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Horace C. Porter (April 15, 1837May 29, 1921) was an American soldier and diplomat who served as a lieutenant colonel, Ammunition officer and staff officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, personal secretary to General and President Ulysses S. Grant. He also was secretary to General William T. Sherman, vice president of the Pullman Palace Car Company and U.S. Ambassador to France from 1897 to 1905.
His paternal grandfather was Andrew Porter, the Revolutionary War officer and his paternal uncles included George Bryan Porter, the Territorial Governor of Michigan, and James Madison Porter, the Secretary of War. Among his first cousins was Andrew Porter, a Mexican–American War veteran and Union Army brigadier general. His aunt, Elizabeth Porter, was the grandmother of Mary Todd Lincoln.
Porter was educated at The Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey (class of 1856)Eicher, 2001, p. 435 identifies this as the Lawrence Scientific School. and Harvard University. He graduated from West Point July 1, 1860.
During the war, he served as chief of ordnance in the Army of the Potomac, Department of the Ohio and the Army of the Cumberland. He was distinguished in the Battle of Fort Pulaski, Georgia, at the Battle of Chickamauga, the Battle of the Wilderness and the Second Battle of Ream's Station (New Market Heights). On June 26, 1902, or July 8, 1902,The uncertainty as to the date is expressed in the source, Eicher, 2001, p. 435 Porter received the Medal of Honor for the Battle of Chickamauga as detailed in the citation noted below. In the last year of the war, he served on the staff of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, later writing a lively memoir of the experience, Campaigning With Grant (1897).
From April 4, 1864, to July 25, 1866, Porter was aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S. Grant with the grade of lieutenant colonel in the regular army. On July 17, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Porter for appointment as brevet brigadier general, to rank from March 13, 1866, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment on July 23, 1866.Eicher, 2001, p. 736 From July 25, 1866, to March 4, 1869, Porter was aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S. Grant with the grade of colonel in the regular army.
Porter had refused to take a $500,000 vested interest bribe from Jay Gould, a Wall Street financier, in the Black Friday gold market scam. He told Grant about Gould's attempted bribery, thus warning Grant about Gould's intention of cornering the gold market. However, during the Whiskey Ring trials in 1876, Treasury Solicitor Bluford Wilson claimed that Porter was involved with the scandal.Jean Edward Smith, Grant, pp. 481-490, Simon & Schuster, 2001.McFeely 1981, p. 409 Porter testified before the committee investigating the scandal and was never formally charged with wrongdoing.New York Times, Western Whisky Frauds: Gen. Horace Porter's Testimony, August 13, 1876 Porter resigned from the U.S. Army on December 31, 1873.
Porter was president of the Union League Club of New York from 1893 to 1897. In that capacity, he was a major force in the construction of Grant's Tomb.
He was elected an honorary member of the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati in 1902. He was also a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the Sons of the American Revolution and a Hereditary Companion of the Military Order of Foreign Wars by right of his descent from Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Porter who served in the American Revolution.
In 1891 he joined the Empire State Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, where he served as President General from 1892 through 1896. He was assigned national membership number 4069 and state membership number 69.
He died in Manhattan, New York and is interred at the Old First Methodist Church Cemetery in West Long Branch, New Jersey. Long Branch in the Golden Age
After a period of suffering, Porter died at New York, New York, May 29, 1921. He was buried in West Long Branch Cemetery, West Long Branch, New Jersey. In his will, he left the Grant Association $10,000 and the flag that flew at General Grant's field headquarters during the Civil War.
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