LETTER OF THE MONTH
BEHIND THE IMAGE
I’d like to shed some more light on the snapshot of a lone American Civil War general that featured in your May 2019 issue. The soldier floating on his makeshift pontoon is in fact Union Army BrigadierGeneral Herman Haupt, a civil engineer who became Chief of Construction and Transportation, US Military Railroads. The pontoon he is depicted paddling is actually of his own design and was used for inspecting bridge foundations.