Hitchcock, Ethan Allen (1798–1870)

US soldier and author. He was commandant of cadets at West Point 1829–33, where Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Edgar Allan Poe 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 US 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 a memoir, Fifty Years in Camp and Field, which was published in 1909.

He was born at Vergennes, Vermont, the grandson of Ethan Allen. He graduated from West Point in 1817.