Hazard Stevens

Hazard Stevens was born on June 9, 1842, in Newport, Rhode Island. He was the son of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, a military officer, explorer, politician, and the first governor of Washington Territory. During Hazard's youth, his family moved west when his father assumed leadership of the newly created territory. Growing up in this frontier environment exposed him at an early age to exploration, surveying, government affairs, and military organization.

As a teenager, Stevens accompanied his father during some of the treaty-making and exploratory expeditions conducted in Washington Territory during the 1850s. These experiences introduced him to the geography and communities of the Pacific Northwest and established a connection with the region that would continue throughout his life.

When the American Civil War began, both Hazard Stevens and his father entered Union military service. Hazard joined the United States Army and initially served as an officer connected with his father's command. By October 1861 he had been promoted to Captain and Assistant Adjutant General, a staff position requiring him to assist with administration, orders, communications, troop movements, and other important responsibilities within the command structure.

Although his duties included staff work, Stevens was repeatedly exposed to direct combat. One of the most traumatic events of his military career occurred on September 1, 1862, at the Battle of Chantilly in Virginia. During the fighting, Stevens was struck and wounded in the hip and arm. His father, Major General Isaac Stevens, was also present on the battlefield and was killed while leading his troops forward.

The death of his father and his own wounds made Chantilly a defining personal event. Hazard Stevens survived, recovered, and returned to active military service rather than leaving the Army. Only months later, he would take part in the action that ultimately earned him the Medal of Honor.

In the spring of 1863, Confederate forces were conducting operations around Suffolk, Virginia. Defensive positions and artillery batteries along the Nansemond River posed a serious threat to Union positions and naval movements. One of the most troublesome Confederate works was Fort Huger, also associated with the defensive position at Hill's Point.

The fort was positioned to control an important section of the river and contained artillery capable of firing on Union gunboats. Previous efforts to neutralize the position through artillery and naval gunfire had not succeeded, making a direct assault necessary if the battery was to be removed.

On April 19, 1863, Captain Hazard Stevens took part in a bold operation against the Confederate fort. Union troops were transported toward the position by water and landed near the enemy defenses. Stevens assumed a leading role in the assaulting party.

Rather than waiting at the rear as a staff officer, Stevens personally led men forward against the Confederate position. The attacking force moved rapidly toward the fort, approaching from a direction that allowed them to strike the defenders before an effective response could be organized.

The assault succeeded. Union troops captured Fort Huger and its artillery position, removing an important threat along the Nansemond River. Stevens's personal leadership during the attack became the action for which he would eventually receive the United States' highest military decoration.

His official Medal of Honor citation later summarized the achievement in direct language: he gallantly led a party that assaulted and captured the fort. Although the wording was brief, the action involved advancing against a prepared enemy defensive position and personally directing soldiers during an aggressive attack.

Recognition did not come immediately. More than thirty years passed between the assault on Fort Huger and the formal presentation of Stevens's Medal of Honor. On June 13, 1894, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct on April 19, 1863.

The Medal of Honor itself had originated during the Civil War. Congress authorized the Army version in 1862 at a time when the United States did not yet possess the extensive hierarchy of military valor decorations that developed in the twentieth century. It became the principal national award for extraordinary military conduct by Union soldiers.

For the project database, Stevens's decoration belongs to the Medal of Honor 1862–1895 Army period. Although his heroic action occurred in 1863 and his Medal of Honor was not presented until 1894, both dates fall within the same historical Army Medal of Honor era. No star, clasp, bar, oak leaf cluster, or other device has been verified with his Medal of Honor.

The Medal of Honor is the only individual military decoration currently supported strongly enough for inclusion in Stevens's final verified medal record. He clearly performed extensive qualifying Civil War service and survived long after the later Army Civil War Campaign Medal was established, but eligibility alone does not demonstrate that he personally received or was issued that medal. Without recipient-specific entitlement evidence, it is not included in his verified medal rack.

Stevens continued serving after the Fort Huger action. His military career extended through the remaining years of the Civil War, during which he gained additional rank and responsibility. He eventually received the honorary rank of Brevet Brigadier General of United States Volunteers.

