Cadwallader, Sylvanus, 1825 or 1826-

Journalist and public official.

Journalist and war correspondent for the New York Herald.

Civil War correspondent for the Chicago Times and later Correspondent in Chief of the New York Herald, Cadwallader was attached to Grant's headquarters from 1862-1865. Grant liked Cadwallader and gave him privileges and information no other journalist had. He also learned Grant's opinion of many of the other major leaders in the war and was present for their meetings. After the war he interviewed Jefferson Davis, Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville Prison, attended the trial and execution of the Lincoln conspirators and went on a tour with President Johnson who was promoting his reconstruction policy.

Biographical Note

Sylvanus Cadwallader, born in Ohio in 1825 or 1826, attended school in Ross County, Ohio, and moved to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the early 1850s, where he started a newspaper career before becoming co-publisher with his brother-in-law, George H. Paul, of the Milwaukee Daily News . As a journalist with Union forces after 1861, he wrote for the Chicago Times and reported on General Ulysses S. Grant’s advance on Richmond for the New York Herald, including the surrender in April 1865 of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. Reportedly an assistant secretary of state of Wisconsin after the war, 1874-1878, he later moved to Missouri and then to San Diego, California. His account of his war experience, Three Years with Grant, as Reported by War Correspondent Sylvanus Cadwallader, written in California in 1876, was first published in 1955 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf), edited and with an introduction and notes by Benjamin P. Thomas.