rise and fall of "Boss" Hogg: 2nd New York Heavy Artillery, The

Military Images, Mar/Apr 2000 by Thaler, Michael

George Hogg of the 2nd New York Heavy Artillery managed to pack a prodigious amount of mischief into his four year military career. On the one hand, Hogg, commissioned captain and later brevetted colonel, was cited for gallantry at Hatcher's Run during the Petersburg Campaign in 1864. Two courts martial, however, reveal a cantankerous side, complete with charges of a lengthy drunken spree, mutiny, and reports of tirades against everyone from his fellow officers to members of Congress.

Hogg was born August 21, 1823, in the Scottish highland town of Macduff, County Banff. He immigrated to the United States in 1858 and settled in New York City, near what today is the fashionable TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. He worked as a watchmaker and jeweler.

In July 1861, Hogg "felt impelled to buckle on my sword and leaving wife and children and business, join the Army of the Union, and battle in the sacred causes of liberty, the maintenance of the Union and the integrity of our flag," as recounted in an 1864 letter to Secretary of State William Seward in which he requests United States citizenship.

On August 1, 1861, Hogg joined the regiment at New York City. He became captain of Company C on September 25; probably at about this time he posed for this tintype. The regiment, one of the large and cumbersome units charged with guarding the nation's capital, was recruited mostly from the New York City area but also contained a sizable upstate contingent. The regiment left New York 1,800 strong in early November for the defenses of Washington. After playing a cameo role in August 1862 during the second battle of Bull Run, the unit did garrison duty at Forts Woodbury and Corcoran, across the Potomac from Georgetown. The forts were part of a chain of seventy defensive works encircling the capital.

Before shouldering muskets and taking to the field later in the war, heavy artillery regiments enjoyed relatively safe and easy duty ensconced in their imposing fortifications. Little wonder, then, that mischief was a welcome diversion for some of the bored men of these units.

Hogg apparently began making enemies early on among his comrades. In March 1862, a group of junior officers and NCOs formally complained that he was keeping a sergeant as an unpaid, unauthorized servant. They also charged that in the presence of a group of fellow officers, he said that he wished the regiment's lieutenant colonel "was tied up by his hands and flogged with a cat o' nine tails." Hogg apparently was not prosecuted on these charges.

In a rambling twenty page complaint made in July, Company C's Pvt. Michael Keating -- a newspaper reporter who had emigrated from Ireland -- charged that Hogg refused to stop men of his company from operating a food smuggling ring that was stealing regimental stores and selling them on the black market outside the fort. Keating also alleged that Hogg set himself up as a private bank, taking charge of the enlisted men's pay.

Though attested to by thirteen witnesses, nothing came of these charges. Keating himself later was court martialed for twice deserting the regiment, the second time joining a Union unit from Virginia to collect a $25 bounty.

By spring 1863, Hogg, now senior captain, seemed to have run out of luck. For reasons not explained in his service records, Hogg was dismissed from the army on May 20, only to be restored to command a month later.

On July 4, at Fort Woodbury, Hogg allegedly obstructed the duties of the officer of the day, preventing the lieutenant from arresting a boisterous sergeant--the same man Hogg had used as a servant. Hogg advised the sergeant to resist arrest; in the ensuing confrontation, Hogg waved a pistol at the officer, shouting, "You are drunk and not fit to put a dog in arrest!"

Charged with conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline, disobedience of orders, and inciting mutiny, Hogg appeared before a court martial on July 14th.

In his testimony, Hogg conceded the charges were "Grave and serious enough, if true, to Dismiss the best and greatest General that ever the sun shone on, much less a poor volunteer captain such as I am." Hogg argued that the lieutenant was not wearing the proper trappings of the officer of the day. He also maintained that he did not know whether the major in charge of the fort was at his post, thus giving himself the benefit of the doubt by declaring himself acting commander.

Hogg insisted the accusation that he threatened the lieutenant with a pistol was "a heavy charge in a large shell, with a fuse cut too short, so that the explosion took place before it left the piece; to the great damage of the unskilled Artillerist who imagined he was about to do a 'big thing.'

"Gentlemen," he implored, "place yourself in my position and what would your idea have been of such an act?" Hogg was found not guilty of brandishing the pistol, but two-thirds of the officers trying him found him guilty of the other charges. There were enough mitigating factors in his case, though, to prompt some of the officers at the court martial to draft an appeal in mid-August "for merciful consideration, on account of his previous good character as an officer." Hogg's actions technically may have incited mutiny, they wrote, but "we do not believe that he was intentionally, or morally, guilty of so heinous an offense against discipline." Nonetheless, by general order Hogg was dishonorably dismissed from the army shortly before Christmas.