HAUNTED

Rufus King’s place as the renowned Iron Brigade’s first commander is, unfortunately, often relegated to mere footnote mention. Rather, the Union brigadier general’s once-proud name and reputation were irrevocably scarred by other Civil War events, specifically several epileptic seizures he suffered while in action and accusations that he made an unauthorized withdrawal from the field after the Battle of Brawner Farm in August 1862 and was then drunk and incapacitated during the subsequent Second Battle of Bull Run. An 1833 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy whose grandfather signed the Constitution in 1787, King had enjoyed success before the war both in the Army and in private life. But he would be haunted by those allegations of wrongdoing for the remainder of his life. Recalled King’s son, Charles—a West Point graduate himself, brigadier general during the Philippine Insurrection of 1899-1902, and later the author of 60 books—his father “for long years…had to bear the stigma, and it ruined his health and broke his heart.” None of King’s antebellum acquaintances, including the likes of Robert E. Lee, William H. Seward, and Thurlow Weed, would have anticipated this fate for this esteemed descendant of a founding father.

Born on January 26, 1814, in New York City, Rufus King shared the name of his famed grandfather. He attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in New York, and entered West Point as a 15-year-old in July 1829, graduating fourth in his class four years later.

Commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U.S. Corps of Engineers, King served as an assistant to Captain Robert E. Lee and aided in the construction of Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Va. King greatly admired the Virginia officer, even after Lee chose to serve the Confederacy. “Father had a high opinion of General Lee,” Charles King remembered, “regarding him as the peer of any man in either army, whether from the viewpoint of a soldier or a gentleman, but deplored his taking up arms against the union of states.”

King demonstrated that reverence the winter of 1861-62 while stationed in Washington, D.C., near Lee’s estate at Arlington, Va. “My mother, who