During the Siege of Vicksburg, Hains was cited for meritorious conduct while serving as the interim chief engineer of the XIII Corps. He was subsequently awarded a brevet promotion to major upon the capture of the city, July 4, 1863. Promoted to captain in the Engineers on July 18, he served out the remainder of the war, and received a brevet promotion to lieutenant colonel for his service during the war.[2]
Postbellum career
Major General Peter C. Hains Sr., 1910s. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Hains remained with the regular army following the war, and was promoted to major in September 1870. Much of his notable post-war service was in designing lighthouses for the U.S. Lighthouse Board, where he also served as Engineering Secretary. Among other accomplishments, Hains designed the Morris Island and St. Augustine lighthouses. He was the chief engineer for the construction of Morris Island light, at the entrance of the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, from 1872 to 1876.[2] He became a lieutenant colonel in 1886 and was promoted to colonel in August 1895. After a flood in 1881, he designed the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., thus solving the drainage problems and unpleasant odor of most of the Washington area marshlands. He also designed the Potomac Park, in Washington, D.C., and the tip of East Potomac Park is named Hains Point in his honor.[2]
Still in the Army during the Spanish–American War, Hains served as a brigadier general in the Volunteer Army from August to November 1898. He was promoted to brigadier general in the Regular Army on April 21, 1903. He successfully lobbied for the construction of the now current Panama Canal site over one proposed in Nicaragua.[2]
Hains retired from active service in 1904, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 64.[2]
Later life and World War I
Major General Hains at his desk in April 1918
On August 15, 1908, two of his three sons, Peter C. Hains Jr. and Thornton Jenkins Hains, a well-known author of sea stories, were involved in the murder of William E. Annis at the Bayside Yacht Club, Bayside, Queens, New York City. The crime, and the subsequent separate trials for the brothers, became one of the notorious cases of its day, front-page news across the country.[3] Thornton was acquitted in January 1909; Peter was convicted of manslaughter in May 1909 and sent to Sing Sing Prison, but, on Hains' appeal, was pardoned by John Alden Dix, Governor of New York, in 1911.[3] Hains spent much of his savings on financing the defense of his sons.
In recognition of his long and distinguished career, Hains was promoted to major general on the retired list in 1916.
He was recalled to active duty during the First World War, in September 1917, at the age of 77. He served as the chief engineer for the NorfolkHarbor and River District and then as chief engineer for the Eastern Division of the Corps of Engineers. He left active duty in the fall of 1918.[4]
Hains was the oldest officer to serve on active duty since Major General John E. Wool retired in 1863 at the age of 79. (The oldest active duty officer in the history of the U.S. Army was Brevet Brigadier General John Walbach who died on active duty in 1857 at the age of 90.) He was likely the only person to serve on active duty with the U.S. Military in both the American Civil War and the First World War.
His sons, John Power Hains and Peter Hains Jr., were both army officers. His grandson and namesake, Peter C. Hains III, was also a major general in the U.S. Army and competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics. All are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Further, his great-grandson, Col. Peter C. Hains IV, and great-great-grandson, Maj. John Power Hains II, served as Army officers while another great-great-grandson, Lt. Col. Paul Hains, served as an Army National Guard officer.
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