page_title: List of brigadier generals in the United States Regular Army before February 2, 1901
section_title: Postwar
hierarchical_section_title: List of brigadier generals in the United States Regular Army before February 2, 1901 / History / Postwar
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Eugene Asa Carr (1830-1910), Union General.
context_page_description: This is a complete list of brigadier generals in the United States Regular Army before February 2, 1901. The grade of brigadier general is ordinarily the fourth-highest in the peacetime Army, ranking above colonel and below major general.
  The grade of brigadier general was the highest peacetime rank in the Regular Army during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the second-highest for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also rare: until 1901 there were fewer than twenty brigadier generals on active duty at any given time. Even during times of war, the number of Regular Army brigadier generals remained relatively constant, because rather than expand the permanent military establishment to meet transient wartime requirements, the Regular Army served as a cadre for a much larger temporary force of volunteers and conscripts. Many famous generals of the American Civil War held high rank only in the volunteer service, and reverted to much lower permanent grades in the Regular Army when the volunteers were disbanded after the war.
context_section_description: Promotions in the Regular Army ground almost to a halt in the years following the Civil War, largely due to the glut of Civil War heroes who were rewarded with senior grades at a relatively young age and then camped in those grades for decades; dramatic reductions in the size of the peacetime military establishment squeezed the promotion bottleneck even tighter. Congress cut the number of brigadier generals of the line to eight in 1869 and to six a year later; death, retirement, and murder eventually cleared the path for Lieutenant Colonel George Crook to become a brigadier general of the line in 1873, the only such promotion between 1869 and 1880. Promotions did not resume their normal flow until Congress instituted a mandatory retirement age of sixty-four in 1882.
  Famous field grade officers campaigned openly for every vacancy in the grade of brigadier general. The Civil War "boy generals" — Colonels Nelson A. Miles and Ranald S. Mackenzie and Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer — became particularly notorious for their ruthless maneuvers to regain their wartime ranks. Custer was killed in 1876 making his eponymous last stand at the Little Bighorn and Mackenzie was promoted to brigadier general in 1882 but pronounced hopelessly insane two years later and involuntarily retired, but Miles — promoted to brigadier general in 1880 when President Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to accelerate Army promotions by involuntarily retiring Brigadier General Edward O. C. Ord — ascended to command of the entire Army and retired as a lieutenant general.
  Political patronage weighed heavily in general officer appointments during this period. In January 1892 Secretary of War Stephen B. Elkins wanted to promote Colonel Eugene A. Carr to a vacant brigadier generalcy, but Elkins' influential predecessor, Vermont Senator Redfield Proctor, lobbied vigorously for Colonel Elwell S. Otis, while Commanding General of the Army John A. Schofield backed Colonel William P. Carlin, Senate Military Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph R. Hawley backed Colonel James W. Forsyth, and President pro tempore of the Senate Charles F. Manderson backed Colonel Frank Wheaton, who ultimately received the appointment in April. When the next vacancy opened in June, Elkins, Proctor, and Schofield agreed that Carr would be promoted but request to retire early so that Carlin could also be promoted and retired in time for Otis to be promoted before the end of President Benjamin Harrison's administration; since Carr had only two years until statutory retirement but Otis had more than a decade, this sequence would prevent the grade from falling vacant during the next four-year presidential term, thereby denying Harrison's successor an opportunity to reward a supporter. However, once promoted, Carr angrily repudiated this arrangement, claiming no one had told him he would have to retire early, so Harrison retired him involuntarily and nominated Otis for immediate promotion, skipping Carlin entirely. Carlin was promoted anyway when Otis agreed to defer his promotion at the behest of the next President, Grover Cleveland, who remembered Carlin fondly from a brief period of shared service early in the Civil War.
caption: Eugene A. Carr
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