Darius N. Couch

Darius Nash Couch (July 23, 1822 – February 12, 1897) was a U.S. Army officer, naturalist, and a Union general in the American Civil War.

Couch, who pronounced his name "Dar-EYE-us Coach", was born in Putnam County, New York, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1846. He saw action in the Mexican War and the Second Seminole War before resigning from the service in 1855. He moved to Massachusetts and worked as a copper fabricator.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Couch reentered the army as colonel of the 7th Massachusetts Infantry, but was promoted to brigadier general on May 17, 1861. He was a brigade and division commander in the IV and VI Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and achieved some success in those roles in the Peninsula Campaign, the Seven Days Battles, and the Battle of Antietam. He assumed commander the II Corps on November 14, 1863, and led it in the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

Couch requested reassignment after being wounded at Chancellorsville and quarreling with Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, and commanded the Pennsylvania Militia and the Department of the Susquehanna during the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863. Later that year he was sent to the Western Theater, where he commanded a division in the XXIII Corps of the Army of the Ohio in the Atlanta Campaign, the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, and for the remainder of the war.

Couch moved to Connecticut after the war and served as the Quartermaster General, and then Adjutant General, for the state militia until 1884. He died in Norwalk, Connecticut. He is buried in Taunton, Massachusetts.

References

• Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J.: Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0–8047–3641–3