Caleb Huse served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Huse was deployed to London by the Confederate Government to serve as a purchasing agent for the army. In this role he purchased over 10$ million worth of rifles, artillery pieces, and other weaponry.
Background
Huse was born on February 11, 1831, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States. He was the eldest son of Ralph Cross and Caroline Evans Huse. He was a descendant of Abel Huse who was admitted to a freeman in Massachusetts in 1642 and died at Newbury in 1690. Caleb's mother died while he was still very young, and he lived for a time with the sisters of his first stepmother.
Education
In 1847 Caleb entered the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1851 seventh in his class.
Caleb Huse was made a brevet second lieutenant in the United States Army and assigned to the first regiment of artillery, serving for a time at Key West. He was on duty at West Point as an assistant professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology from 1852 until 1859, a period which included most of the time when Robert E. Lee was superintendent of the Academy.
On November 4, 1854, he was promoted to the first lieutenant. At a time when other young officers were becoming restive in the pre-war army, he procured leave in order to travel abroad, and on his return in 1860 he accepted a position as commandant of cadets at the University of Alabama, where military discipline was being introduced for reasons quite apart from politics. When his leave was suddenly terminated in February 1861, he at once resigned his commission.
His decision to serve the Confederacy, apparently made without hesitation, can be explained only by his association at West Point with Lee and other Southerners, and by his environment at the critical moment.
Caleb entered the Confederate army as a captain and was later made a major. About the first of April 1861, he was known as an artillery expert, he was summoned to Montgomery and soon left for Europe to purchase supplies for the army. Arriving in Liverpool on May 10, he found the market ill-supplied with small arms: "Everything has been taken by the agents from the Northern States," he reported, "and the quantity which they have secured is very small." Huse's first instructions were limited, and until early in August he was obliged to watch the Federal agents sweep the field. After the battle of Bull Run, however, the secretary of war gave him a free hand to purchase arms "from whatever places and at whatever price," and he plunged into the buying of all sorts of army supplies, including large amounts of clothing and medicines as well as ordnance. Among his interesting acquisitions were rifles and cannons from the Austrian government.
Huse showed much energy and was always supported by his immediate chief in Richmond, Colonel Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance, who wrote: "He succeeded, with very little money, in buying a good supply, and in running my department in debt for nearly half a million sterling, the very best proof of his fitness for his place." Captain Bulloch gave as his opinion that Huse's efforts were of great importance in enabling the South to check McClellan's advance on Richmond in 1862.
As a Northerner, Huse was suspected of disloyalty by some Southerners and suffered from the constant bickerings and charges of financial malpractice so rife among the Confederates abroad. There seems no reason to question his loyalty and business honesty, however.
At the end of the war he was left practically penniless with a large family. Huse returned to the United States about 1868. After being concerned in several business enterprises, in 1876 he started a school at Sing Sing, New York, to prepare candidates for the Military Academy at West Point. In 1879 the school was moved to Highland Falls, where for some twenty years it was successfully carried on, among those preparing there being men who have risen to the highest rank in the army.