Theodore Winthrop

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Theodore Woolsey Winthrop (September 22, 1828 – June 10, 1861) was an American writer, lawyer, and world traveler. He is remembered as one of the first Union officers killed in the Civil War.

Winthrop was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and came from prominent Colonial families. He traced his ancestry to Governor John Winthrop and to theologian Jonathan Edwards. He finished Yale University in 1848, where his uncle was the president, and he belonged to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. After traveling for a year in Britain and Europe, he toured the United States and settled on Staten Island in the 1850s. He wrote essays and short sketches that gradually gained attention.

In 1861, Winthrop joined the newly formed 7th Regiment of the New York State Militia to answer President Lincoln’s call for troops. He wrote a popular essay about his experience, titled “Our March to Washington.” He quickly rose to the rank of Major and became an aide-de-camp to Major General Benjamin Butler, who led the Department of Virginia at Fort Monroe. Winthrop was an abolitionist, and Butler credited him with helping shape the policy that allowed freed slaves who reached Union lines to gain freedom.

At the Battle of Big Bethel on June 10, 1861, Winthrop volunteered to help on General Ebenezer W. Peirce’s staff and helped plan a battle maneuver. He led a bold assault on the Confederate left but was killed by a musket ball, making him the first high-ranking Union officer to die in the war. There are various accounts about who fired the shot.

Winthrop left behind several novels that were published after his death. They include Cecil Dreeme (about social life in New York University), John Brent (set in the American West), and Edwin Brothertoft (about the American Revolution). He also wrote The Canoe and the Saddle and Life in the Open Air. His sister, Laura Winthrop Johnson, collected his poems and prose in Life and Poems of Theodore Winthrop. Before his death, he also contributed a pamphlet that accompanied Frederic Edwin Church’s painting The Heart of the Andes (1859). After he died, the Atlantic Monthly published sketches of Virginia campaigns based on his experiences.

Winthrop’s brother William became a leading expert on military law, and Winthrop’s abolitionist beliefs and literary work left a lasting impact beyond his short life.