Whispering Pines: A Tale of Two Brothers

In this month’s column, as the country marks 150 years since the start of the Civil War, John Cross ’76 uncovers the little known tragedy of the McArthur family — three alumni, a father and his two Bowdoin sons, who are the only known alumni brothers to have fought on opposite sides in the Civil War.

April 12 marked the 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate troops in the first military engagement of the American Civil War. The conflict has sometimes been characterized as a war of “brother against brother,” and for two brothers in the McArthur family of Limington, Maine, this was literally the case. Arthur McArthur, Jr. of the Class of 1850 served as a major in the 6th Louisiana Infantry Regiment, while William M. McArthur of the Class of 1853 was a colonel in the 8th Maine Infantry. As far as I know, this is the only instance of Bowdoin brothers squaring off on opposite sides of a shooting war, even though the two didn’t face each other directly on the battlefield.

The McArthur Family Papers in the College’s Department of Special Collections and Archives trace the thoughts and deeds of members of one of Limington’s founding families through the turbulence of the Civil War. Lawyer and local temperance leader Arthur McArthur, Sr. (Bowdoin Class of 1810) and his wife, Sarah, had five sons and a daughter. The eldest, Arthur, Jr., roomed with Oliver Otis Howard in his senior year at North Yarmouth Academy and they later became Bowdoin classmates. In his 1908 autobiography, General Howard described Arthur as “…a splendid specimen of a youth, having a perfect physique, with mental talents above the ordinary, that is, in the outset, when I first knew him. Fearful headaches and depression followed his frequent indulgences, and I did my best to care for him. ..Before we graduated from Bowdoin Arthur McArthur had so suffered from drink that he had hard work to secure his diploma.” Within a decade of Arthur’s graduation he had sought his fortunes in Missouri, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nicaragua, and Panama, before he finally settled in Sabine Parish, Louisiana. Freed from having to live up to hometown expectations or living down the history of his own personal conduct, Arthur embraced many of the attitudes of his new neighbors – including views on slavery and secession – in becoming a teacher, a lawyer, and a sober and respected citizen.

No such scandal or adventure in distant lands followed William’s career in college or in the years leading up to the war. He was quiet and studious, at Bowdoin and throughout his career. He was admitted to the Maine bar, and entered into the practice of law in Limington, somewhat half-heartedly, if contemporary accounts can be believed. When war broke out he received a captain’s commission and helped to organize the 8th Maine volunteer regiment. He rose through the ranks, fought at Fort Pulaski, Cold Harbor, Fair Oaks, Petersburg (where he was wounded), and Appomattox Court House, and by war’s end had been brevetted a brigadier general.

Two days after the firing on Fort Sumter, Arthur wrote a letter to his father from the “Confederate States of America, Nashboro Sabine Parish, La.” The content of the letter reaffirmed Arthur’s new-found perspectives on slavery and his shifting allegiances since he left Maine. He had become a strong supporter of John C. Breckenridge, the Southern Democratic party candidate in the 1860 presidential election: “I was a Breckenridge man, a secessionist, immediate, no compromise, never-go-back fire eater…The Confederate States of America are destined to be the most powerful, richest + most glorious nation on the Western Continent. With the present 7 states for the nucleus we may see added to it other states, Mexico, Central America + Cuba,” with an importance to rival ancient Rome or Greece. Arthur then announced that he had been made a captain in the Union and Sabine Rifles. He chides his father for asking in recent letters if he was intemperate (that is, still drinking). In reading the letter I could almost hear Arthur sigh (parents will be parents, after all), and then the tone shifts: how are things at the Masonic Hall; send me some Limington news; I’ll write to mother; none of the heated rhetoric in the letter applies to you or anyone in the family; “My love to all. I am your affectionate son, Arthur.”

Arthur’s regiment joined Stonewall Jackson’s army in the Shenandoah Valley in the spring of 1862. On May 25, in the first battle of Winchester in Virginia, Arthur was shot and killed while leading a charge. His funeral is described in the diary of a local woman, Cornelia Peake McDonald: “Betty and I wept over him tears of sincere sorrow, the more so as we thought that perhaps ours and those of the poor soldier would be all that would fall on his lonely bier. I wiped the pale forehead, and smoothed the hair… In the afternoon I brought some white roses and laid them in his cold hand…men of his regiment…had raised money enough among them to buy an elegant metallic coffin…That evening he was buried, and a small board placed at his head was inscribed ‘Arthur McArthur, aged 27.’ We planted some violets and lilies of the valley at his head.” As historian Drew Gilpin Faust H’07 has pointed out in her book, This Republic of Suffering, expressing grief for soldiers who were martyrs to the cause became a potent political act for the women of the Confederacy, who took as their inspiration the biblical example of “last at the cross, first at the grave.”

My love to all. I am your affectionate son, Arthur.

It would be more than six months before the McArthur family would receive confirmation of rumors that Arthur had been killed in battle. It was difficult for families to communicate back and forth with soldiers in the field, and especially so when information had to cross the divide between Union and Confederate territories. In the early days of the war, neither side was prepared to identify, bury, or transport the dead, nor were mechanisms in place to report deaths to families. In December of 1862 a Union officer from Portland sent a copy of a New Orleans newspaper that listed Arthur’s death, bringing a measure of closure – but little comfort – to the McArthurs. Letters from Arthur, Sr. and brother William to brother Malcolm (a student at West Point), brother Charles in California, and sister Catherine (a teacher in Flint, Michigan), reveal a deep sense of anguish that neither Arthur’s death nor his funeral was attended by a member of the family. The pain was intensified by Arthur’s rejection of the Union and all that it stood for and by his support for the institution of slavery. The family narrative that emerged was that Arthur was misguided in choosing the path that he did, but that he had been motivated by noble impulses and sincere beliefs, and that he had died a soldier’s death.

William survived the war, returned to Limington, was a pension agent and postmaster, ran the family farm, and served in the Maine House and Senate. After the war he visited Arthur’s grave in Winchester. In 1885 he won $75,000 in the Louisiana State Lottery and used some of the money to buy land and build a memorial hall for the 8th Maine Regiment on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, which still operates as a museum and hotel. He never married. William died in 1917 in the gambrel-roofed 1797 McArthur family home in Limington, and is buried with his ancestors in the village cemetery.

In 2004 The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities drew from its collections for an exhibit of “Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy.” Included in the exhibit were portraits of six-year-old Arthur McArthur, Jr. and four-year-old William M. McArthur of Limington, painted in 1836 by local artist Royall Brewster Smith. What a difference a quarter-century can make – in the life of an individual, a family, and a nation.

With Best Wishes,

John R. Cross ’76
Secretary of Development and College Relations