Like the men of the 120th, Sharpe settled back into his prewar pursuits in the law career and local politics. He made sure that his warhorse, Babe, was tenderly cared for on the grounds of his large home, The Orchard, at 1 Albany Street, “in green pastures so that he could pass his old days in peace and plenty.” When Babe died in 1882, Sharpe showed his enduring affection by setting up a stone over the animal’s grave. Upon the stone was engraved:
A noble, intelligent and resolute Horse, who carried his Master through all the marches and conflicts of the Army of the Potomac, from Fredericksburg to Appomattox, and faced the last enemy in October, 1882, aged 28 years, full of the fire and courage, he had shown on the field of battle.
______
One of my best friends.1
Sharpe did not disappear into the quiet anonymity of Hudson Valley gentry but retained powerful connections in Washington. For example, on the evening of March 21, 1866 he received an urgent telegram from Secretary of War Stanton to come immediately to Washington. Sharpe replied that the message had come too late to take the last train but that he would catch the first one in the morning. Interestingly, this telegram is found in the papers of the Secretary of State, William H. Seward, though addressed to Stanton. It apparently had been forwarded from Stanton’s office to Seward. The trail on this intriguing moment then disappears from the historical record.2
Almost the first thing we hear of him after the war is a reference to a meeting he had in Washington with Brig. Gen. Cyrus B. Comstock. “When I saw you last in Washington, we conferred upon a matter, theretofore spoken of, and for sundry reasons delayed, which it was understood between us was to be put on paper by myself, and would then be presented by you to the consideration of General Grant.” He was referring to the compensation for Elizabeth Van Lew’s war services. He had traveled to Richmond in the middle of May in 1865 on the issue of Mosby but apparently at the time had not met the woman he would eulogize as the “Lady of College Hill.” He had made a trip to Richmond in the summer of 1866, when he finally met the remarkable Miss Van Lew. After the surrender at Appomattox, he had ridden directly back to Washington and not gone to Richmond. He wrote, “I became possessed of the facts many of which I had some knowledge before which tend to show that they [Van Lew and her mother] have a very strong claim upon the assistance of the Government.” He had learned of her financial plight at the time and on his own urged the War Department to compensate her for having expended her fortune and property in the service of the Union. The letter was detailed, generous, and heartfelt. He obviously held Van Lew in great respect and did his utmost to obtain $15,000 as the minimum owed to her. He ended his letter by stating that hers was “the most meritorious case I have known during the war.” His letter would have convinced a stone, but the letter had another quality of a stone—it sank like one in the mean-spirited offices of Stanton’s War Department.3 (See Appendix O—Sharpe’s letter of support of Van Lew’s claims.)
Sharpe closed his letter by saying that “I do this now without waiting for future reference because I am just leaving home to be absent some little time…” That was because the government, which ignored his generosity to others, had not forgotten his ability as an intelligence officer. In the wake of Lincoln’s assassination, John H. Surratt, the son of Mary Surratt, one of the conspirators to be convicted and executed, fled to Europe and later Egypt where the local authorities delivered him into American custody in February 1867. In January 1866, with Surratt still at large, Secretary of State Seward sent Sharpe on a special mission to Europe “to ascertain if possible whether any citizens of the United States … other than those who heretofore have been suspected and charged with the offense, were instigators of or concerned in the assassination of the late President Lincoln and the attempted assassination of the Secretary of State.” Unspoken in his official instructions but certainly communicated to Sharpe was Seward’s belief that the former Confederate vice president, Judah Benjamin, who had fled to London, was implicated in the assassination.4
Sharpe followed Surratt’s trail first to Liverpool and then to London, where he sought the assistance of the embassy secretary, Benjamin Moran. The secretary, a self-important busybody, had been at the embassy since the early 1850s and left voluminous diaries. He left a record of Sharpe’s efforts which revealed that there was a greater prize than Surratt, one of such delicate importance that it was not stated in his official instructions. It was none other than the former vice president of the Confederacy, Judah Benjamin, who had fled to England as the Confederacy collapsed.
Moran’s diary entry on February 11 stated, “Mr. George H. Sharpe, the detective, has been sent here to hunt up evidence against the persons implicated in the assassination of President Lincoln. He is a bullet-headed person and is determined to catch Benjamin if possible.”5
His next entry was a week later: “General George H. Sharpe also called. He thinks he will be able to prove that Judah Benjamin was implicated in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. I hope so.”6 Sharpe spent the next month pursuing this lead. On March 14, Moran recorded, “General Sharpe came up. He is on the track of George McHenry and Benjamin and thinks he will be successful.”7 The net had widened to McHenry, who been an assistant in Paris to Edwin DeLeon, a Confederate propagandist.
