The Van Dorn House: A General Born Here

The Van Dorn House sits on a hilltop in Port Gibson, a Federal-style brick home built around eighteen thirty for Peter Aaron Van Dorn, a lawyer who had migrated from New Jersey to make his fortune on the Mississippi frontier. He succeeded. He clerked the Circuit Court, served in the state legislature, bought town land, and planted cotton. The house he built is unusual for this part of Mississippi, where Greek Revival and later styles dominated. Its Federal symmetry and restrained ornament mark it as the work of a man who carried his architectural tastes from the northeastern states.

But the house is remembered mainly for what Peter Van Dorn's son became. Earl Van Dorn was born here on September seventeenth, eighteen twenty, a relative of Andrew Jackson through his mother's family line, a connection that perhaps shaped his instinct for audacity. He graduated from West Point in eighteen forty-two, fought in Mexico under Winfield Scott, and earned brevet promotions at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and the assault on Mexico City. He was the kind of officer who got promoted by riding toward the guns.

When Mississippi seceded, Van Dorn went with his state. As a Confederate general he was often reckless and sometimes brilliant. His greatest hour came in December of eighteen sixty-two when he led a cavalry raid on Grant's massive supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi, burning a million and a half dollars worth of Union stores and forcing Grant to abandon an entire campaign. It was the kind of strike that wins legends.

His death was stranger than his life. On May seventh, eighteen sixty-three, a physician named George Peters walked into Van Dorn's headquarters at Spring Hill, Tennessee, and shot him at his desk. Peters said Van Dorn had dishonored his wife. Van Dorn was forty-two. He is buried in Port Gibson, not far from the house where he was born. The house where he was born survived the war and stands today, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since nineteen seventy-one.