Alanson Merwin Randol

Alanson Randol was born in Newburgh, New York, on October 23, 1837. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in July 1855 and graduated in 1860, ranked 9th out of 41 in his class.[1]

In November 1860, Randol entered the 4th U.S. Artillery as a 2nd Lieutenant at Benicia Arsenal in California.[2]

Captain Alanson Randol, 1863. (Note 1st Artillery patch on cap)

When the Civil War broke out, Lieutenant Randol requested a combat post and was transferred to the 1st U.S. Artillery, promoted to 1st Lieutenant in May 1861.[1][3]

From August to December 1861, Randol was posted to the Department of the Missouri in command of a battery of the 1st Missouri Light Artillery.[2]

In January 1862, Randol was posted to the artillery defenses of Washington, D.C.[2]

In March 1862, Randol was transferred to command of Battery E, 1st U.S. Artillery (armed with six 12-pounder Napoleon smoothbore cannons) in reserve of the Army of the Potomac as General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign commenced.[4]

Battery E was engaged throughout the Siege of Yorktown, the Seven Days Battles, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and the Maryland Campaign.[1]

At the Battle of Glendale in June 1862, Battery E was overrun and its guns captured. After intense volleys of canister shot exacted a visibly heavy toll on approaching Confederate infantry, nearby men of the supporting 4th Pennsylvania Reserve advanced to the front of the guns to drive them back: they were unsuccessful and routed directly into the path of the cannons, closely pursued by charging Confederates who swarmed Randol's guns. Despite a desperate effort to recapture and remove them, with 38 of his horses killed, Randol was unable to recover his six 12-pounder Napoleons.[4] He described the action in his official report:

Early in the engagement I had cautioned both officers and men of my supports that if they charged in front of the battery and were obliged to fall back, they should at once unmask my fire by returning by the flanks of the battery. They rushed boldly to the charge, confident of an easy victory, but being met by a fresh regiment... they fired once, were seized by unaccountable panic and fled, threw away their arms, and rushed directly for the battery. I in vain endeavored to make them unmask my fire. On they came, the foe close behind them, till when within 30 yards I gave the command to fire; but it was too late. They rushed through the battery, followed by nearly 50 of the enemy... When the enemy entered the battery they drove the cannoneers (who had up to this time kept up the fire) from their posts at the point of the bayonet, and took Lieutenant Hill, who was badly wounded, a prisoner. It was impossible to stop all our frightened, flying supports, but I rallied a few companies, and with them charged the battery and retook it, one of their officers recapturing Lieutenant Hill; but we could not hold our advantage. The enemy were within 50 yards, charging again, and I was obliged to leave the field.[5]

Randol was made a brevet captain on June 30, 1862 for "gallant and meritorious service" at New Market, Virginia (Battle of Glendale).[2]

On October 11, 1862, Randol was promoted to captain, and was in December made the Chief of Artillery of the 3rd Division, V Corps (under Brigadier General Andrew Humphreys) in command of combined Batteries E & G, 1st U.S. Artillery (Randol's Battery).[1][3][4]

Captain Randol's Batteries E & G were engaged at Fredericksburg (specifically, the assault of Marye's Heights) and Chancellorsville.

Battery officers in the eastern theater, 1863. Captain Alanson Randol, commander, 1st U.S. Artillery, Batteries E & G, third from left.

At the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign, Batteries E & G (now reorganized as units of the highly-mobile Second Brigade, U.S. Horse Artillery, rearmed with four 3-inch Ordnance rifles) were part of Brigadier General David M. Gregg's mission to locate Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces which had disappeared from Fredericksburg.

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Randol's batteries engaged Confederate cavalry trying to flank the Union right. Here he was breveted to the rank of major for bravery and "gallant and meritorious service".[1][2]

In August 1863, Major Randol commanded the 1st Regular Brigade of the Artillery Reserve, Army of the Potomac, then transferred to command of Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery at the outset of the Mine Run Campaign.

In 1864, Randol commanded Batteries H & I, 1st U.S. Artillery during the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg.

2nd New York Cavalry

In August 1864, Randol returned to New York and served for three months as an assistant professor of Artillery Tactics and Mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point.[2] In December, he accepted a promotion to lieutenant colonel as commander of the 2nd New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, and in March 1865 that unit joined the Appomattox Campaign in the 1st Brigade, Third Division of the General Philip Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah.[2]

Randol was breveted to colonel for "gallant and meritorious service" on March 13, 1865 following the Battle of Five Forks.[1][2]

At the Battle of Appomattox Station, the 2nd New York was preparing to make one final charge against a fortified Confederate position, an action which Randol himself described as suicidal, when the enemy raised the white flag of surrender.[6]

A carte-de-visite of Alanson Randol, produced by photographer Mathew Brady, bearing the inscription "Yours truly A.M. Randol Col. 2nd NY Cavly" and "Feb 1865 Winchester, VA". Owned by Elizabeth Custer, wife of George Armstrong Custer, Randol's cavalry division commander during the Appomattox Campaign of 1865

Colonel Randol was present at Appomattox Court House when Robert E. Lee met Ulysses S. Grant to discuss the terms of Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865:

After we had halted, we were informed that preliminaries were being arranged for the surrender of Lee’s whole army. At this news, cheer after cheer rent the air for a few moments, when soon all became as quiet as if nothing unusual had occurred. I rode forward between the lines with Custer and Pennington, and met several old friends among the rebels, who came out to see us. Among them, I remember [Colonel John W. "Gimlet" Lea – Johnston's Brigade], of Virginia, and [Colonel Robert V. Cowan – 33rd North Carolina], of North Carolina. I saw General Cadmus Wilcox just across the creek, walking to and fro with his eyes on the ground, just as was his wont when he was instructor at West Point. I called to him, but he paid no attention, except to glance at me in a hostile manner. While we were thus discussing the probable terms of the surrender, General Lee, in full uniform, accompanied by one of his staff, and General Babcock, of General Grant’s staff, rode from the Court House towards our lines. As he passed us, we all raised our caps in salute, which he gracefully returned.[6]

