Robert Hall Chilton, CSA... A Traitor...

5fish

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Here is a link implying that General Chilton may have been a traitor to the cause or really just incompetent... He implies Chilton treachery in the infamous order Special Order 191...

Here is his wiki bio...


Here is the special case of Chilton... click on each link to follow the story...

The Lost Order Mystery Synopsis
The Strange Case of Robert Hall Chilton
A Short Biography of Robert Hall Chilton
Chilton's Suspicious Gaffes
The Text of Special Orders 191
The Lost Order Mystery Home Page

snip...


The Case Against Robert Hall Chilton

When I read the accounts of the circumstances surrounding the "Lost Dispatch" I became puzzled as to why no one had seriously investigated Robert Hall Chilton, Lee's Adjutant General who signed the Special Orders 191. I had just finished reading Douglas Southall Freeman's, Lee's Lieutenants, where I remembered Chilton's role being flawed to say the least. Returning to that work, I traced every index reference to Chilton.

Chilton appears in three major scenes. In every one, his role provided room for suspicion. Here is what I found that established, for me, Chilton as the prime suspect for a historical betrayal.




 

5fish

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He has a park in Dodge City named after him?


snip...

In the War Between the States, he was a General for the “other” side. Yet there is a park in Dodge City named for him

snip... the article states he and Lee were friends...

Serving as Chief of Staff for his friend General Robert E. Lee during much of the War, Chilton attained the rank of Brigadier General in 1861 and Major General in 1864.


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It is his negotiations with the Plains Indians in the 1850′s, his endeavors on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, and his service on the western frontier that earned him the honor of having Chilton Park in Dodge City named for him in 1931. In the Park stands a signboard telling his story. The other side of the sign pays tribute to Thomas Fitzpatrick (1799-1854).
 

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Here more about his time on the Santa Fe trail...


snip...

He was very active in guarding the Santa Fe Trail and was the officer in charge with Indian Agent Thomas Fitzpatrick at the Fort Atkinson Treaty of 1853, with the Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache Indians.

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Major Chilton is honored with a monument for the years he spent protecting the trails in Chilton Park in Dodge City, Kansas, which was dedicated May 28, 1931. This quote is from the program for the dedication of that monument: “Beacon Hill, the property east of the monument in Chilton Park, from whose eminence water flows northward to the Pawnee, was an old Indian signal point and videttes (mounted sentinels) from Chilton’s camp stood there on quard.
 

diane

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Here is a link implying that General Chilton may have been a traitor to the cause or really just incompetent... He implies Chilton treachery in the infamous order Special Order 191...

Here is his wiki bio...


Here is the special case of Chilton... click on each link to follow the story...

The Lost Order Mystery Synopsis
The Strange Case of Robert Hall Chilton
A Short Biography of Robert Hall Chilton
Chilton's Suspicious Gaffes
The Text of Special Orders 191
The Lost Order Mystery Home Page

snip...


The Case Against Robert Hall Chilton

When I read the accounts of the circumstances surrounding the "Lost Dispatch" I became puzzled as to why no one had seriously investigated Robert Hall Chilton, Lee's Adjutant General who signed the Special Orders 191. I had just finished reading Douglas Southall Freeman's, Lee's Lieutenants, where I remembered Chilton's role being flawed to say the least. Returning to that work, I traced every index reference to Chilton.

Chilton appears in three major scenes. In every one, his role provided room for suspicion. Here is what I found that established, for me, Chilton as the prime suspect for a historical betrayal.




I don't know that it's been shown for a certain fact who wrote the Lost Order. The members of Lee's staff at that time were solid, but the one who made the loudest noise was Charles Marshall. He was in charge of drafting all of Lee's dispatches. The problem may have occurred without any treason by anybody - Jackson wrote out a copy himself for D H Hill because he was not sure Hill had gotten a set. After the war, when accusations were flying about, Hill was able to produce his copy from his desk drawer. Longstreet chewed his up and swallowed it - sure wasn't him! Jackson burned his up in the presence of his staff.

McClellan appears to have thought it a trick - his actions (or inactions) seem to support that. He knew Lee very well and knew this type of carelessness was uncharacteristic of that general. Wrapped up in some nice cigars would indeed seem too good to be true! But then...sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
 

5fish

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I don't know that it's been shown for a certain fact who wrote the Lost Order
Here is an answer .... Suspicious... traitor he is...

