Daniel Frost: The Confederate General Who Deserted

Brigadier General Daniel Marsh Frost

       There were only a couple of the 426 commissioned Confederate generals who were ever accused of cowardice. Daniel Marsh Frost was not one of them, however he is remembered today as the only Confederate general who deserted his cause. General Frost was born in Duanesburg, New York in 1823. He graduated from West Point ranked 4th in the class of 1844. Dan Frost saw action in the Mexican War and was brevetted for gallantry at the Battle of Cerro Gordo. Following the Mexican War, he almost lost an eye in a skirmish with Native Americans in Texas. In 1853, Frost resigned from the U.S. Army and began a career in business that involved both lumber and fur trading. By 1854, he was elected a senator in the Missouri State Legislature. He left the Missouri legislature in 1858 but became a brigadier general in the Missouri State Militia. 

       When the Civil War began, Frost was a supporter of the Southern states and raised Missouri troops for the Confederate cause. He and his recruits were surrounded by Federal troops near St. Louis, his men were marched through the city streets as prisoners and a riot broke out. After being exchanged he was commissioned brigadier general in the Confederate Army on March 3, 1862. He served briefly as a staff officer on Confederate General Braxton Bragg's staff before being reassigned to the Trans-Mississippi Department to serve under Major General Thomas C. Hindman. There he led a division in the Battle of Prairie Grove. In the spring of 1863, Hindman was relieved of duty in Little Rock, Arkansas (mostly for ruling the region with an iron fist) and Frost took command. 

       About five months after he took command of Confederate forces in Arkansas, Federal officials removed his family from their home in St. Louis, Missouri and exported them to Canada. Frost very quickly made a decision to desert the Confederate Army and rejoin his family in Canada. He didn't ask for permission to leave and was listed as a deserter from the Confederate Army (the only Confederate general out of the 426 to ever do so). He wouldn't return to Missouri until late 1865. 

       He spent the remainder of his life attempting to convince pro-Union people that he had not done anything wrong when he joined Confederate forces and at the same time he attempted to convince Southern supporters that he never really deserted. He wrote many articles attempting to explain what happened to him, but when he finally wrote his memoirs, he hardly even mentioned the greatest conflict of the time. 

       He died in 1900 on the outskirts of St. Louis and rests in that city today in Calvary Cemetery. He was 77 years old. No matter how you spin the story, he will always remain one of the most controversial generals of the war. 

Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost in a post-war view