12th LOGO

THE GENERALS WHO COMMANDED THE 12TH WVI
(Not a complete list.)


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER, (See Photo), was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, on November 5, 1818. Although diminutive in stature and having a cast in one eye, he was aggressive, dynamic, and resourceful. After the death of his father, his mother operated a boarding house in Lowell, Massachusetts. Young Butler went to Colby College in Maine, graduating in 1838. He returned to Lowell, taught school, was admitted to the bar in 1840, and soon built a large criminal practice with offices in Boston and Lowell. He was elected as a Democrat to the Massachusetts house of representatives in 1853 and to the state senate in 1859. The following year Butler was a delegate to the Democratic convention which met in Charleston, where he voted fifty-seven consecutive times to nominate Jefferson Davis for President of the United States. Butler later joined with other seceders from the Baltimore convention in backing the extreme States' Rights candidate, John C. Breckinridge. Before the decade was out, however, Butler was one of the foremost Republican Radicals to howl for the head of Andrew Johnson, whose fall from favor was occasioned by his soft policy toward such men as Davis and Breckinridge. As a brigadier general of the Massachusetts militia, Butler entered the war in dramatic fashion: five days after the bombardment of Sumter he lifted the blockade of Washington with the 8th Massachusetts. He was the first volunteer major general appointed by Lincoln (to rank from May 16, 1861), and although his military exploits were not such as to earn him a place beside Napoleon and Marlborough, in other respects his contributions to the Union cause were little short of monumental. Badly defeated in the action at Big Bethel while in command of Fort Monroe, Butler was the first to apply the term "contraband-of-war" to slaves of Southern masters who fled into the Union lines. In August, Butler commanded the successful amphibious attack on Hatteras Inlet and the following May entered New Orleans with his troops -the city had already surrendered to the fleet under Admiral David G. Farragut. Appointed military governor, Butler's subsequent conduct of office was controversial. He was vilified in the South and declared an outlaw by President Davis and was even accused of stealing the silverware from the house in which he made his headquarters. That he governed effectively and performed useful service is impossible to deny, but that he lined his own pockets and those of his family and friends seems equally evident. He was removed in December, 1862, but was given command of the Army of the James in 1863. This army consisted of two corps which U. S. Grant intended to employ as a part of the over-all strategy of the 1864 campaign. Butler's ineptness resulted in his entire force being bottled up at Bermuda Hundred by a greatly inferior force under the Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. After some service in New York City in November, 1864, Butler was ordered by Grant to return home and await orders in January, 1865. He resigned his commission on November 30. Elected to Congress as a Republican in 1866, Butler served until 1875, meantime, as noted above, taking a prominent part in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868. Loathed by conservative Democrats and Republicans alike in Massachusetts, Butler repeatedly ran for governor of the state from 1871 until 1882, when he was finally elected. In 1878 he was elected once again to Congress, this time as a Greenbacker -the third of his political affiliations. He was presidential candidate of this party in 1884. General Butler died in Washington, D. C., on January 11, 1893, and was buried in his wife's family cemetery in Lowell. His daughter married General Adelbert Ames.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 60-61;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


GUSTAVE PAUL CLUSERET, (See Photo), was born in Suresnes, France, on June 13, 1823. In 1841 he was admitted to St. Cyr, then the West Point of France. Seven years later he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor for helping suppress the insurrection of June, 1848, against the Orleanist regime. With the return to power of the Bonapartists, he was temporarily retired but soon reinstated. He served in Algeria and in the Crimea and was promoted to captain in 1855. Resigning his commission in 1858, he commanded the French Legion in Giuseppe Garibaldi's forces and was wounded at the siege of Capua. Among many military adventurers who flocked to the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War, Cluseret arrived in January, 1862, and was commissioned colonel and aide-de-camp on the staff of General George B. McClellan. Soon afterward he joined John C. Fremont's entourage, was given a brigade, and fought tenaciously at the battle of Cross Keys. For his services here he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers to rank from October 14, 1862. After service in the Shenandoah, he was reported in arrest (charges un-stated) in January, 1863, when General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck (in responding to William S. Rosecrans' request that Cluseret be detailed to him) telegraphed: "If you knew him better, you would not ask for him. You will regret the application as long as you live. . . ." (*70) Cluseret resigned on March 2, 1863; the following year he edited a weekly in New York which advocated Fremont for the presidency while vehemently opposing the renomination of Abraham Lincoln. Returning to Europe in 1867, Cluseret soon had a price placed upon his head by the British government for his alleged complicity in the Fenian uprisings, was jailed by the French government for inflammatory magazine articles, and was ultimately allowed to leave France by claiming he was a naturalized American. Returning after the fall of Napoleon III, he schemed against the provisional government and was condemned to death - although the sentence was not executed - during the period of the Commune. In later years he was four times elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Toulon. General Cluseret died near Hyeres, Department of the Var, August 22, 1900. He was buried in the Old Cemetery of the Commune in Suresnes. (*71)

