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CLASS OF 1850
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Assigned to the topographical engineers after graduation, Warren participated in surveys of the Mississippi Delta and railroad routes to the Pacific.
He later compiled the first accurate map of the trans-Mississippi West.
A lifelong champion of Indian rights, Warren in the mid-1850s amassed an important collection of Sioux and other northern Plains Indian material
culture. Passed to the fledgling Smithsonian Institution, it joined the stream of specimens and notes from western exploration upon which such sciences
as natural history, geology, and ethnology flourished in America.
The Civil War made Warren a major general. In 1863 he married Emily Forbes Chase (they would have two children). Just two weeks later, he spotted the
Gettysburg battlefield’s key ground feature in time for its seizure by Union forces. Today his statue stands on Little Round Top, overlooking the
battlefield his topographical eye helped to win.
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