Sharpe evidently saw the value of Moran’s knowledge of London and engaged his active assistance in the chase. On March 16 the two went to a hotel “to ascertain if J. P. Benjamin and George McHenry saw John Surratt and supplied him with money after Mr. Lincoln’s assassination in London.”8 Five days later he was working on his own for Sharpe. “In the afternoon, I went to Fenton’s for General Sharpe about Benjamin and Surratt, but could get no reliable information.”9
Sharpe then traveled to Rome where the fugitive had enlisted in the Papal Zouaves, and even to Egypt where Surratt had fled last, before concluding his investigations. His report showed in detail how he had pursued every lead, but each had petered out. The only item of interest in his report was that “Surratt’s passport showed that it was obtained by some influence from the provincial government of Canada, and had received the visé of the United States consul-general.” That in itself was highly suspicious since the conspirators had frequently traveled through Canada and been well supplied with gold, a rare priority for the specie-starved Confederacy. This line of investigation too led to nothing. In July Sharpe made his official report to Seward while Surratt’s trial was underway:
Conscious that earnestness was brought to the attempt at identifying the loathsome instigators of the great crime, and that every possible assistance was received, I have to report that, in my opinion, no such legal or reasonable proof exists in Europe of the participation of any persons there, formerly citizens of the United States, as to call for the action of the government.
Surratt was acquitted by a Democrat jury. Seward would wait until December to acknowledge Sharpe’s report but would thank him for his zeal in the matter, stating that the Department of State had approved all his actions, and that his report had been “communicated to the House of Representatives,” the day before.10 (See Appendix P—Sharpe’s report to Seward.)
Sharpe’s observations of the political situation in Europe during his visit were prescient:
I took every occasion of talking with Frenchmen on their all engrossing interest of Luxembourgh [sic], and was surprised to find the unanimity with which war was desired with Prussia. The French are eminently an ideal[istic] people—they will fight more for ideas than interests, and they had all conceived the opinion that France had been grossly insulted, and by the people … whose legions at Waterloo had turned the scale [Prussia].
He observed that the lull was entirely due to the fact that the Prussian Army had been fully equipped with the needle gun, the first breech-loading rifle as general issue to an army, and to the fact that if Louis Napoleon went back on his promises to the other great powers to submit to arbitration, the French people would not be able to pay the necessary war loans. Nevertheless, he concluded, “[T]hat Louis Napoleon will not try to reestablish his success by letting them fight the people they hate, is to believe him to be willing to let the empire take slow poison.”
Sharpe thought that France would have been better off to have gone to war with Prussia earlier when Austria and Russia could have been paid off to support France. A French ambassador told him in Rome that “The only question now is one of alliances,” surely an example of barring the barn door after the horse has escaped. When France did blunder into war with Prussia in 1870, it was because the Prussian foreign minister, Otto von Bismarck, was able to play upon the French eagerness for war. Sharpe did see a silver lining for the United States. He accurately predicted that U.S. securities would rise in value in Europe.11
He recounted how well he had been treated in Britain in the way of “receptions and compliments, one that a much more prominent officer could scarcely have hoped for.” At one large dinner party, he met a former Confederate officer, Maj. Osman Latrobe, of Longstreet’s staff, whom he had paroled at Appomattox. He had quite forgotten the officer, but Latrobe had not forgotten him. He announced to the room that the officer that had paroled him was also a guest, and, tongue in cheek, “that he must therefore conduct himself carefully.” Sharpe was surprised at the great interest of the other guests to hear of incidents of the war that had “not struck me as being of particular interest.”
Then too these people did not believe that we could conquer the rebellion and having done it, we have risen immeasurably at one monstrous stride in their estimation. They are greatly struck with the bloodlessness of the end—that there is nothing like heads on Temple-bar—that there has been little or no confiscation—that that there is but one man [Jefferson Davis] in the United States restrained of his liberty, on account of the rebellion.