(*70) - Official Records, XXIII, Pt. 2, pp. 11-12.

(*71) - No problem of research in connection with Union generals presented more of a challence than that of Cluseret. Aside from a brief obituary in the New York Herald, August 24, 1900, which incorrectly recorded the day of his death, all background research is especially indebted to M. Maxine Serre of Toulon, Mrs. Roy O. Cook of Algiers, stepmother of Mrs. Carolyn Sutton of San Diego, and Mrs. Kenneth Garner of San Diego, whose fluent French supplemented the author's meager command of the language.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 85-86;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


GEORGE CROOK, (See Photo), was born near Dayton, Ohio, September 8, 1828. Securing his early education in the common schools, he was graduated from West Point in 1852, ranking thirty-eighth in a class of forty-three, and was commissioned in the 4th Infantry. Until the outbreak of the Civil War, Crook was stationed mainly in northern California and in Washington. On September 12, 1861, he was appointed colonel of the 36th Ohio and with his regiment served in western Virginia. In August, 1862, he was commissioned brigadier general and took part in the Maryland campaign, engaging in the battles of South Mountain and Sharpsburg in command of a brigade of three Ohio regiments, including his own. In 1863, Crook commanded a cavalry division of George H. Thomas' Army of the Cumberland and took part in the Chickamauga campaign. The following year he was again assigned to the Kanawha District in western Virginia where he defeated and routed the forces of Confederate General A. G. Jenkins at the battle of Cloyd's Mountain. That August he was given command of the Department of Western Virginia and, subsequently, of one of the three corps of Sheridan's army in the Shenandoah. He was promoted to major general of volunteers to rank from October 21, 1864. The following February he returned to the command of his department and made his headquarters at Cumberland, Maryland, at that time a town of some eight thousand inhabitants. Here, one of the most daring feats of the war was performed at Crook's expense. Crook's private rooms were in the Revere House, a hotel operated by one Daily (or Dailey), whose daughter Mary later became Crook's wife. Daily's son was a member of Captain Jesse McNeill's band of Confederate "Partisan Rangers." Early in the morning of February 21 these sixty young men overpowered or deceived the Union pickets and, in the face of some ten thousand Union troops, captured and made off with Generals Crook and Benjamin F. Kelley who was also engaged to a Cumberland belle. They were taken to Richmond, where they were paroled and subsequently exchanged - Crook, as of March 20, 1865. (*86) During the final operations culminating in the surrender at Appomattox, General Crook commanded a division of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac and was brevetted major general in the regular service. In the army reorganization of 1866, Crook became lieutenant colonel of the 23rd Infantry. For the next twenty years he enjoyed unusually rapid promotion to the grade of major general and was constantly on the western frontier, pacifying the various tribes of hostile Indians. One of his few failures was against Geronimo's Southern Chiricahua Apaches; their surrender was engineered by General Nelson A. Miles a few months after Crook's relief. From 1888 his headquarters was in Chicago, where he commanded the Division of the Missouri until his death on March 21, 1890. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

(*86) - Secretary of War Stanton was so enraged by this event that U. S. Grant had to cool him off umtil an official investigation was made. Even then (and no investigation took place) there was talk of replacing Crook with Crocker. The latter, however, was in New Mexico and unavailable. All the details of this incident are in the Official Records, XLVI, passim.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 102-104;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


