Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Hurlbut, Stephen Augustus

HURLBUT, Stephen Augustus, soldier, b. in Charleston, S. C, 29 Nov., 1815 ; d. in Lima, Peru, 27 March, 1882. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1837, and practised in Charleston until the Florida war, in which he served as adjutant in a South Carolina regiment. In 1845 he went to Illinois and practised his profession in Belvidere. He was a presidential elector on the Whig ticket in 1848, was a member of the legislature in 1859, 1861, and 1867, and presidential elector at large on the Republican ticket in 1868. At the beginning of the civil war he was appointed a brigadier- general of volunteers, and commanded at Fort Donelson after its capture in February, 1862. When Gen. Grant's army moved up Tennessee river, Hurlbut commanded the 4th division, and was the first to reach Pittsburg Landing, which he held for a week alone. He was promoted major- general for meritorious conduct at the battle of Shiloh, was then stationed at Memphis, and after the battle of Corinth, in October, 1862, pursued and engaged the defeated Confederates. He com- manded at Memphis in September, 1863, led a corps under Sherman in the expedition to Meridian in February, 1864, and succeeded Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks in command of the Department of the Gulf, serving there from 1864 till 1865, when he was honorably mustered out. He was minister resi- dent to the United States of Colombia from 1869 till 1872, and then elected a representative to con- gress from Illinois as a Republican for two con- secutive terms, serving from 1873 till 1877. In 1881 he was appointed minister to Peru, which office he retained till his death. — His brother, William Henry, journalist, b. in Charleston, S. C., 3 July, 1827, was graduated at Harvard in 1847, at the divinity-school there in 1849, and then studied in Berlin, Rome, and Paris. After a few years in the Unitarian ministry, he entered Harvard law- school in 1852, in 1855 was a writer on " Putnam's Magazine " and the " Albion," and joined the staff of the New York " Times " in 1857. While visit- ing the south in 1861, he was arrested by a vigilance committee in Atlanta, Ga., imprisoned for a time, and then released, but he was refused a passport unless upon conditions with which he would not comply, and finally in August, 1862, made his escape through the Confederate lines, and reached Washington. He became connected with the New York " World " in 1862, and in 1864 purchased the •' Commercial Advertiser," intending to publish it as a free-trade paper, but, he and his associates in the enterprise failing to agree, the paper was sold in 1867 to Thurlow Weed. He went to Mex- ico in 1866, and was invited to the capital by Max- imilian, represented the New York "World" at the World's fair at Paris in 1867, and the Centenary festival of St. Peter at Rome, and in 1871 accom- panied the U. S. expedition to Santo Domingo, dur- ing which time he wrote and published the most complete account in any language of the modern history of that island. In 1876-'83 he was editor- in-chief of the " World," and in the latter year went to Europe, where he has since chiefly resided. He has contributed largely to American periodicals and to the " Edinburgh " and other British maga- zines, and has published " Gan-Eden " (Boston, 1854) : " General McClellan and the Conduct of the War " (New York, 1864), and other works, besides several hymns and poems.