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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dodge, Theodore Ayrault

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8067331911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 8 — Dodge, Theodore Ayrault

DODGE, THEODORE AYRAULT (1842–1909), American soldier and military writer, was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on the 28th of May 1842. He received a military education in Germany and subsequently studied at Heidelberg and London University, returning to the United States in 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he at once enlisted in the federal army, and he soon rose to commissioned rank. He served in the Army of the Potomac until Gettysburg, where he lost a leg. Incapacitated for further active service, he continued to be employed in administrative posts to the end of the war, and for several years thereafter he served at army headquarters, becoming captain in 1866 and brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1867. He retired in 1870. His works include The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1881), A Bird’s Eye View of our Civil War (1882, later edition 1897), a complete, accurate and remarkably concise account of the whole war, Patroclus and Penelope, a Chat in the Saddle (1883), Great Captains (1886), a series of lectures, Riders of Many Lands (1893), and a series of large illustrated volumes entitled A History of the Art of War, being lives of “Great Captains,” including Alexander (2 vols., 1888), Hannibal (2 vols., 1889), Caesar (2 vols., 1892), Gustavus Adolphus (2 vols., 1896) and Napoleon (4 vols., 1904–1907). He died in France, at Versailles, on the 26th of October 1909.