Sharpe then noted that he had just heard that Davis had been released and was on his way to New York. He could not resist writing, “I hope he will not find it necessary to visit Kingston.” Returning to the seriousness of upper class sentiment in Britain, he noted, “But there are thousands of people here, who hate us because we have succeeded, and the … support of the reform bill is ascribed to the pernicious influence of America, which in her success they look upon as a protest against the Aristocratic institutions of England.”12
The most memorable event of his trip was his meeting with John Bright, the champion of the Union in Britain during the Civil War. Then he had been a member of Parliament and so determined in his support for the American cause that he was referred to by his fellow Parliamentarians as “the member from the United States.” Sharpe was perhaps a bit star struck by the man beloved by the American public and whose portrait was the only such to hang in Lincoln’s cabinet room (other than an old print of Andrew Jackson) as such a singular friend of the United States. He would fondly remember the moment in his speeches over the decades, and as in the following case to a meeting of veterans.
I saw him once. It was after the war. I scanned his appearance very closely—as strangers will frequently do when they meet some famous man the first time—to see if he looked like what I had pictured to myself he was; if I could find in him what, it would seem, marks a very great man; and there, through an open door, I saw that splendid figure and that massive head; that head that seemed to resemble Webster’s more than any other I have ever seen. Among others, I was introduced. “Now, Mr. Bright,” said he who presented me, “I want to introduce to you an American officer who paroled Gen. Lee’s army.” John Bright replied, “I am glad to see you, and you treated them a great deal too well, too.” That was the first thought that struck the mind of the man who would not have been a Minister of the Crown of England if these men here had failed.13
Upon his return to Kingston Sharpe settled down to a happy family and successful professional life. The 1870 census shows Sharpe claiming the value of his real estate at $15,000 and his personal estate at $4,000, a fall from the $30,000 he claimed in the 1860 census. Nevertheless, he was employing five servants at his home at the time, four women and a coachman, all apparently Irish. Two were born in Ireland, the rest native-born New Yorkers.14
Sharpe became an active member of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution and presented a number of erudite addresses on the history of his town and region in the American Revolution. He remained a devoted member of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston. He obtained and donated for the church two stones that were embedded on either side of the entrance. They originated in the “Old Middle Dutch Church on Nassau Street in New York City, erected in 1729 and given over to civic uses in 1844. With Biblical inscriptions in Dutch on the sandstone and in English on the granite, the tablets read, ‘I have loved the habitation of thy house’ and ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer.’”15
Sharpe was a convivial man, at ease with others individually and in groups of even great size. He was also a man who could enjoy life in robust and enthusiastic style. Although he came from old Hudson Valley stock, he was at ease with everyone. He fit a definition of the gentleman as “Someone who shows respect for those who can do nothing for him.” A quarter-century after his death, former Congressman Cornelius Van Buren would pen this remarkable character sketch of Sharpe:
In one way or another I have been in touch with all the leading Ulster politicians of the time. If I were to name the best one of each of the great parties I would name General George H. Sharpe from the Republican… Sharpe was a college graduate, a scholar, widely read, a good talker, had travelled abroad, was in touch with all the prominent men of his day. Share could go to East Kingston when the brick yards were in full blast, enter the dance hall, grab the first pretty girl he saw, swing her in the waltz, take the whole crowd up to Garry’s and buy the drinks, then call upon and smoke a cigar and drink a glass of wine with the priest, start for home and if it wasn’t too late stop and express his absolute belief in the doctrines of election and predestination to the Dutch Domnie.16
This personal side of him may have been one reason he was to remain a popular figure so long in Kingston.
As might be expected, he was also a very public man and took an active part in the associations of his life. He was a “member of the Sons of the Revolution, The Loyal Legion [MOLLUS], St. Nicholas Society, Delta Phi Society, Union League Club, Metropolitan Club of Washington, Army and Navy Club, Society of the Army of the Potomac and that of the Third Army Corps.” He was also a Mason. He remained attached to the educational institutions of his youth as well and served as a Rutgers College trustee from 1879 until his death in 1900. In 2006 he would be inducted into the roll of Rutgers distinguished alumni.17
Sharpe easily fit the ancient Athenian definition of a politis (citizen) by remaining deeply involved in the social and political life of Kingston. When any event required a gifted speaker, Sharpe was called upon. When civic leadership was needed, Sharpe was called upon. When positions of public trust were open, Sharpe was called upon. The following partial list of his efforts in public life in 1889 are illustrative of that involvement:
| Jan. 8: | Appointed President of the National Bank of Rondout.18 |
| Feb. 20: | Gave an oration at the dedication of the new lodge of the Knights of Pythias.19 |
| Feb. 23: | Appointed again as President of the 120th Regiment Union.20 |
| Apr. 22: | Served as Chairman of the design committee on a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.21 |
| May 15: | Called upon to deliver the oration at the dedication of the regiment at Gettysburg.22 |
| May 17: | Led the work of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument design committee.23 |
| Jun. 7: | Called upon by the mayor to lead the collection of funds for survivors of the Johnston Flood.24 |
