Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,457
By This is the grave of William Crowninshield Endicott.
Born in 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, Endicott grew up rich. Old Puritan ancestors, old money, etc. He went to Harvard, natch. Then it was Harvard Law and then his own practice. He was a Salem elite who did Salem elite things. He held a bunch of city offices, started a practice with a partner that was probably the most successful law firm in Salem, was a bank president in the city for 20 years.
Overall, he’s just a rich guy without much interesting going on for most of his life. In 1873, he got an appointment to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, where he stayed until 1882. He lost a race for Congress in 1879 and lost a Democratic primary race for governor in 1884. Still not interesting. But then in 1885, Grover Cleveland named Endicott Secretary of War. I am not actually sure why. I think the reason is basically that Endicott was a prominent Massachusetts Democrat and Massachusetts needed to be taken care of in the Cabinet and Cleveland trusted him. But there we are.
As Secretary of War, Endicott was basically fine for an era where the U.S. military was small and other than guarding the reservations after the genocidal project of America had conquered the tribes, there wasn’t much to do. So a lot of his efforts were around administration and planning and he was by all accounts pretty good at these things. He instituted new examinations for officer promotion, probably a better system that what was there before. He also headed the Board of Fortifications, an attempt to build up the nation’s coastal defenses. This was a good idea. It came up as a response to the growing naval race between the British and Germans and the realization that the brick and masonry forts that existed were simply useless when facing newer ships. Over the next twenty years, the military built up what became known as the Endicott Period fortifications. It could have been better–but Congress was typically too cheap to pony up the cash. But a bunch of forts were redone, if not all of them. Whether this was strictly necessary in terms of future attacks on the nation might be debatable, but of course one can’t know what the future holds and so it’s hard to argue this as a sensible defense measure. Moreover, a lot of these fortifications were in use until World War II. So they had good shelf life.
Endicott served for the entire first Cleveland administration. He then went back to Salem and his rich guy things, including heading the Harvard Alumni Association. He died in 1900, at the age of 73. His wife lived much longer and John Singer Sargent painted her portrait and it is now in the National Gallery of Art, so we are in that level of rich. Also his daughter married Joseph Chamberlain, father of Neville. However, he was married before so she was his stepmother. In fact, Joseph was 26 years older than she.
William Crowninshield Endicott is buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery, Salem, Massachusetts.
If you would like this series to visit other Secretaries of War, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Going back in time, we’ve visited Robert Lincoln and Alexander Ramsey, Endicott’s two immediate predecessors, but George McCrary, who held the position in the Hayes administration is in Keokuk, Iowa. Going forward, Redfield Proctor, who held the position under Harrison, is in the appropriately named Proctor, Vermont. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.