This highest rank must be distinguished from the position he held when he performed his Medal of Honor action. At Fort Huger he was a Captain and Assistant Adjutant General. Brevet Brigadier General represented the highest rank later associated with his Civil War service and reflected recognition of his wartime record.

Stevens remained in service through the closing period of the conflict before returning to civilian life. The war had transformed him from a young officer serving alongside his father into an experienced veteran who had survived wounds, personal loss, years of campaigning, and direct battlefield leadership.

After the Civil War, Stevens returned to the Pacific Northwest and became involved in business, exploration, and regional development. His name soon became associated with an achievement entirely separate from his military career but one that would make him an important figure in the history of American mountaineering.

In August 1870, Hazard Stevens and Philemon Beecher Van Trump set out to climb Mount Rainier. They were assisted during their approach by Indigenous guide Sluiskin, whose knowledge of the mountain region helped them reach their high camp. On August 17, Stevens and Van Trump completed what is recognized as the first documented successful non-Indigenous ascent of Mount Rainier.

Their climb was an extraordinary undertaking for the period. They had none of the specialized equipment, established routes, detailed maps, weather forecasts, or modern climbing technology available to later mountaineers. The mountain's glaciers, steep slopes, altitude, cold, and unpredictable weather presented serious hazards.

Stevens and Van Trump reached the upper mountain and successfully returned, establishing one of the foundational events in the documented climbing history of Mount Rainier. Their ascent later became commemorated within what is now Mount Rainier National Park.

Stevens maintained a lifelong association with the mountain. Remarkably, he climbed Mount Rainier again in 1905 when he was in his early sixties, demonstrating that his interest in exploration and mountaineering had continued decades after the famous 1870 ascent.

His postwar life also included political and civic service. In the 1870s, Stevens moved to Massachusetts, where he became involved in public affairs and served in the Massachusetts legislature. His career therefore combined military service, politics, business, historical writing, and exploration.

Stevens also devoted considerable effort to preserving the memory of his father. He wrote a substantial biography of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, documenting his father's military, political, and territorial career. His writings preserved important firsthand and family material relating to the early history of Washington Territory and the Civil War.

The memory of his own wartime service also remained significant. In 1894, when the Medal of Honor was finally presented to him, Stevens was more than three decades removed from the young Captain who had led the assault against Fort Huger. The award formally placed that battlefield action within the national record of Civil War military heroism.

Later in life, Stevens returned permanently to Washington. By the 1910s he was again living in the Olympia area, the community that had been closely associated with his family since his father's territorial governorship.

He established a farm near Olympia known as Cloverfields. The property became part of his later-life connection to Washington and reflected his return to the region where he had spent much of his youth before the Civil War.

Hazard Stevens died on October 11, 1918, in Olympia, Washington, at the age of seventy-six. His remains were returned to Rhode Island, and he was buried at Island Cemetery in Newport, the city where he had been born.

His life connected several major chapters of nineteenth-century American history. As the son of Washington Territory's first governor, he witnessed the formative years of the Pacific Northwest. As a Union officer, he fought in the Civil War, was wounded at Chantilly, lost his father in battle, returned to service, and personally led the successful assault on Fort Huger.

For that action, Captain Hazard Stevens ultimately received the Medal of Honor on June 13, 1894. He later attained the rank of Brevet Brigadier General, the highest verified rank of his Civil War military career.

His achievements did not end with military service. In 1870, together with P. B. Van Trump and with critical assistance from Indigenous guide Sluiskin during their approach, he completed the first documented successful non-Indigenous ascent of Mount Rainier. He later served in public life, wrote extensively about his father and the history he had witnessed, and eventually returned to Washington.

Hazard Stevens therefore left two particularly enduring legacies: one as a Civil War officer whose leadership at Fort Huger earned the Medal of Honor, and another as an early documented climber of Mount Rainier. With no additional military decoration supported by sufficient recipient-specific evidence, the Medal of Honor 1862–1895 Army remains his single verified medal and the defining official recognition of his wartime courage.