| Jun. 26: | Led the veterans of the 120th Regt. to Gettysburg to dedicate their monument and delivered an oration.25 |
| Jul. 20: | Issued a report on the condition of the National Bank of Rondout.26 |
| Sep. 15: | Presented a eulogy at the Mason lodge for naval officer lost at sea.27 |
| Sep. 19: | Served as a pallbearer for funeral of Claude V. Quilliard.28 |
| Dec. 23: | Endorsed the election of Charles Preston as State Superintendent of Bank.29 |
His estate was known as “The Orchard” for its location in a vast grove. It had been in the family for over 200 years. There Carrie and he raised a happy, devoted family. Their two boys and a girl adored their father. His older boy, Severyn B., followed his father’s example, graduated from Yale, and became a lawyer. He practiced law, served as an Ulster county judge, became active in New York Republican politics, and ran a successful law practice in New York City.30
The younger son, Henry, unexpectedly secured an appointment to West Point in the Class of 1880 through the good officers of President Grant. The appointment was never solicited and came as a complete surprise to father and son. “President Grant intended the selection as a compliment to the son and a delicate expression of regard for the father.” Nevertheless, Henry had been inspired by his father’s record in the Civil War and would find a fulfilling life in the army. He served for a few years with the 4th Infantry on the frontier, but in 1882 resigned his commission. Evidently he thought better of that and in the autumn of 1883 requested a return to active duty. President Arthur, no doubt to do a favor to his friend, recalled Henry with the rank of captain in the Commissary Corps. He married Kate Morgan on June 7, 1884 shortly after returning to active duty. For the next 15 years he provided subsistence support to a number of posts across the country. By diligence, hard work, and talent he established an impressive reputation. That apple did not fall far from the tree.31
Although the Sharpes were a close-knit and loving family, like so many fathers Sharpe doted on his only daughter, Katherine. When she married New York Congressman Ira Davenport on April 27, 1887, her father pulled out all the stops to give her, described as a “pretty and vivacious brunette,” a storybook wedding. The church was engulfed in a sea of a thousand friends and admirers of Sharpe, a sign of not only his political but his personal popularity as well. Inside, the church was filled with flowers of every description and heady with their perfume. To the tune of Lohengrin’s wedding march, he walked his daughter down the aisle as she leaned lovingly on his arm. He gave her away grudgingly, as all fathers do, to the groom who was flanked by her brothers as groomsmen.
A lavish reception followed at The Orchard which was also brightened with flowers everywhere. He feasted 250 guests to a wedding breakfast prepared by one of the great chefs of New York. At the end Katherine toasted her new husband in a massive, antique family silver loving cup. They departed on their honeymoon to Europe in the railroad president’s own car. Sharpe saw his New York City guests offon a special train of the West Shore Railroad he had reserved for event.32
Severyn would wait until 1897 to marry. He and Frances Patynr were wed on February 17, 1897 at her parent’s home in Kingston. General and Mrs. Sharpe gave the bride a family heirloom diamond necklace as a wedding present. Severyn and Frances would have one daughter, born in 1902, named Katharine after Severyn’s little sister. She would be General Sharpe’s only grandchild.33 (See Appendix Q—Sharpe’s Family.)
The Orchard was not only the site of a contented family life but was known for its hospitality as well, and Sharpe as a great host known for his splendid table and fine conversation. Sharpe knew the value of a rich, formal table as a setting for good manners and fine conversation. His family had a custom when they met for dinner. All would wait until Sharpe’s wine glass had been filled. They then raised their own to him with the salute of “Hoste,” to which he would reply, “Gramercy.” The visitors to The Orchard included Presidents Grant and Arthur, Generals Sherman, Thomas, Slocum, Hooker, Howard, Davies, Kilpatrick, Wilson (James H.), Sickles, McMahon, Varnum, Major Ulrich, and Judge Rawlins, Grant’s former chief of staff. As the animosities of the Civil War faded, he would add a number of former Confederate generals to his wide circle of friends.34
Clearly a favorite of Grant’s, the President appointed Sharpe to a number of critical positions, requiring a high degree of trust and ability, during his administration—to be addressed later. A highpoint in Sharpe’s life was Grant’s acceptance of his invitation to be his guest in Kingston in July 1873. His reputation as a host was already local common knowledge. The Kingston Daily Freeman wrote, “Whatever is needed or desired in the matter of entertainment may safely be trusted to the hospitable Gen. Sharpe.” Indeed, Sharpe threw him a magnificent party at the Overlook Mountain House nearby. He did not neglect to include in the guest list his old deputy in the BMI, John McEntee. “As the guests went in to dinner a comely young lady hung on the arm of General Grant. To make conversation he said, ‘Are you fond of Shakespeare?’ She, never having read a line of that author, said, ‘Why, General, I read his books as fast as they come out.’” There is no report of Grant’s reaction to Sharpe’s choice of his dinner companion.35
For Sharpe Grant’s demonstration of his favor and friendship had been a personal and social triumph which burnished his reputation in Ulster County to a high sheen. He wrote Grant an effusive letter of thanks on July 1 that emphasized the effect of the visit on the people:
It was an extreme kindness to our people, and so thoroughly appreciated by all classes of them that I find their gratitude extending somewhat to me—while to myself the mark of favor was so dear personally, and so brilliant from its conspicuousness, that I could not trust myself to thank you in words. How much good it is your power to do in this way! I know already that the tone of our people has been raised by your visit—they have more pride in themselves; and I am confident too that misconduct would be more difficult to me in the future than heretofore—I should have farther to fall.
