Cyrus B. Comstock

Cyrus B. Comstock (born February 3, 1831, Wrentham, Massachusetts—died May 29, 1910, New York City, New York) was a Union army officer and engineer who commanded the Balloon Corps during the American Civil War and later founded the Comstock Prize in Physics.

Comstock was educated in the local public schools and at an academy in Scituate, Rhode Island. He was especially interested in surveying, though he also exhibited his family’s fascination with spiritualism and communication with the dead, an interest that is reflected in the diary of more than 800 pages that he kept throughout his life. Comstock obtained an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, through the office of U.S. Representative Horace Mann in 1851. He graduated in 1855 and was commissioned an engineer. He oversaw the construction of forts in Florida and Maryland until 1859, when he was appointed as an assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy at West Point.

After the Civil War began in 1861, Comstock was transferred from West Point to Washington, D.C., to assist with the construction of fortifications around the capital. During the Peninsular Campaign (April 4–July 1, 1862), the large but unsuccessful Union effort to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, he served as a member of the engineering staff of the Army of the Potomac, becoming chief engineer in November 1862 and holding that position until March 1863. In that capacity he oversaw the construction of pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock River prior to the crushing Union defeat in the Battle of Fredericksburg, on December 13, 1862. Comstock also commanded an engineer battalion during the Battle of Chancellorsville (May 1–5, 1863).

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During his tenure as chief engineer, Comstock made numerous ascents in hydrogen balloons with Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, chief aeronaut for the Union Balloon Corps (observing Confederate positions around Fredericksburg), and from April to May 1863 he served as staff officer supervising the Balloon Corps. Comstock attempted to impose regular military discipline on the corps and ordered immediate cutbacks in supplies and personnel. He also ordered Lowe to relieve civilian members of the Balloon Corps, including Lowe’s father, accusing the aeronaut of nepotism. Moreover, Comstock reduced Lowe’s salary from $10 to $6 per day, and—most infuriating to Lowe, who had enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in balloon operations under Comstock’s predecessors—Comstock ordered Lowe to clear all operations through him.

Lowe bristled at his newfound subordinate status and offered to resign. After Comstock declined the offer, Lowe lobbied incessantly for the restoration of his original salary and his previous autonomy. When Comstock made no concessions, Lowe resigned in May 1863, and the Balloon Corps as a whole disbanded.

Comstock then served as chief engineer in the siege and capture of Vicksburg in July 1863. After a convalescent leave, Comstock joined the staff of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as an aide-de-camp and assistant inspector general. Grant later detached Comstock to serve as the chief engineer for the capture of Fort Fisher in January 1865 and the Mobile Campaign of March–April 1865.

In early May 1865 Comstock was appointed to serve as one of the nine military commissioners overseeing the trial of the conspirators allegedly involved in the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Although initially eager to serve on the commission, he soon grew agitated. He protested to the president of the tribunal, Brevet Maj. Gen. David Hunter, about the treatment of the conspirators and questioned the secret nature of the hearings. He believed that the conspirators should be tried in a civilian court rather than by a military tribunal. His objections led Pres. Andrew Johnson to remove him from the commission, whereupon Comstock was reassigned to Grant’s staff, on which he served until May 1870.

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Comstock then led the Geodetic Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes from 1870 until its completion in 1882. He also served on the Mississippi River Commission from 1879 until his retirement in 1895, serving as the commission’s president during the last five years of his career. Throughout his tenures on the Geodetic Survey and the Mississippi River Commission, Comstock served on numerous engineering boards and published papers and books on civil engineering projects generally focused on improvements to rivers and harbours.

Comstock had married Elizabeth Blair, daughter of Lincoln’s Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, in 1869. She died in 1872 while giving birth to their daughter, who also died later that year. After his retirement in 1895, Comstock settled in New York City, where he died in 1910. Both he and Elizabeth were buried at West Point.

Although Comstock made no original theoretical contributions to science, his “busy life,” wrote his early biographer Henry Abbot, “was spent in the application of science to public needs rather than in original research.” Comstock donated $10,000 to the National Academy of Sciences to establish the Comstock Prize in 1907. Since 1913 the award has been given roughly every five years to a North American scientist “for recent innovative discovery or investigation in electricity, magnetism, or radiant energy, broadly interpreted.”

Aside from the physics prize named for him, Comstock is remembered chiefly as the dogmatic adversary of Lowe. His workmanlike contributions to practical physics and topography of the 19th century and his varied participation in the leading events of the Civil War are today rarely noted.