JOHN GIBBON, (See Photo), was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 20, 1827. As a small boy, he was taken to Charlotte, North Carolina, from which state he was appointed to the Military Academy. He was graduated from there in 1847, ranking in the middle of the class; his most famous classmates were Ambrose P. Hill of the Confederacy and Ambrose E. Burnside of the Union. Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Gibbon saw service in Mexico, against the Florida Seminoles, and at the Academy where he was on duty for five years as an artillery instructor and quartermaster. In 1861 he was a captain of the 4th Artillery, stationed at Fort Leavenworth. Although his wife was from Batlimore and three of his brothers entered the confederate army, Gibbon adhered to the Union. After some months as chief of artillery in Irvin McDowell's division, he was made a brigadier general of volunteers on May 2, 1862, and assigned to the command of the "Iron Brigade," which he led at Second Manassas and in the Maryland campaign. In November, 1862, Gibbon was advanced to command of the 2nd Division of John F. Reynolds' I Corps and was badly wounded at Fredericksburg the following month. Returning to duty after a three-month convalescence, he directed the 2nd Division of Winfield S. Hancock's II Corps - - and on two occasions the corps itself - with conspicuous gallantry and distinction at Gettysburg, until he was again wounded and carried off the field. Upon his recovery he commanded the Cleveland and Philadelphia draft depots until the commencement of U. S. Grant's Overland campaign in 1864, when he assumed the direction of his old division. With it he fought in all the battles between the Wilderness and the investment of Petersburg, and was promoted to major general to rank from June 7, 1864. In January, 1865, he was given command of the newly organized XXIV Corps, Army of the James. At Appomattox he was one of the commissioners designated to receive the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia. After the war General Gibbon received the usual brevets and was appointed colonel of the 36th U. S. Infantry and in 1869 of the 7th U. S. Infantry; his service was mainly against the Indians on the frontier, where the fallacy of oursuing the world's finest horsemen with foot soldiers was indelibly illustrated. Nevertheless, Gibbon's overall conduct of operations was highly commendable. He shared no blame in Custer's headstrong conduct at Little Big Horn, arriving in time only to rescue the survivors of Custer's command and to bury the dead. The following year he conducted a successful campaign the Nez Perces and on July 10, 1885, was made a brigadier general in the Regular Army. After retirement in 1891, he made his home in Baltimore where he died on February 6, 1896, serving at the time as commander in chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. General Gibbon was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was the author of The Artillerist's Manual, published by the War Department in 1860, and of Personal Recollections of The Civil War, written in 1885 but not published until 1928.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 171-172;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT, (See Photo), ranking general of the armies of the United States and eighteenth President, was born April 27, 1822, in the Ohio River hamlet of Point Pleasant, Ohi. He was baptized Hiram Ulysses; however, upon his admission to West Point in 1839 he was reported by the Congressman who had authored his appointment as Ulysses Simpson, Simpson being his mother's maiden name. In his four years at the Academy he was outstanding only in equestrianism, a proficiency gained at his father's farm, where at the age of seven he had begun to haul wood with a team. "Sam" Grant was graduated twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine and on July 1, 1843, was brevetted a second lieutenant of infantry, there being no vacancy in any of the cavalry regiments for the best horseman at West Point. During the Mexican War he rendered distinguished service in the army of Zachary Taylor, whom Grant greatly admired. After the battle of Monterey, Grant's 4th Infantry was transferred to Winfield Scott's army of invasion at Vera Cruz, and as regimental quartermaster Grant discharged his staff duties with great ability and also took part in the fighting at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec, which won him the brevets of first lieutenant and captain. Assigned to the Pacific Northwest, he seems to have at times taken to the bottle, and after a warning from his commanding officer, resigned his army commission as of July 31, 1854. During the next six years he was successively (and unsuccessfully) a farmer, real estate salesman, candidate for county engineer (at St. Louis), and customhouse clerk. At length he was reduced to a clerkship in a leather store conducted by his two brothers in Galena, Illinois. At this point Grant's career started upward: within three years he commanded the armies of the United States, and within seven he was elected Chief Executive. Few army officers in American history have achieved such rapid advancement from relative obscurity. However, even at the outbreak of war Grant found no ready market for his talents and it was not until June 17, 1861, that he was appointed colonel of the 21st Illinois - despite his having offered his services to the adjutant general in Washington and to General George B. McClellan, then considering applications in Cincinnati. Grant's regiment was ordered to Missouri, where on August 7 he was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers to rank from May 17. The appointment stemmed from Grant's connection with Elihu B. Washburne, an important member of the Illinois Congressional delegation which parceled out the four Illinois brigadierships. After