As an aside, he reminded Grant that a large gift of wine he had presented the President was “safe, in a separate store-room of this building, ready to be forwarded anywhere as you may direct. And there is no reason why it should not remain here as long as you may direct.”36
Grant’s visit gave rise to speculation about Sharpe’s future. He was thought to be Grant’s choice to succeed Roscoe Conkling as senator and the power in New York if the latter were appointed to the Supreme Court. It would remain, however, only speculation, as Roscoe Conkling declined to his later regret, but its inspiration lay in Grant’s high estimation of Sharpe based upon their wartime association and reinforced by Sharpe’s dramatic triumph against the Tweed Ring, described in detail in the next chapter.37
At some point a deep friendship grew. It was understood that Grant was fond of Sharpe, enjoyed his company, and valued his advice. It is assumed that they did more than retell old war stories, although it appears that one of the things that had recommended Sharpe to Grant in the war was his marvelous ability as a storyteller. At one point he was a facilitator for Grant early in his presidency, a man who could be depended upon to take care of delicate political matters discreetly. On a visit to the White House in October 1870, he wrote to James McKean, whom Grant had just that year appointed Chief Justice of the Superior Court of the Utah Territory, that he had been asked by someone “in an important quarter” to persuade his brother not to run as a third candidate in a New York congressional district because it would endanger that district. Sharpe ended his letter with the pointed remark, “It is suggested that you must be deeply interested in the matter.”38
Not only were Grant and Sharpe close but their wives and children were as well. Jessie Grant and Cary Sharpe had become good friends. In October 1874 Cary Sharpe was accompanying the Grants as their guest on a tour of Indian Territory.39 Earlier that same year the Sharpes and their daughter were invited by the President to the wedding of his daughter Nellie in May to the English singer, Algernon Sartoris. Their gift was a ring set with a cameo surrounded by diamonds. Their daughter Kate and another little girl threw their slippers at the departing couple, a custom of good luck at the time.40 In February 1875 the couple returned to the United States; when they returned to England it was with a new grandson of the President. When the couple returned to England from New York in September, Sharpe requested the honor of carrying their newborn son, Grant, on board their ship.41 In June of the next year, it was the turn of the Grants to be guests of the Sharpes at the commencement exercise of Sharpe’s daughter at the Notre Dame Academy in Baltimore.42
However much Sharpe was in New York City or Washington on business or politics, he remained a devoted son of Kingston, that pleasant town on the Hudson. His affection for his hometown found expression in a loving and fond address on the history of Kingston to the Kingston Young Men’s Union on the evening of December 20, 1875. Reprinted in The Journal of Kingston and The New York Times, it stands as both a delightful and scholarly history of the town. His purpose, he said, in writing the history was to hand “down to those who are to come after to celebrate the second Centennial of the Republic, a distinct recollection of our forefathers.” He paid homage to the original commander of the 20th NYSM, Col. George W. Pratt, who had begun the work but whose life had been cut short when he fell at the battle of Second Manassas in 1862. Sharpe said he was only picking up the fallen standard, a charge left behind by a gallant man. He closed by asking his audience to join him in the aspiration of that lovely version of the 23rd Psalm:
Let goodness, and mercy, our bountiful God
Still follow our steps, till we meet thee above;
We seek, by the path which our forefathers trod,
Through the land of their sojourn, they kingdom of love.43