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Charles Fessenden Morse

Charles Fessenden Morse
CharlesFMorse.jpg
Photo and signature of Charles Fessenden Morse
Born (1839-09-22)September 22, 1839
Boston, Massachusetts
Died December 11, 1926(1926-12-11) (aged 87)
Buried at Oak Grove Cemetery, Falmouth, Massachusetts
Allegiance United States United States of America
Union
Service/branch United States Union Army
Years of service 1861 – 1865
Rank Union Army LTC rank insignia.png Lieutenant Colonel
Commands held Massachusetts 2nd Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry
Battles/wars Battle of Gettysburg
Other work Letters written during the Civil War, 1861-1865

Charles Fessenden Morse (September 22, 1839 – December 11, 1926) was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War and, afterward, an influential businessman and civic leader in Kansas City, Missouri.

Morse was born in Boston, and spent his childhood there. He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1858 with an B.S. degree.

Soon after the start of the Civil War in 1861, Morse joined the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, where he fought alongside some of his Harvard classmates, including the future colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Robert Gould Shaw. The two became close friends, maintaining near-daily correspondence until the latter's death in the Battle of Fort Wagner in July 1863. Morse was promoted to captain of the regiment's Company B, and served in this role at the battles of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, and Chancellorsville. After Gettysburg, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Massachusetts, a rank he held until the end of the war. During the Atlanta campaign waged by Union General William T. Sherman in 1864, Morse served as provost marshal of the city following its burning and Union occupation, where "[b]y all accounts, [he] kept strict order."

After the war, Morse tried his hand at cotton farming in Georgia, but was unsuccessful. He traveled west in 1870 and found greater success in a series of positions in the railroad business. In 1878, Morse left his post as general manager of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Topeka, Kansas at the suggestion of his friend, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and relocated to Kansas City, where he served first as general manager and eventually president of the . Morse also served for several years as president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Street Railway company. He was one of the first residents of the city's exclusive Hyde Park district, a gated suburb established outside the city limits near the frontier town of Westport in 1882. During the 1880s and 1890s, Col. Morse helped establish several elite civic institutions, including The Barstow School and the Kansas City Country Club. Morse maintained a summer residence in Falmouth, Massachusetts, to which he retired in 1913.


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