The Lost Order Mystery Home Page

The story of Special Orders 191 became of particular interest to me when I discovered that the characters involved its writing, discovery, and verification (Robert Chilton, Alpheus Williams and Samuel Pittman) all knew each other in Detroit (my home city) in the 1850's.
That such a crucial piece of information, upon which the fate of the United States hung, should coincidentally happen to fall into the hands of friends who could immediately and positively identify the signature of its writer struck me as both highly unlikely and suspicious.
These suspicions led me to first examine the many references to the incident, which in turn caused me to more closely examine the signer of the order, Robert Hall Chilton, by looking up all references to him in Freeman's monumental study of Southern Command, Lee's Lieutenants.
What I found was not complimentary. In fact, every instance where he makes an appearance, his actions have negative results for the South thus deepening my suspicions.
 

5fish

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Here is this too... :

There it was determined to be a bona fide document by Capt. Samuel Pittman, Williams' adjutant, on the basis of his ability to verify the signature of the order's signer, Col. Robert Hall Chilton, AAG to Lee. Chilton, it turned out, had been stationed in the prewar Army at Detroit, home of both Pittman and Williams, and had known Pittman, and probably Williams. The circumstances of this relationship is cited variously as that of a friend, military colleague, and simply as knowing each other. The most interesting assertion is that Pittman has been a teller at a bank where Chilton had kept an account and therefore knew the signature.2
 

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Special order 191... NPS


snip... traitorous behavior...

Special Orders 191 and Harpers Ferry
On September 9, after meeting with Major General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Lee ordered Robert Hall Chilton, his assistant adjutant general, to write and distribute his orders regarding the army's movements over the next several days. That document is Special Orders 191. Another member of Lee's staff, Walter Taylor, wrote in his memoirs that he was not present to "supervise the promulgation" of the orders, suggesting that he was normally responsible for the administrative duties attendant upon the issuance of orders, i.e., making copies, overseeing delivery and verifying receipt of orders. This may explain some of the confusion surrounding the delivery and absence of a paper trail that would normally follow the issuance of orders.[iv]

The orders specified the planned movements of Lee's army for the following three days (September 10-12), splitting Lee's army, and explaining each assignment.

  • Major General Jackson, with three divisions, was to lead the advance through Middletown, Maryland, on to Sharpsburg, Maryland, and across the Potomac. There he was to take control of the B&O Railroad, capture the Federal garrison at Martinsburg, Virginia, then move toward Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
  • Major General Lafayette McLaws, with two divisions, was to take Maryland Heights, a promontory which dominates Harpers Ferry from the north, and attempt to capture the garrison.
  • Brigadier General John G. Walker, with another division, was to take possession of Loudoun Heights, south of Harpers Ferry, then assist McLaws and Jackson in capturing the garrison.
  • Major General James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart, Lee's cavalry commander, was to detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws. The main body of the cavalry was to cover the rear of the army, bring up stragglers and watch for the advancing enemy.
  • Major General Daniel Harvey Hill, with his division, was to be the rear guard of the army.
  • Major General James Longstreet, with the remainder of the army and the supply and baggage trains, was to march west to Boonsboro, Maryland, across South Mountain. Lee would move with Longstreet.
  • Jackson, McLaws and Walker, after obtaining the surrenders of the two Federal garrisons, were to rejoin the main body of the army, which would be in either Boonsboro or Hagerstown, Maryland.[v]
Chilton initially made seven copies of the orders for Jackson, Longstreet, Walker, Stuart, McLaws, Taylor, and a file copy for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. When the copies of Orders 191 were initially written, D.H. Hill fell under the command of Jackson. As such, he received a copy directly from Jackson. Special Orders 191, however, defined Hill's new role as an independent commander and Chilton took it upon himself to pencil Hill a copy as well. The confusion surrounding the loss of the orders began when Chilton sent the additional copy. Hill was sent orders from Jackson, which he kept, and from Chilton, which he said he never received. That copy is the "Lost Orders."[vi]

snip... Tracheary abounds...

George W. Welch, Company F, remembered camping in an old meadow that had been occupied the daybefore by D.H. Hill. A few other soldiers noted that they were in Hill's former camp; however, an assumption could have been made that since Hill's name was on the orders, it must have been his camp. Bloss,who was wounded at Antietam, wrote a letter from a field hospital 13 days after Orders 191 was found. Bloss' letter and description is the earliest primary source at present to the time of the event, making it the most reliable information yet. In this unpublished letter, Bloss gives a few details about the finding of the orders. He said that the orders were found in a wheat field, under a locust tree, with two cigars.[xi]

Once discovered, Orders 191 was sent up the 27th Indiana's chain of command to Captain Peter Kop, Colonel Silas Colgrove, then to General Alpheus Starkey Williams, commander of the XII Corps. In an interesting twist of fate, Williams' acting Adjutant General Samuel E. Pittman authenticated the orders by identifying Chilton's signature. Prior to the war Pittman had been a teller at Michigan State Bank in Detroit at the same time Chilton was paymaster for the army. As paymaster, Chilton kept an account at the bank and Pittman was familiar with his signature from checks and account records.
[xii]
 

5fish

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Here is lee's staff..


