Description
Exceptional and rare carte view of Captain Jacob Lynn Greene of Michigan. A close, personal friend of General Custer, and a staunch unionist, Jacob enlisted as a private in Company G of the 7th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in June 1861. Two months later he was commissioned first lieutenant of Company G. Greene’s regiment was assigned to the Army of the Potomac, arriving in Virginia in September 1861. Jacob’s service with the 7th Michigan, however, would be brief. His health failed terribly in the Fall, and on January 30, 1862 he resigned his commission. Returning home to Monroe, Michigan, more than a year would pass before the ailing Greene could consider rejoining the war effort. In the latter part of 1862, while in Monroe, Greene struck up a friendship with a fellow townsman, a young cavalry captain home on leave, George Custer. Custer was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers in June 1863, and after the Gettysburg campaign began assembling his own personal staff. Jacob Greene, with his prior military service, was a natural choice to join the new brigadier’s military family. The important position of assistant adjutant general went to Greene, who on July 14, 1863 was commissioned a captain in the 6th Michigan Cavalry, one of the four Michigan regiments that formed General Custer’s “Wolverine Brigade.” Never mustered into the Sixth, a second commission was issued to Jacob in September naming him, Captain and Assistant Adjutant General U.S. Volunteers.
August of 1863 saw Captain Greene return to active duty and almost immediately he proved himself a steady man under fire. One day, Custer, wishing to “try” his friend’s mettle, rode with Greene to the picket line where Custer noted, “the bullets flew thick and fast.” “I watched him closely,” Custer reported to Jacob’s fiancée Annette Humphrey, “He never faltered, was as calm and collected as if sitting at his dinner.” Custer was more than satisfied with Captain Greene’s coolness, proudly relating to Annette that, “I expected him to make a good Adjutant General, but he succeeds beyond expectation.”
During the winter of 1863, General Custer, Captain Greene and the rest of the staff settled into a large frame house, home to them for the next few months. The winter boredom in Stevensburg was broken in late January 1864, when General Custer announced he was returning to Michigan to marry Libbie Bacon. Choosing Jacob Greene and three other staff members to accompany him with Jacob serving as his best man.
During the Battle of Trevilian Station, some of General Custer’s wagon train, including his headquarters wagon, turned up missing in the confusion of battle. Jacob Greene went in search of the missing vehicles. Winding his way carefully through a maze of timber which reverberated with the sounds of gunfire, Greene, to his chagrin discovered himself confronted by numerous Confederate horsemen with no avenue of escape. With firearms leveled at him, Greene knew he must surrender or face certain death. In desperate straights, Jacob Greene elected to surrender, the whole incident happening “so quick[ly],” in Jacob’s words, “that my head swam.”. Greene’s capture at Trevilian Station marked the end of his service in the field for six months. A succession of prisons in Richmond (Libby), Macon, Charleston, and Columbia, would be his home until December 9, 1865 when he received his parole. It is said that he refused earlier parole “over an issue regarding unequal treatment of black prisoners.”. On December 19, Jacob received a thirty-day furlough courtesy of the War Department and set out for General Custer’s winter headquarters in Winchester, Virginia. There the two friends were reunited for the first time in six months.
In February, 1865, Greene returned to duty in a non-combatant role as a mustering officer at Camp Parole in Annapolis, Maryland. As a paroled prisoner, Jacob waited patiently for word of his exchange, which would free him to return to front-line duty with Custer’s cavalry division. General Custer himself eagerly awaited Jacob’s return, writing to Libbie, “I miss him greatly.” On April 8, 1865, Captain Greene was notified of his exchange and rushed as quickly as possible to join Custer’s division then in hot pursuit of Lee’s army somewhere near Appomattox, Virginia.
On April 10, Jacob Greene caught up with Custer’s command at Burksville junction, one day after Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant. Dissapointingly, Jacob had just missed the grand finale of the War but was present on the field when Lee’s gallant army formally surrendered in a moving ceremony on April 12, 1865. On May 23, Jacob rode with General Custer at the head of the Cavalry Corps’ third division in the great Victory Parade (Grand Review) held in Washington D.C. It was a great day, but trouble was brewing far to the south in Mexico, where France had installed a puppet government, thus threatening America’s security in the region. As a show of force, troops were dispatched to Texas from Union armies in the field; General Custer being tapped to command a division of cavalry being organized there.
Ever faithful, Jacob Greene made the journey to Texas with Custer, where he would serve as his chief of staff until January 1866. In the meantime, Jacob had been justly rewarded with promotion to major in July 1865, and to brevet lieutenant colonel for “distinguished gallantry at the battle of Trevilian Station.” On March 20, 1866, Jacob Greene’s distinguished military career ended when he was mustered out of the volunteer service. This exceptional view bears an extraordinarily rare back mark by Frank Browne who served as the photographer for Kilpatrick’s Division at the Headquarter of the 5th Michigan Cavalry. Superb carte view!
