Augustus Caesar Buell | |
|---|---|
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| Born | September 4, 1847 |
| Died | May 23, 1904(1904-05-23) (aged 56) |
| Resting place | Mount Moriah Historic Cemetery & Arboretum |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Author of allegedly fraudulent biographies about Prominent Americans |
| Spouse(s) | Helen Elizabeth Slocum (1843-?) (m. 1864); 2nd Gertrude --- in 1894. |
| Parent(s) | Simon and Julia Buell |
Augustus Caesar Buell (September 4, 1847 – May 23, 1904) was an Americanauthor who wrote several biographies of great Americans, following the success of a book about his experiences in theCivil War. A large amount of his material was alleged to be plagiarised or made up.[1]
Buell was born in 1847 to Simon and Julia Buell nearNorwich, New York.[2] He was raised inNew York City and is known to have enlisted in Company L of the 20th New York Cavalry, on August 21, 1863. He was promoted to corporal three months later, but was then demoted the following April, and he left the service in July 1865. He later claimed to have risen to the rank of colonel.[3] For some years he lived in New York State, but his literary career began some time after he had moved toPhiladelphia, to work for the major shipbuilding and engineering firm ofWilliam Cramp & Sons. In 1876 he was briefly arrested following an accusation of libel.[4]
In his Civil War memoir,The Cannoneer, published in 1890, he vividly described his experiences at theBattle of Gettysburg, but that battle took place in July 1863, seven weeks before he enlisted, and two essays by Silas Felton reveal much of the hollow truth behind Buell's claims. He later claimed that a visit toSt. Petersburg in Russia on behalf of Cramp's, a few years later, enabled him to find important material for his first biographical project, the life ofJohn Paul Jones. The major demolition job on that work we owe to the far superior scholarship of AdmiralSamuel Eliot Morison, who devoted an appendix to Buell's supposed lies about Jones in his ownPulitzer-winning biography. The work of scholars like Morison, which should never have been necessary, reveals the full depth of Buell's alleged fraud.
He died in 1904, and is buried at theMount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia.[3]
Milton Hamilton, editor of the papers of colonial administratorSir William Johnson, had to do the same sort of research as Morison to uncover the truth behind Buell's 1903 production. Two further biographies, ofWilliam Penn andAndrew Jackson, were published in the months following Buell's death, by which time suspicions of his work were already growing rapidly.[5] His last posthumous work may be his most truthful, the memoirs of his boss, Charles H. Cramp. About the same time as this was published, Mrs. Reginald de Koven produced the first detailed analysis of the fraudulent Buell technique, specifically his John Paul Jones biography.
Buell's diary for 1867-68 still survives,in the Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Col. Augustus C. Buell, a veteran of the civil war and later widely known as a war correspondent and author of a standard "Life of John Paul ...
More recently, Hendrik Booraem's biographical study of Jackson's early life contains an appendix that identifies twenty-one of Buell's fabrications regarding Old Hickory's time in the Carolinas.
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