Colonel Luther P. Bradley

Luther Prentiss Bradley was the first lieutenant colonel of the Fifty-First Illinois Infantry. In the autumn of 1862, with the resignation of Colonel Gilbert Cumming, Bradley became colonel of the regiment, officially on October 14, 1862. But already by May 1862 he was in effective command of the regiment as Cumming was absent sick. He was in effective command of the brigade of which the Fifty-First Illinois was a part as of December 31, 1862 at the Battle of Stone's River. He was promoted Brigadier General, U. S. Volunteers, on July 30, 1864.

When the Civil War ended Bradley took a lieutenant colonel’s commission in the regular army and served in the army until his retirement in 1886. By then, Bradley was a full colonel and had fought in wars against the Indians in Montana, Dakota, Arizona, and New Mexico. Bradley is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 2).

He was born on December 8, 1822 in New Haven, Connecticut. He was the youngest of 13 children. Until 1855, Bradley lived in Connecticut where he participated intensely in militia activities and devloped a foundation in things military. In 1855, he moved west to Chicago. He worked for the firm of F. Munson, stationers and booksellers, in downtown Chicago.

National Archives Photo
Bradley as Regular Army Colonel

His men knew him as even-handed and fair-minded, concerned for the welfare of his soldiers, not interested in the accoutrements of command as avenues of personal aggrandizement, not using office to push privates around. He was not mild-mannered; he was effective as a disciplinarian. He gained the respect of his men and his command superiors. There was no hot air to him. He made little military show and would not expose his men needlessly to danger but only for the military demands of battlefield situation. He knew when to exercise personal bravery as a tool of command as in the final charge of the Fifty-First and Twenty-Seventh at Stones River and, to take another example, when bringing his brigade into the conflagration in Viniard's Field on September 19, 1863. Two horses were killed under him at Stones River. He was wounded twice, shot clean through the hip and in the shoulder, within moments at Chickamauga. On October 2, Bradley in Louisville recovering and on his way to Chicago and then east to his family, wrote to his mother, "The wound in my hip is doing finely, and I can already walk pretty well with a crutch and cane. My arm scarcely troubles me at all, though I suppose the ball is still in there." In early November 1863, a local newspaper reported him back in New Haven recuperating from Chickamauga, a ball having passed "entirely through his body". Bradley was wounded again at Spring Hill, Tennessee on November 29, 1864, the day before the Battle of Franklin. The Spring Hill wound was a nasty wound, a bullet to the shoulder joint, and healed more slowly than his Chickamauga wounds. In early spring Bradley rejoined his brigade, but the wound was still an aggravation. Emerson Opdycke wrote to his wife on May 10, 1865, "[Bradley's] arm is still sore and painful and he can use it but little."

In 1868, Bradley married a Chicago woman Ione Dewey. They had two sons. Bradley lived out his retirement years in Tacoma, Washington until his death in 1910. Bradley, probably in the early 1880s, wrote an autobiographical sketch.

Sources:
William F. Prosser, A History of the Puget Sound Country, Its Commerce and Its People, New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1903, 192-4.
Luther P. Bradley, Compiled Service Record, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
The Willimantic Journal, Willimantic, Connecticut, November 9, 1863.
Luther Bradley Papers, United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Glenn V. Longacre and John E. Haas, eds., To Battle for God and the Right: The Civil War Letterbooks of Emerson Opdycke, Urbana and Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 2003, p.291.