William Rosecrans - Postbellum Career

Postbellum Career

After the war, Rosecrans became interested in railroads and was one of the eleven incorporators of the Southern Pacific Railroad, but his valuable interests in the stock of the railroad were lost to some of the unscrupulous financiers who were his business partners. From 1868 to 1869, Rosecrans served as U.S. Minister to Mexico, but was replaced after just five months when his old nemesis, Ulysses Grant, became president. During this brief service, he became convinced that Mexico would benefit from a narrow-gauge railway and telegraph line from Tampico to the coast, but this venture, from 1869 through 1873, was a failure.

Rosecrans then became interested in civil administration and wrote a book, Popular Government, with a former newspaperman, Josiah Riley, which advocated registration and voting reforms. He was approached by various political parties to run for high office: governor of Ohio (Union party, 1866); governor of California (Democratic Party, 1868); governor of Ohio (Democratic Party, 1869); congressman from Nevada (Democratic Party, 1876). He refused all of these offers because they conflicted with potentially promising business ventures, leading him to be referred to by the nickname "The Great Decliner."

In 1869, Rosecrans bought 16,000 acres (65 km2) of Rancho San Pedro in the Los Angeles basin for $2.50 per acre ($620/km²), a low price possibly because the land was deemed worthless for lack of a spring for water. The ranch, dubbed "Rosecrans Rancho", was bordered by what later was Florence Avenue on the north, Redondo Beach Boulevard on the south, Central Avenue on the east, and Arlington Avenue on the west. By the time of Rosecrans's death, his son Carl was living on the estate, but most of the land had been sold parcel by parcel to support the financial needs of mining ventures in which Rosecrans invested.

Rosecrans was elected as a Democratic congressman from California's 1st congressional district, serving from 1881 to 1885. This was the same election in which James Garfield was elected the president as a Republican and Rosecrans was distressed to see that Garfield's campaign literature played up his role in the war at Rosecrans's expense. Their former friendship was irretrievably broken. After Garfield's assassination, Charles A. Dana capitalized on the tragedy by publishing letters from Garfield to former treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase, which may have been the major factor in Rosecrans's loss of political support after Chickamauga.

Rosecrans was reelected in 1882 and became the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, a position in which he publicly opposed a bill that would provide a pension to former Pres. Grant and his wife. Unaware of the serious financial condition that Grant's family was enduring, Rosecrans objected that some of Grant's official statements "were false, and which he knew to be false at the time he made them, and which I have shown in my official reports to be false. I cannot say to the people of this country that a business which has been conducted as to rob poor people of millions, and which, if done on a smaller scale would have sent its managers to prison, shall be considered as important when the principal manager has allowed a great name to be used as the instrument of the robbery." The bill was passed over his objections. When a bill was introduced in 1889 to restore Rosecrans's rank and place him on the retired list, a number of congressmen objected, based on Rosecrans's actions against Grant in 1885, but the bill was passed.

Although Rosecrans was mentioned on a few occasions as a possible presidential candidate, the first Democratic president elected after the war was Grover Cleveland in 1884 and newspaper stories circulated that Rosecrans was under serious consideration to be appointed his Secretary of War, but he was appointed instead as the Register of the Treasury, serving from 1885 to 1893.

Rosecrans spoke at the dedication of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park on September 19, 1889, during which he delivered an address that was considered the best in capturing the feelings of the veterans present from both sides.

He was the first colonel of the regiment to which I belonged, my boyhood ideal of a great soldier, and I gladly pay him tribute.

Rosecrans died at Rancho Sausal Redondo, Redondo Beach, California. He had suffered in February 1898 from a cold that turned into pneumonia. Although he appeared to recover successfully, upon hearing the news that one of his favorite grandchildren (the son of Lily and Joseph Porter Toole—the son of the first governor of Wyoming) had died of diphtheria, he was seized with grief and his health failed precipitously. His body lay in state in Los Angeles City Hall, his casket decorated by the headquarters flag that flew over Stones River and Chickamauga. In 1908 his remains were interred in Arlington National Cemetery.