having been in command at Cairo for a time and having survived the ill-advised attack on Belmont, Missouri, Grant prepared to assault the center of the Confederate line protecting Nashville. The resulting surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson in February, 1862, won him vast stretches of Confederate-held territory, the acclaim of the nation, the sobriquet of "Unconditional Surrender," and a commission as major general of volunteers. Next followed the bloody battle of Shiloh, in which Grant and W. T. Sherman were surprised by Albert Sidney Johnston and nearly driven into the Tennessee River, before the arrival of D. C. Buell and the death of Johnston helped turn the tide. Until July 1863, Grant occupied himself with plans to take the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, which would split the Confederacy in two and give the Union control of the last railroad leading east from the Mississippi. After one abortive attempt in the fall of 1862, Grant determined to march his troops down the west bank of the river to a rendezvous with David Porter's gunboats which were to run the batteries and then ferry Grant's men to the east bank. The plan was successful; after interposing between the forces of Joseph E. Johnston and John C. Pemberton, Grant defeated Johnston with his right, driving him out of Jackson, and with his left drove Pemberton into his fortifications at Vicksburg, after inflicting defeats on him at Baker's Creek (Champion's Hill) and Big Black River Bridge. The Confederate garrison capitulated July 4, 1863, and Grant was acclaimed and rewarded with the appointment to major-general in the Regular Army. In November came the relief of William S. Rosecrans' beleaguered forces in Chattanooga, the replacement of Rosecrans by George H. Thomas in command of the Army of the Cumberland, and the routing of Braxton Bragg's army by the combined forces of Thomas, Sherman, and Joseph Hooker. A gold medal, the revived grade of lieutenant general carrying with it command of all the armies, and the adulation of the Union were now bestowed upon Grant. At this juncture a coordinated plan was devised to bring about the downfall of the Confederacy: hurling George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac against Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the James against Lee's communications, and Sherman's forces (Armies of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland) against Johnston's Confederate Army of Tennessee - which was entrenched ninety miles northwest of Atlanta. Making his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, Grant directed the sanguinary struggles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, the North Anna, and Cold Harbor in May and June of 1864. Union losses were staggering and equaled the entire strength of Lee's army at the beginning of the campaign. Following the failure to take Petersburg by assault, the siege was on from June 18 until the breakthrough the following spring; the campaign was a gradual extension of the Federal lines to the left to gain possession of the rail lines which supplied Petersburg and Richmond, highlighted by numerous assaults which in the main were successfully resisted by Lee. Sheridan's victory at Five Forks on April 1, 1865, and the penetration of the main Confederate line the following morning compelled Lee to evacuate the two cities and march westward hoping to unite with Johnston. But he was brought to bay at Appomattox and the morning of April 9 surrendered to Grant. On April 26 the war was virtually over when Johnston surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina. The following year Congress revived the grade of full general, unused since the days of Washington, and conferred it upon the general in chief. His siding with the Congressional Radicals and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton against President Andrew Johnson during the Tenure of Office Act imbroglio made Grant the inevitable Republican candidate for President in 1868. He was easily elected over his opponent Horatio Seymour. Grant doled out Cabinet positions with little regard for fitness; criticism was not brooked; and gifts were loosely accepted. However, Grant's abundance of simple honesty weathered the storms of the 1873 panic, the earlier factionalism which had impeached a President, the dispute with England, and the threat of crisis during the disputed election of 1876. Following his retirement from the presidency, Grant traveled abroad for two years and in 1880 was a leading contender for nomination to a third term 306 delegates remaining loyal until the end, when a coalition of Grant's oppo- nents agreed upon James A. Garfield as the candidate. The last years of Grant's life were marked by want, misfortune, and agonizing illness. He lived in New York in a house and on a trust fund donated by admirers for a time, but the income failed and he entered a business in which his name could be exploited. The insolvency of the brokerage firm of Grant & Ward threw Grant into bankruptcy and his swords and souvenirs were lost as security for a loan which he had been unable to repay. At length his friends succeeded in having his name restored to the retired list of the army, carrying with it a salary for life. In his last months he wrote his memoirs which were published by Mark Twain. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant proved to he one of the greatest successes in the annals of publishing, earning nearly $450,000 for his family. Toward the end, speechless and racked by throat cancer, Grant wrote notes on slips of paper in order to finish the manuscript. He died on July 23, 1885, at Mount McGregor, New York, and his remains lie in a mausoleum on Riverside Drive in New York City.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 183-186;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