Contrary to some writings, Lee did not fill his personal staff with friends and family, as many other generals did. Lee knew only two of these six men before the war. He was a good friend of Chilton and his wife, and spent a lot of his time in Texas with them; they later named their first child after him. While Thomas M. R. Talcott had never served in the antebellum army, his father, Andrew Talcott, had been Lee’s first commanding officer as a young engineer in the 6 1830s and had been a very close friend of the future Confederate general. Taylor explicitly recorded that he never met Lee until May 1861 after Lee took command of Virginia’s state forces, while Long stated that he did not meet Lee until he and future general William Wing Loring stood in Lee’s Richmond office in 1861 to report for their assignment; Loring was sent to Western Virginia, with Long as his chief of artillery. There is no evidence that Lee knew Marshall or Venable before they were assigned to him. Although Chilton was appointed Lee’s chief of staff when he assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee did not specifically ask for his friend, only for a “chief of staff.” At least twice during the war, Lee denied his sons a place on his staff; when his eldest son, George W. C. Lee, expressed his desire to join his father’s “military family,” Lee refused, citing his son’s lack of field experience and the importance of his current position on the staff of President Jefferson Davis. Lee also refused his wife’s request that he take his youngest son, Robert E. Lee, Jr. onto his staff.12 Of these six men, only three served on Lee’s staff for the duration. By the end of April 1864, Chilton, Long, and Talcott had left for other assignments, leaving only Taylor, Marshall, and Venable. Although Lee used other officers like Henry McClellan and Giles B. Cooke temporarily on his staff, this diminished group remained the core until Appomattox. This tiny size of Lee’s staff has been another source of controversy, as Freeman and others have argued convincingly that the staff was simply too small. Conceding this point, however, does not require admission that the remaining staff officers themselves were incompetent.

snip...

When they mentioned Lee’s staff at all, later scholars largely followed Freeman’s lead, dismissing it as utterly inept or emphasizing its small size and lack of antebellum professional military training or experience. Many of them inferred that the staff was terrible when Lee took command, and that it remained as poor in 1865 as it had been in June 1862. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones wrote of Lee’s staff in scathing terms, arguing that “In part they failed because they had an inadequate chief…Colonel R. H. Chilton, a comrade of Lee’s Texas days in the old army, but a misfit in his present position, served as Lee’s chief of staff.”21 Hattaway and Jones thus advanced Freeman’s criticism of the staff even farther. Freeman never claimed that Lee’s staff officers did not “appreciate” the nature of their jobs; he had only stated that they had not been adequately trained. Furthermore, Hattaway and Jones flatly accused Lee’s personal staff of deserting their posts, while Freeman had made no such contention. Finally, while these writers agreed with Freeman that Chilton was not suited to his responsibilities, they led readers to believe that all of Lee’s personal staff officers were similarly inept
staff.
 

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Here he know Chilton not getting it done...

In a letter to his eldest son, George Washington Custis, he expounded on this problem at length:

I have two officers of the old service as my aids now, but may have to part with them as soon as I can do better for them. I suppose it is vain to expect to keep an instructed officer, there is such demand for their services with troops. I have wished to get one of our young relatives with me if I could find one who can be of service….Who can you recommend to me? I have had numerous applications for the post of aid from citizens, but do not want a revenue around me who seek nominal duty or an excuse to get off of real service elsewhere. I have a great deal of work to do & want men able & willing to do it. 10
 

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Here we go... saved Jeff Davis...