It was here, as well, that Randol encountered another famous participant of the Civil War:

After the surrender, I rode over to the Court House with Colonel Pennington and others and visited the house in which the surrender had taken place, in search of some memento of the occasion. We found that everything had been appropriated before our arrival. Mr. Wilmer McLean, in whose house the surrender took place, informed us that on his farm at Manassas the first battle of Bull Run was fought. I asked him to write his name in my diary, for which, much to his surprise. I gave him a dollar. Others did the same, and I was told that he thus received quite a golden harvest. [6]

Captain Alanson Randol in Boston, Massachusetts, ca. 1879.

In June 1865, Randol ended his Civil War service as a Brevet Brigadier General before returning to Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery and resuming his permanent rank of captain.[1][7]

After the Civil War ended, the United States Army mustered out most of its temporary wartime units and the regular units resumed their pre-war operations. The 1st U.S. Artillery was posted to various East Coast installations in the following years.[8]

Captain Randol remained in the 1st U.S. Artillery and served in numerous locations nationwide in the years following the Civil War:

Posted at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas from 1865 to 1869; Fort Trumbull, Connecticut from 1869 to 1870; Fort Delaware, Delaware in 1870; Fort Wood, New York from 1870 to 1872; Fort Hamilton, New York in 1872; in Charleston, South Carolina 1872 to 1873; Fort Barrancas, Florida 1873 to 1875; Fort Independence, Massachusetts 1875 to 1879; and Fort Warren, Massachusetts 1879 to 1881.[2]

Randol was commander of Battery K, 1st U.S. Artillery in 1872,[9][10] until transferred to Battery L on July 25, 1873.[11]

During the election of 1874 and again in 1876, following a contentious presidential election, the 1st U.S. Artillery was sent to the Southern States to maintain order after concerns of public violence.[8][3] Randol's battery was detached to New Orleans, Louisiana during the election of 1874, and to Florida and South Carolina in 1876.[2]

In July 1877, Randol's Battery L was deployed with a battalion of Federal troops under Major John Hamilton, 1st U.S. Artillery,[12] to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. While in transit to the city by rail near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the train carrying the battalion was pelted with rocks thrown by rioters and derailed when struck by a freight car full of bricks rolled from a siding into the train as it passed. The soldiers established a perimeter around the wrecked train and held off the rock-throwing rioters until a second train of reinforcements arrived.[13]

In November 1881, Randol was transferred with Battery L, 1st U.S. Artillery to the West Coast of the United States posted at the Presidio (Fort Winfield Scott) in San Francisco, California. He served for a month as Aide-de-Camp to Major General Irvin McDowell, Commander of the Department of California, until he was promoted to major, 3rd U.S. Artillery in April 1882.[2]

In May 1882, Major Randol returned to the 1st U.S. Artillery, posted at the Presidio until October 1883; he was commanding officer of Fort Winfield Scott until December 1884, Fort Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay until October 1886, and Fort Canby at the mouth of the Columbia River in November 1886.[2]

Randol wrote an essay describing his experience commanding the 2nd New York Cavalry Regiment under Custer during the Battle of Appomattox Station, as well as its role in forcing the subsequent surrender of Lee's Confederate forces at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, published while he was posted in San Francisco in 1886.[14]

In 1886, Randol's health declined, attributed to Bright's disease.[3] This was possibly a result of his history of exposure to yellow fever while serving in the Southern United States during the Civil War and while posted in Texas and Florida post-war.[1][2][15] On November 22, 1886, he went on sick leave from Fort Canby to the warmer climate of San Francisco; he died of his illness on May 7, 1887 in New Almaden, California.[3][2]

Randol's funeral took place at the Presidio on May 9, 1887:

All the troops at the Presidio were in the funeral procession, together with Major General Howard and staff. The body of the dead officer was borne on a caisson drawn by six horses, followed by the deceased's horse carrying his rider's saddle and boots, the latter reversed in the stirrups . . . the dead officer was interred in the Military Cemetery, and three volleys were fired over his grave.[16]

Randol was married to Elizabeth B. Guion on January 23, 1869 at Brownsville, Texas.[17]

At the time of his death, Randol was survived by four children, including (later-Brigadier General) Marshall Guion Randol (1882–1965).[18][1][3] Two other children died in infancy.[19][15]

Randol's brother, James Butterworth Randol, was manager of the New Almaden Quicksilver Mine. Alanson Randol died at his brother's home in New Almaden, California.[3][20]

Randol was a member of the Military Order or the Loyal Legion of the United States, Companion of the First Class, Insignia No. 2535.[21][3]

An Endicott Era coast artillery battery at Fort Worden was named after Randol in 1904.[22]

• 1st U.S. Artillery

• Heitman, Francis B. Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, From its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903.
• Randol, Alanson Merwin. Last Days of the Rebellion: The Second New York Cavalry (Harris' Light) at Appomattox Station and Appomattox Court House, April 8 and 9, 1865. Alcatraz Island, CA: 1886.
• Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy. West Point, NY: West Point Alumni Foundation, Inc., 1970.
• US War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894.

• Works by Alanson Merwin Randol at Project Gutenberg
• American Memory: Selected Civil War Photographs. Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division. Washington, D.C.
• Generals and Brevets: Photographs of General Officers of the Civil War