THOMAS MALEY HARRIS, (See Photo), was born on June 17, 1817, in Wood County (now Ritchie) on the Ohio River, in that part of Virginia, which in 1862 became West Virginia. He studied medicine and in the years before the war practiced his profession at Harrisville and Glenville, Virginia. In the latter part of 1861, Harris aided in recruiting the 10th West Virginia and upon its muster was appointed first its lieutenant colonel and on May 20, 1862, its colonel. The regiment shared in the reverses sustained during Stonewall Jackson's celebrated Shenandoah Valley campaign. In May, 1863, Harris and his regiment were ordered back to West Virginia and attached to William W. Averell's "Fourth Sepa- rate" brigade. After participation in some minor operations, it took part in the bloody fight at Cloyd's Mountain in May, 1864, where Confederate General A. G. Jenkins was mortally wounded. That summer Harris commanded a brigade under George Crook during Jubal Early's raid on Washington and subsequently in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, under the leadership of Philip Sheridan, distinguished himself in command of a division of the Army of West Virginia at Winchester and at Cedar Creek. He was brevetted brigadier general of volunteers for his services at the latter battle and on March 29, 1865, was accorded full rank. Meantime, on December 19, 1864, Harris' division was ordered to the Petersburg front, where it was attached to the Army of the James and took part in the final operations against Robert E. Lee's army. After serving on the commission which tried the Abraham Lincoln conspirators, Harris was mustered out in 1866 with the brevet rank of major general for "gallant conduct in the assault on Petersburg." After the war General Harris served one term in the West Virginia legislature, was adjutant general of the state in 1869-70, and was pension agent at Wheeling from 1871 to 1877. In addition he practiced his profession and authored several medical essays and a religious tract entitled "Calvinism Vindicated." He also wrote a very prejudiced account of the Lincoln conspirators' trial, Assassination of Lincoln. He died in Harrisville on September 30, 1906, at the age of ninety, and was buried in the town cemetery. (*187)

