Henry Gorshing

Henry Stanton Gorshing (May 17, 1799 - September 5, 1859) was an American military officer and first President of the Dominal Base after its settlement and foundation in 1832. He served as a Colonel for the American army, stationed at Fort Jackson under General William Celebus, the founder of Celebus, New Jersey, from 1826 until his departure in 1832.

Early Life
Gorshing was born on May 17, 1799 in Trenton, New Jersey, just over fifteen years after the end of the American Revolutionary War. His parents had been born at the height of the protests against the British Empire's actions against the colonies. In fact, his parents had been just children when George Washington crossed the Delaware River with the Continental Army during the war. Several months after Gorshing's birth, George Washington died at his estate and Gorshing's parents mourned with emotional solitude. He was raised in Trenton in the early 1800s, attending public school until 1817, two years after the end of the War of 1812, which had suspended a lot of the school's services temporarily.

The War of 1812 shaped his outlook on the military, making the prospect of armed conflict a virtue of righteousness in his own head. The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 made Gorshing susceptible to the idea that the Native Americans were brutal warriors rebelling against American independence. "I dream of one day moving to the west and engaging the savages in the fight of a lifetime," he wrote on March 14, 1815 in a journal entry. "With one hand on my heart and another on my rifle, I would be the ideal me." While he didn't enjoy the armed combat itself, he liked what it stood for - a symbol of moral direction. He believed that reform and change could only come from constrained violence, a direction he continued on when he became the first President of the Dominal Base.

Military Career
After public school, which he didn't do too well in, Henry Gorshing entered straight into the military in September 1817, inspired by the American military prowess of the past decade; he was driven by this point by the desire to protect the country from an onslaught of Native Americans and British officers, which was to be fully anticipated after the invasion of Washington D.C. in 1814. He finished his training in Jackson, New Jersey, around 10 miles west of the shoreline, with high honors, and was placed as an officer on the first day of 1826. "Placed with high honors today as an Officer under Gen. Celebus, who has a reputation for being a headstrong tyrant. I've yet to see any such behavior," he wrote on January 1, keeping up his journal entries every few weeks to highlight important things in his life. Celebus had been stationed in Jackson, NJ for the time being for protective measures, even though no actual chaos had emerged from outside sources during this era. Internal conflicts, however, sprang up within the fort between General Celebus and the general stationed in Trenton, who wanted to maintain the military link between the two forts. Celebus wished to e xpand the base by pushing through open land to the east and e xploring the settlement options there. Up to that time, Native Americans had established an agreement with the American colonists that the area on the shoreline would be theirs.

During the three year disagreement,