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H.R. Rathbone
(1837 - 1911)
Home State: New York
Education: Union College (AM 1857); Albany School of Law
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Antietam
In 1860 he was a 23 year old lawyer living in his wealthy adoptive father Ira Harris's home in Albany, NY. Harris was elected to the US Senate in February 1861 (succeeding William Seward, the Secretary of State) and Henry was appointed Captain, 12th United States Infantry on 14 May 1861.
On the Campaign
He commanded Company C, and was acting field officer (Major) of the Battalion at Antietam in September 1862.
The rest of the War
After Fredericksburg, in December 1862, he was assigned to staff jobs in Washington, DC into March 1864. He was then aide to General Burnside and was at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg to August 1864. He was afterward with the Provost Marshal General's office in Washington, DC. He was appointed Major and Assistant Adjutant General of Volunteers on 13 March 1865 and was with the Lincolns in their box at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC on 14 April when John Wilkes Booth shot the President; Rathbone was also hurt in the attack.
He was honored by brevets to Major, Lieutenant Colonel, and Colonel for his war service.
After the War
He resigned from the Volunteers in July 1867 and continued in the Regular Army. He was promoted to Major in the 5th US Infantry on 22 February 1869 and was discharged at his own request on 31 December 1870, then in Washington, DC.
He was in declining physical and mental health, likely from the trauma of the President's assassination, and took his family to Germany in 1882. The next year, on Christmas Day, he killed his wife and failed to kill himself, and spent the rest of his life in an asylum in Hildesheim, Germany.
References & notes
His service from Heitman1 and Henry.2 His role at Antietam from Captain Blunt's after-action report. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860 and 1870. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a c. 1865 photograph among Mathew Brady Photographs of Civil War-Era Personalities and Scenes at the US National Archives and Records Administration.
He married his step-sister Clara Hamilton Harris (1834-1883) in 1867 and they had 3 children.
More on the Web
See much more about Rathbone in a post over on the blog.
Birth
07/01/1837; Albany, NY
Death
08/15/1911; Hanover, GERMANY; burial in Stadtfriedhof Engesohde, Hanover, Germany
1 Heitman, Francis Bernard, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, 2 volumes, Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1903, Vol. 1, pg. 816 [AotW citation 28823]
2 Henry, Guy Vernor, Military Record of Civilian Appointments in the United States Army, 2 Volumes, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1873, Vol. 1, pg. 424 [AotW citation 28824]