(*187) - The author is indebted to Mr. Boyd S. Stutler, Charleston, West Virginia, for certain facts of General Harris' career.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 209-210;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


DAVID HUNTER, (See Photo), whose maternal grandfather, Richard Stockton, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Washington on July 21, 1802. Cullum's Register states that "little is known of his early life before entering the Military Academy," from which he was graduated in 1822. Serving on frontier duty in what was then the Northwest - stationed at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) from 1828 to 1831 - he met and married the daughter of the city's first permanent resident, John Kinzie. He resigned in 1836 in order to speculate in Chicago real estate, but six years later returned to the army as paymaster with the staff rank of major. In 1850 Hunter, then stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, initiated a correspondence with the newly elected President Lincoln, which won for him an invitation to travel on the inaugural train to Washington in February, 1861. Almost immediately he became a prime example of Lincoln's inability - at that stage of the war - to select officers for high command, for he was made the fourth ranking volunteer general. Hunter's Civil War record ranged from his order abolishing slavery in the Department of the South in March, 1862 (repudiated instantly by Lincoln) to his burning of the buildings of the Virginia Military Institute in 1864, following which he retired rapidly into the mountains of West Virginia. He had previously presided at the court-martial of Fitz John Porter - "organized to convict" as it was said - and would win the additional distinction of presiding at the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt evidently feeling that he had a kindred spirit who could be depended upon to exclude all testimony favorable to the defense and unfavorable to summary execution. His confidence was not misplaced. Mrs. Surratt and three others were hurried to the gallows. Hunter accompanied the body of President Lincoln to Springfield. Hunter's field service embraced the first Manassas campaign, where he was wounded; the battle of Secessionville, during which he unsuccessfully attempted to take Charleston; and the battle of Piedmont, after which he yielded up the Shenandoah Valley to General Jubal Early, who promptly marched on Washington. In 1866 he was retired as colonel of cavalry with the brevets of brigadier and major general, U. S. Army. Thereafter he lived in Washington until his death on February 2, 1886; he was buried in Princeton, New Jersey.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 243-244;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KELLEY, (See Photo), was born April 10, 1807, in New Hampton, New Hampshire. At the age of nineteen he moved to Wheeling, in what is now West Virginia, and in 1851 became freight agent of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad there. In May, 1861, Kelley raised the 1st (West) Virginia, a ninety-day regiment which he led at the battle of Phillippi on June 3. (*290) He was wounded severely during this engagement and upon recovery was commissioned brigadier general to rank from May 17. Virtually all of General Kelley's war service took place in West Virginia and Maryland, where his principal duty was to guard the line of the Baltimore and Ohio and to fend off the constant incursions of Confederate raides seeking to sever this vital line of communications. In consequence he took part in the pursuit of the army of Northern Virginia after Gettysburg, the dispersal of Imboden's camp near Moorefield in November, 1863, and the engagements at Cumberland, Maryland, and Moorefield and New Creek, West Virginia in 1864. On February 21, 1865, a band of Confederate partisan rangers made a raid on Cumberland, Maryland, and carried off General Kelley along with General George Crook, his superior in command of the department of West Virginia. Both Crook and Kelley were at the time engaged to belles of the town (whom they subsequently married), and the affair created a contemporary furore which has been studiously ignored by the biographers of both men. (291) Aftera brief sojurn in Richmond, Kelley was released by special exchange. He had been brevetted major general on August 5, 1864, and on June 1, 1865, resigned from the army. During the remainder of his life General Kelley held a succession of Federal positions as a reward for his wartime exploits: President Grant made him a collector of internal revenue for West Virginia in 1866 and superintendent of the Hot Springs, Arkansas, military reservation ten years later; in 1883 President Arthur appointed him an examiner of pensions. He died in Oakland, Maryland, on July 16, 1891, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

(*290) - In the first year of the war the "loyal" regiments recruited in western Virginia were called 1st Virginia, 2nd Virginia, etc. After Congress admitted West Virginia as a state in 1862, the nomenclature was changed accordingly.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 260-261;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


ROBERT HUSTON MILROY, (See Photo), was born June 11, 1816, on a farm near Salem, Indiana, but the family moved to Carroll County in 1826. At the age of twenty-four he matriculated at Captain Partridge's Academy in Norwich, Vermont, and was graduated in 1843 with degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Military Science. From 1846 to 1847 he served as a captain of a company if the 1st Indiana Volunteers. Then he studied law, was admitted to the bar, was a member of the constitutional convention of 1850, was appointed to the bench and resigned, and in 1854 took up the practice of law in Rensselaer, Indiana, where the outbreak of the Civil War found him. Milroy had recruited a company in and about Rensselaer before Lincoln's inauguration, and two weeks after Sumter he was mustered into Federal service as colonel of the 9th Indiana (a three-month unit which he reenlisted for three years after the expiration of its original term of service). After taking part in George B. McClellan's western Virginia campaign, Milroy was promoted brigadier general of volunteers on September 3, 1861, and major general on March 10, 1863, to rank from November 29, 1862. He commanded the Cheat Mountain district for a time and then was engaged in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862. He later commanded an "Independent Brigade," attached to Sigel's corps, at the battle of Second Manassas. The following June, in command of some 6,000 to 8,000 men at Winchester, he was outmaneuvered, outfought, and virtually "gobbled up" by Ewell's 2nd Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia while en route to Gettysburg. He lost thirty-four hundred prisoners, all twenty-three pieces of his artillery, and many dead and wounded. Milroy himself, with two hundred or three hundred cavalry, made good his escape to Harpers Ferry. (*417) He held no further command in the field; however, after being hailed before a court of inquiry and being subjected to ten months of inactivity, he was at length formally "exonerated" of culpability and toward the end of the war served under G. H. Thomas at Nashville, organizing and assigning militia regiments. Postbellum General Milroy was a trustee of the Wabash and Erie Canal Company and after 1872 Indian agent in Olympia, Washington, where he died, March 29, 1890, and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery. Years later the people of Rensselaer erected a bronze statue of heroic size to his memory.