Lee did not select Robert Hall Chilton as his chief of staff. Chilton had spent most of the war’s first year working in the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Department in Richmond, and joined Lee when he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Chilton had graduated from West Point near the bottom of the Class of 1837, and had seen extensive service during the Mexican-American War. In fact, his initial appointment to serve under Adjutant General Samuel Cooper may have stemmed from that earlier conflict, when he had dragged a severely wounded Colonel Jefferson Davis out of the Mexican line of fire at the Battle of Buena Vista, thus saving the future Confederate president’s life. After the Mexican-American War, Chilton became a U. S. Army paymaster, serving the troops scattered across Texas. While he was headquartered at San Antonio, he either formed or renewed a friendship with Robert E. Lee, who was assigned to duty in Texas. Lee repeatedly wrote to his wife in Arlington referring to Chilton and his wife, who apparently hosted him several times during his tenure as lieutenant colonel of the Second United States Cavalry. Lee became very close to the Chiltons during this time and Robert Chilton even named his first son, Robert Lee, after him. In 1861, Chilton thus possessed seemingly ideal qualifications for becoming the new Confederate Army’s chief of staff. He had both West Point training and Mexican-American War battlefield experience. He was a close friend of the future commanding general of the Army of 25 Northern Virginia, and well-connected to President Jefferson Davis and Adjutant General Cooper. He even possessed very rare antebellum experience in a staff capacity, having dealt with logistical and personnel matters as an army paymaster on the frontier. Nevertheless, Chilton became the only unqualified failure on General Robert E. Lee’s staff, and his lack of success helped to taint the reputations of Lee’s other five personal staff members. 15
 

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Taylor...

Taylor also understood the functions of his fellow staff officers and complained to his sweetheart about their faults, using criteria remarkably similar to the prevailing staff theory of his time. Although Taylor complained that Marshall and Venable did not assist him with the army’s paperwork as much as he wanted, he admitted that this was not their responsibility.55 Taylor was much less forgiving of Robert Hall Chilton’s failures as chief of staff. Although it was Chilton’s responsibility to manage the staff and function as Lee’s chief representative according to Jominian theory, Taylor repeatedly emphasized that Chilton actually did very little work. When Lee was absent, Taylor wrote that Chilton did not give him “one single suggestion” about how to manage the Army of Northern Virginia, but would “allow me to continue the performance of my present duties and look on complacently.” Although Chilton may have understood his responsibilities, he failed to act on them, while Taylor both recognized the importance of his job and performed it well. 56
 

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Well, 5fish, it seems to me you have shown ample evidence that Chilton was not the brightest bulb in Lee's lamp but not much that he was a traitor!
 

5fish

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I trying to point out Chilton was disgruntled and turned on Lee...
a cigar is just a cigar.
Have you ever wonder why the order were wrapped with cigars... I know it was a clue from the traitor to those he wanted to get these stolen orders too... think about it...

snip...

In Maryland, Lee depended on his staff as never before, and with the exception of Chilton, they did not disappoint.

snip...

Although Lee still referred to Chilton as his chief of staff, the latter’s proven unreliability led him to issue most orders through his other staff members. Instead of using Taylor, Lee relied on Mason to issue most of his routine orders during the Maryland Campaign, perhaps because Mason still held the title of assistant adjutantgeneral he inherited from serving on Joseph E. Johnston’s staff.16 As Lee’s military secretary, Long was now responsible for taking even more of the general’s dictation than before, and Taylor, Marshall, Venable, and Talcott all had to assist him. Even Chilton was pressed into taking dictation, a job he deeply resented.17


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Additionally, Lee’s chief of staff had demonstrated that he could not be relied on to exercise personal initiative and the general had been steadily decreasing his responsibilities

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In a recorded conversation, Lee strongly disagreed, claiming that Hill “takes an entirely different view from mine” and adding that “General Hill’s view of the matter was not correct in 97 certain particulars.”31 Lee directly defended his personal staff, insisting that he was sure it sent Hill a copy of the order and that his staffers could not have lost it, because the couriers who carried written orders from his staff officers to the generals were required to obtain receipts to prove they had safely delivered them.32 By insisting that the order sent to Hill had been thus accounted for, Lee was defending his personal staff’s war record; if the dispatch was not properly delivered, they should have detected the error and investigated immediately.

snip...

Although other historians have examined the “Lost Dispatch” from seemingly every angle, a few additional conclusions can be reached regarding the performance of Lee’s personal staff and the distribution of orders. First, it should be remembered that Lee’s staff was already overworked from having to write every single order, dispatch, and letter for the commanding general because of his injury. They were therefore not available to personally deliver any copies 99 of Special Orders No. 191, even to the highest- ranking of Lee’s subordinates, and had to rely on couriers. Secondly, by this point, most of the army’s orders of this type were distributed through Taylor, who was not present, leaving the often-negligent Chilton to circulate the order. 40 Finally, Lee’s staffers cannot be held responsible for either deliberate espionage or simple carelessness by any member of D. H. Hill’s staff. Under the circumstances, Lee’s overburdened staffers followed established procedure, accepting the signed receipts as proof that the order had been safely promulgated, and that was all they could have reasonably been expected to do.

snip...

Chilton had again 113 proven himself a weak link, possibly in distributing Special Orders No. 191 and definitely in many of his subsequent instructions
 
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