Brigadier General Gustavus Loomis Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Gustavus Loomis (1789-1872) graduated from the US Military Academy in 1811. He served as a lieutenant of artillery in the War of 1812, captured by the British at Fort Niagara. He saw combat again in the Black Hawk War and two wars against the Seminoles, and commanded re-supply columns in Mexico during the war with that nation. While commanding the peacetime garrison at Fort Gibson (1847), in what is now northeastern Oklahoma, he was subject of complaints to the War Department from residents of Arkansas that he was "teaching negroes in a slave state to read - and possibly to write." During the Civil War, Loomis was Superintendent of Recruiting (1861-1864), stationed at Fort Columbus, the same post where he had begun his military service in 1811. He retired in 1865 as a Major General.