(*417) - At this juncture General Henry W. Halleck, the general-in-chief, remarked acidly in a telegram to General Robert C. Schenck, Milroy's department commander, "Do not give General Milroy any command... We have had enough of that sort of military genius..." (Official Records, XXVII, Pt. 3, p. 124.)

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; page 326;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


EDWARD OTHO CRESAP ORD, (See Photo), was born in Cumberland, Maryland October 18, 1818, but when he was a year old, his parents moved to Washington where he received his early education, much of it from his father. (*449) He demonstrated great proficiency in mathematics and at the early age of sixteen received an appointment to West Point from which he was graduated in 1839. His first field service was against the perennially troublesome Florida Seminoles; then he was on duty in California during the Mexican War and in the meantime was advanced in rank from second lieutenant to captain. In the interval before the Civil War, Ord was on Indian duty in the Pacific Northwest; in 1859, however, chancing to be stationed at Fort Monroe, he participated in the expedition which suppressed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. In 1861 he was again in California, where he was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers on September 14, 1861, and ordered East. During the first winter of the war he commanded a brigade on the right of the Washington defenses and saw his first action at Dranesville against Jeb Stuart. On May 3, 1862, Ord was appointed major general and ordered to the Western theater, where he won the regular brevet of colonel for "gallant and meritorious services" at Iuka - even though he was not present at the battle, not even within the sound of it. (*450) A few days later, however, he performed good service by roughing up Van Dorn's Confederates who were falling back after their abortive assault on Corinth. He was severely wounded in this encounter and did not return to field duty until June, 1863, when he took part in the Vicksburg campaign as commander of the XIII Corps. Subsequently, he had commands in Louisiana and in the Shenandoah, was assigned the VIII Corps, and finally the XVIII Corps in the operations before Richmond. During the successful attack on Fort Harrison in September, 1864, Ord was again seriously wounded and did not resume command until January, 1865, when he took charge of the Army of the James and the Department of North Carolina, both formerly under Benjamin F. Butler. After the surrender at Appomattox, General Ord commanded various military departments, was made a brigadier general in the Regular Army as of July 26, 1866, and was retired as a major general in 1881. While on a ship bound from New York to Vera Cruz, he was stricken with yellow fever and died in Havana on July 22, 1883. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

(*449) - Edward O. C. Ord's father James Ord is thought to have been a natural son of George IV of England by his morganatic marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert. This is family tradition as verified for the author by a great-great-nephew of E. O. C. Ord, Ord Preston of La Jolla, California.

(*450) - Horn, The Army of the Tennessee, 174.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 349-350;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


BENJAMIN STONE ROBERTS, (See Photo), a descendant of an old New England family of Welsh extraction, was born in Manchester, Vermont, on November 18, 1810. He graduated West Point, ranking near the bottom of the class of 1835, but resigned his commission four years later in order to become chief civil engineer of a New York railroad which is now a part of the Rutland. He was appointed geologist of New York State in 1841 and the following year aided in the construction of the railroad line from St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) to Moscow. After returning to the United States he studied law and began a practice in Des Moines, Iowa. With the outbreak of the Mexican War, Roberts was reappointed in the army with the rank of first lieutenant of Mounted Rifles. He was promoted to the regular rank of captain and the brevet ranks of major and lieutenant colonel and received a sword from his adopted state of Iowa - all for his distinguished service in this war. Remaining in the army, he discharged frontier duty at various stations in the Southwest and was promoted to major of his regiment on May 13, 1861 (the regiment's name was changed to 3rd Cavalry under the act of August 3, 1861). Roberts took part under Edward Canby in opposing Confederate General Henry Sibley's New Mexico invasion and was brevetted colonel for his services at the battle of Val- verde. Soon after, he was summoned East and during the campaign of Second Manassas, served as John Pope's inspector general as well as his chief of cavalry, thus becoming embroiled in the celebrated case of Fitz John Porter in which he officially preferred the charges which brought Porter to ruin. (*526) After the trial he was shelved along with Pope and sent to Minnesota where he remained until recalled to Washington in February, 1863, to briefly command the upper defenses of the capital. He then held a series of minor commands until the end of the war. Nevertheless, his efforts in behalf of the clique pledged to oust George B. McClellan from command of the army were not unnoticed: he had received the full rank of brigadier general of volunteers to rank from July 16, 1862, and was awarded the brevets of brigadier in the regular service and major general of volunteers at the close of the war. Roberts became lieutenant colonel of his regiment in 1866 and was assigned as Professor of Military Science at Yale in 1868. He retired in 1870 so he could prosecute claims against the United States. He died in Washington, January 29, 1875, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, his remains later being removed to his birthplace.

