requested, he stated that he was a first lieutenant, his old Regular Army rank, in the First Virginia Cavalry, which sounded similar to where his brother had achieved success, in the First U.S. Dragoons. With no other members of the First Virginia Cavalry present to challenge him, why should anyone doubt? He was taken to Fort McHenry Sept. 9, 1863.
In early December, he requested to take the oath, trying to follow his plan, but giving a story closer to reality than fiction. He said he'd joined the Confederate service in 1861, left it (implying the departure was voluntary), and took the oath in Norfolk. Where was his record of taking the oath? Well, he didn't have it. And here he was, captured in the Confederate army after supposedly taking the oath. It made no sense. His request was denied.
His fate was now in the hands of his captors, but he would attain a form of military prominence that he'd never expected.
In June of 1864, he was transferred from Ft. McHenry to Ft. Delaware. In August, he became one of 600 prisoners put on the steamer Crescent to be transferred toward South Carolina--a group that would gain fame as the "Immortal 600."
In the confines of the steamboat, perhaps without access to the opium he'd been begging from the doctors at Ft. Delaware, he broke down. Along with 40 physically sick and injured men, he was evacuated to a military hospital in Beaufort, SC, for "disease of the mind." He couldn't give a coherent answer to what Confederate regiment he'd been captured from, but he was begging once more to take the oath.
His confused stories about already haven taken the oath and having been in the U.S. Army made the officers mistrust him, and again his request was denied. He was sent from the hospital to rejoin his fellow prisoners, now at Fort Pulaski, on Oct. 25, 1864.
His belongings and blankets had been stolen on the way to the hospital, and his mental and physical health were at their lowest. He claimed now sometimes to be a captain with the Fifteenth Virginia Cavalry, Co. E., at other times to be a first lieutenant with the Twelfth Virginia Cavalry, Co. A, to have been captured at the unknown location of "Turin, Virginia," or at Gettysburg. One fellow-prisoner thought he was in the navy, perhaps because he rambled on about his father and brother.
Union Army officials could only write down what he himself told them about his Confederate service. Some of his claims wound up consolidated with Confederate regiments' legitimate records, but no independent record of his Confederate service existed prior to his capture, except for the few humiliating months in the 41st Virginia, because he'd served in no other regiment.
However, some prisoners figured out his ruse, didn't call him by any rank, and believed him "to be simply a citizen or at most a private"--which was exactly what he'd been since 1861, despite his insistence otherwise.
Amidst the lies and confusion about his Confederate service, he told only slightly exaggerated stories of his early life and service in the Mexican War, emphasizing his brother's and father's connections as much as his own achievements, though he did claim to be a West Point graduate, something no one in the family had accomplished.
At Fort Pulaski, "he was a confirmed opium eater; a poor, miserable wreck--ragged, filthy, lousy, loathed by all, and pitied by many, who reported sick that they might get opium for him. He has had no blanket, no socks, hardly clothes to cover him; none of us could supply him, and he slept alone, covering himself with an old piece of tent fly."
He'd been exaggerating the symptoms of chronic diarrhea to get the usual treatment, opium, so when he actually fell ill with pneumonia, the prison doctors ignored him. Finally, at the urging of some of his fellow prisoners who realized his life really was in danger, he was admitted to the prison hospital November 11, 1864, and was found dead in his hospital bed two days later.
In death, he received more respect than in life. In the obligatory period of eulogy, some of the good stories began to surface, and word spread about his past. One prisoner wrote in his diary, "Once he had all the comforts wealth could give him. A graduate of West Point; a lieutenant in the old army; mingling with the Lees, McClellands and Grants;… beloved by many who admired him for his learning and accomplishments."
Most prisoners, though, cared less about George's life than they did about their own injustices received at the hands of the Union army, when they were held under fire at Morris Island and given starvation rations at Pulaski. George's fall from southern gentleman to pitiful opium addict was a dramatic symbol, and they used him as an example, unaware or uncaring that his fall had begun long before he entered prison.
Captain Henry Dickenson wrote in his diary, published post-war, "Might not a coroner's jury say that he died from neglect? Poor man!"
J. Ogden Murray, also writing post-war about the retaliation suffered by the Immortal 600, wrote, "We had one or two opium eaters in our party, made so by the medicine furnished by order of General Foster." He called Fitzgerald, one of "these grand men, made beasts by the cruelty of the United States government."
In the end, George B. Fitzgerald was remembered as a Confederate officer and a gentleman, suffering nobly at the hands of the Federal Government, not responsible for his own downfall--a legacy he could only have dreamed of achieving in the fall of 1861, when the Confederacy rejected his service even as a private.
