The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-07-24
COL. LOCKWOOD CLOSES A NOTABLE
CAREER OF ACTIVE SERVICE IN ARMY
RetlreS With Rank of Brigadier
General and a Splendid, Un-
furnished Record.
Fought in a Hundred Battles
Against Rebels, SpanlardS,
Indians and FiIipinoS.
BY RUTHERFORD coRBIN.

BY RUTHERFORD CORBlN.
Colonel Benjamin c. Lockwood, who
viii retire from the army with the rank
of brigadier general upon the conclu-
sion Of the service of his regiment at
Fort Douglas the last day of this
month, is a type of the working,
brave and chivalrous gentleman who
has made the United States army ia
nous over the world, and at the same
time utterly failed to attract to him
self portion of what his actions and
merits have deserved. 1 would not
wish to be assigned a harder task than
TO get such a man as Colonel Lock-
wood to tell in even reasonably de-
scriptive terms the story of his life. He
IS modest to the point of depriving his
narrative of all personal color, and the
facts which follow are for the most
part CLEANED from his admirers and
weli-wishers in the service.
Colonel Lockwood is the last of fifty
reGimental commanders of infantry
who served in the civil war in the
last ten years. He is the last of the
active line who fought with Grant and
Sherman and Thomas. When he closes
his career he will have served his
country longer than any other officer
now in the service, military or naval,
with the exception Of Admiral George
Dewey, whom congress has exempted
from the compulsory age retirement
and who is eight years older than Col
Onel Lockwood.
A Record of Service.
The Iatter's service has lasted al
most forty-five years. During that
time he has bravely and wisely met
every military issue that has confront
ed him. He has been in half a hun
dred pitched engagements, from Shiloh
TO FL Caney, and from the Tongue
river, in Montana, to Mari1aO, in the
valley of Luzon, in three of which he
was recommended for a brevet rank.
He saw Grant in the day of his great
est trial upon the white horse behind
The impending route from Pittsburg
Landing, and again in the hour of his
greatest triumph, at the surrender of
Pemberton, before the red mud en-
bankments of Vicksburg. He has fol-
lowed George Crooks red whiskers into
the heart of the Cheyenne melee; has
treated with Terry and marched with
Miles. He took the surrender of Vara
Del Rey the Lion of Santiago, for his
greatest chief, Henry Ward LawtOn,
and side by side with Bell and Funston
turned the flank of Aguinaldo's great
est general beyond CaloOean. In about
a half century he has fought against
Forrest and Albert Sydney Johnston,
BraXtOn Bragg and Sterling Price;
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: ToraI
and Gregorio Del Pillar; from the re-
cruiting camp near Louisville through
twelve campaigns and four wars to
Fort Douglas in Utah his record has
been blameless.
The True Army Type.
Colonel Lockwood is the type of the
old army that has become the new. He
would want no higher recommendation
for himself than to be known as the
type of the United States soldier. While
others were striving for themselves,
he has been working for the whole,
and the result is that after service in
which he had no situation to meet
that he did not meet with not only
credit but honor, he retires next
month with just the same rank as he
would have retired with had his con-
duct been mediocre and his life an
avoidance of his duties. He was a dis
tinguished officer when Wood and
Roosevelt were in the kindergarten,
had ten years service before Aims
worth entered a medical school and a
record that extends back of and be-
yOnd that of almost any Of the general
officers in the army today. The an
swer: the man without a pull. faith
ful up to the jaws of death, who eats
his heart out while his comrades march
by and retires into private life after
q service for which Napoleon would
have made d field marshal or Grant the
leader of an army corps. Tonight
feel that General Bell was right wheI
he said that something was wrong
with the army.
Casts I of With Norfh
Colonel Lockwood was born in Ken.
lucky in February, 1874. and before h'
was IS years old enlisted in the UnioI
army. 1t was not an easy thing to de
eide in those days in Kentucky, anC
ike every one else in the state Colone
Lockwood had relatives on both sides
From then on until the close of the
war however he fought as bravely a!
did all of those from The Dark an(
Bloody Ground" which ever side they
elected TO serve. The Sixth Kentucky
had a record which made them famou:
even among the many regiments which
distinguished themselves from tn,
blue grass country The list of theil
battles from the first on into which
they went Il thousand strong and, L
the last. from which they emerged {
mutilated fragment in itself. tells the
story of the great crucial drama of the
civil war. Inc winning OF the western
plain country through which the Mis-
sissippi. the Tennessee, the Cumber-
land the three blocked rivers of the
confederacy cut like knives TO threaten
the life of the republic. At Shiloh, il
the west and Cumberland Gap, in the
east Of the worlds greatest battle
ground, the Sixth Kentucky was in the
front rank. At Charleston, Chickesav
Gap and Arkansas post, and finally a
VicksbuTg. they participated in the
close of the great struggle for the
western rivers. At the latter figh
young Lockwood won his greatest lau-
rels as a private soldier, and a year
later, after participating in a dOzer
more battles, was advanced to the
grade of second lieutenant of the Sixth
Kentucky volunteers
Commissioned by Grant.
After the war he was among those whC
concluded to cast their lot with the regu
lar establishment. and on the eth OF
March. 1861 he received from Genera
Grant who was then acting secretary OF
war. his first regular army commission
that of a second lieutenant in the Thirty
first United States infantry. From thai
no