Hitchcock, Ethan Allen

Hitchcock, Ethan Allen, 1835–1909, U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1898–1907), b. Mobile, Ala. He was appointed minister to Russia in 1897 but was called into McKinley's cabinet the next year. Under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, Hitchcock prosecuted a vigorous program for the conservation of natural resources and reorganized the administration of Native American affairs.

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Hitchcock, Ethan Allen (1798–1870) soldier, author; born at Vergennes, Vt. (grandson of Ethan Allen). He graduated from West Point (1817) and commenced upon a remarkable military career. While commandant of cadets at West Point (1829–33), Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Edgar Allan Poe and others were among his pupils. He served in Florida and on Indian duty in the Northwest (1837–40). He wrote a scathing report on the frauds against the Cherokee Indians (1841–42) and he served in the Mexican War—although his diary indicated his distaste for that conflict. He retired in 1855, but then returned to duty in the Civil War and served as a Union commissioner for exchange of prisoners and as a major general of volunteers. He wrote numerous books on alchemy, religion, and spirituality, especially on Emanuel Swedenborg. He left an unpublished memoir, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, which was published in 1909.