Civil War
Lieutenant Mason was still at Fort Vancouver when news arrived in April 1861 of the outbreak of the Civil War and the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. After the departure of Edward O. C. Ord, Mason assumed the role of post commander at Fort Vancouver on May 7, 1861 and remained in that position until June 11, when relieved following the arrival of Capt. Henry K. Black of the 9th U.S. Infantry. . Later in May, he was promoted to a captaincy in the 11th U.S. Infantry. In October of that year, he was appointed as the colonel of the three-years' 4th Ohio Infantry. He joined 4th OVI in western Virginia, where they served during the fall and winter under command of Maj. Gen. James Shields.
In 1862, Mason's regiment participated in the Peninsula Campaign of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, where they guarded Harrison's Landing. He was involved in the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam. Late in the year, he commanded a brigade in Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick's II Corps' "Right Grand Division" and fought at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He was cited for gallantry in both of those actions and brevetted. On November 29, 1862, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general of U. S. Volunteers.
His health, never robust following the two yellow fever bouts, again failed him and Mason asked for and received administrative duty. In April 1863, Mason was assigned to muster and recruit duty, first in Ohio (where he also commanded Camp Thomas for more than a year), and for the last two years of the war in California as an Adjutant General, and finally in the new state of Nevada. He was promoted to Major of the 17th U.S. Infantry in the Regular Army in 1864.
Mason was responsible for John Hunt Morgan and his raiders imprisoned in Columbus, OH at the time that seven escaped.
From March 7, 1865 - July 21, 1865 he was commander of the District of Arizona under the Department of the Pacific. In the omnibus promotions at the end of the Civil War in 1865, he was brevetted through the Regular Army grades to that of brigadier general.
Read more about this topic: John S. Mason
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)