George Henry Sharpe

George Henry Sharpe is arguably the father of U.S. military intelligence. After receiving two degrees from Rutgers and a law degree from Yale, Sharpe worked as an attorney for several years. As the Civil War ravaged the nation, he raised a regiment, the 120th New York, and commanded it during fighting in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, area. In 1863, Major General Joseph Hooker was named by President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army. Hooker was unhappy with the state of military intelligence and asked Sharpe to create a Bureau of Military Information. A few months later, the bureau accurately assessed General Robert E. Lee’s order of battle just before the Battle of Chancellorsville. Sharpe’s intelligence reports made additional vital contributions to the Union cause from the Battle of Gettysburg until the final siege at Petersburg. A U.S. Army study praised Sharpe’s practice of “comparing intelligence from a number of sources and evaluating it before passing it along.” Sharpe served as a U.S. Marshal from 1870 until 1873, and was instrumental in uncovering the Boss Tweed election fraud of 1868 in New York City. Sharpe served as a Rutgers College trustee from 1879 until his death in 1900.