Philip Kearny was born in New York City in 1815 into great wealth: his grandfather John Watts was the last royal recorder of New York and his father helped found the New York Stock Exchange. The family insisted on spelling the name without a second E and rhyming it with Killarney. Barred from the Army by his grandfather, he earned a law degree from Columbia in 1833, then inherited over $1 million in 1836 and joined the 1st U.S. Dragoons under his uncle Stephen W. Kearny, with Jefferson Davis as adjutant. Sent to study at Saumur, he fought in Algeria with the Chasseurs d’Afrique, who called him Kearny le Magnifique.

In the Mexican-American War he bought 120 matched dapple gray horses for his company, which became Winfield Scott’s bodyguard, and lost his left arm to grapeshot at Churubusco. After a scandal over his relationship with Agnes Maxwell, he fought for Napoleon III at Solferino in 1859 and became the first U.S. citizen awarded the Légion d’honneur. In the Civil War he commanded the 1st New Jersey Brigade, then a division of the 3rd Corps, and called George McClellan’s retreat after Malvern Hill cowardice or treason. On September 1, 1862, at Chantilly, he rode into Confederate lines in a thunderstorm and was shot dead.

• Kearny threw away letters that misspelled his name without reading them.
• At Williamsburg he told his men he was a one-armed Jersey son of a gun and to follow him.
• His order for officers to wear red cloth patches led to the corps badges Daniel Butterfield later standardized.
• A.P. Hill recognized the body, and Robert E. Lee had his belongings returned and burned his personal letters unread.
• He was reinterred at Arlington in 1912 under an equestrian statue dedicated in 1914.