(*526) - Roberts, as did some of the judges themselves, served as a catspaw for Edwin M. Stanton; he not only brought the charges but also testified against Porter at the court-martial. Roberts' subsequent career is mute testimony to the regard in which he was held in army circles.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 405-406;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


PHILIP HENRY SHERIDAN, (See Photo), Philip Henry Sheridan, one of the three Union generals who won the greatest fame in the Civil War, may have been born in any one of several locations on a date which he himself occasionally reestablished. According to his memoirs, he was born in Albany, New York, on March 6, 1831. (*578) When he was an infant the family moved to the frontier village of Somerset, Ohio, where the future general secured a basic education, clerked in a country store, and received an appointment to West Point in the class of 1852 by virtue of the failure of the original appointee to pass the entrance examination. A year before his expected graduation, "a quarrel of a belligerent character" with a fellow-cadet (later General William R. Terrill) resulted in his suspension from the Academy for a year. (*579) Accordingly he was graduated in 1853, ranking in the bottom third of his class. After eight years of service on the frontier his advance in rank from the grade of second lieutenant, 4th Infantry, was not achieved until the defection of superiors to the Confederate cause created vacancies in the line of promotion in 1861. Sheridan's first active field service was as chief quartermaster and commissary of the Army of Southwest Missouri; next he served as General Henry W. Halleck's headquarters quartermaster during the tortoise-like advance on Corinth subsequent to Shiloh. On May 25, 1862, however, he was appointed colonel of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry; thereafter his rise in rank and responsibility was meteoric and is comparable only to that of John B. Hood, Sheridan's classmate who rose from first lieutenant to full general in the Confederate hierarchy. Sheridan was made a brigadier general of volunteers on September 13, 1862, to rank from July 1; fought stubbornly at Perryville and Murfreesboro; and on March 16, 1863, was promoted major general to rank from the date of the battle of Murfreesboro. At Chickamauga Sheridan commanded the 3rd Division of Alexander McD. McCook's XX Corps, losing 1,500 out of 4,000 men brought into action as well as two of his three brigade commanders. Some two months later at Missionary Ridge during the various encounters which made up the battle of Chattanooga, Sheridan's men, without orders from anybody, clawed up the height and wrested it from their Confederate opponents. The position was considered impregnable by the Southern commander, Braxton Bragg, and its loss occasioned his relief from command at his own request. Sheridan, on the other hand, made a reputation which immediately attracted the attention of U. S. Grant, who assigned him to the supervision of all of the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac the following spring. At this time Sheridan, a relatively obscure division commander of infantry, sprang into world prominence. Coincident with the beginning of Grant's Overland campaign against Richmond in May, 1864, Sheridan's 10,000 Federal troopers began to make themselves felt in opposition to the depleted and poorly horsed legions of the legendary Jeb Stuart. His men killed Stuart at Yellow Tavern in May, but were not so successful at Hawes' Shop and Trevilian Station. Nevertheless, a constant flow of propaganda magnified Sheridan's successes along with those of Grant, while minimizing the reverses and attendant casualties. After Jubal Early's raid on the environs of Washington in July, 1864, Sheridan was placed in command of the VI and XIX Corps, three divisions of cavalry, and a plentiful supply of artillery (the whole numbering some 43,000 electives and ordered to close the "back door on Washington," Virginia's fertile Shenandoah Valley, by destroying everything which could lend support to the Confederate war effort. He defeated and drove back Early at Winchester and Fisher's Hill in September, but in October, while he was absent, his Army of the Shenandoah was surprised and temporarily routed by the numerically inferior Rebels. Only Early's dilatoriness - a consequence of his indulging in the fond hope that the defeated Federals would dissolve into retreat - saved Sheridan, who was en route from Winchester "twenty miles away," from disaster. Arriving on the field after passing a stream of fugitives, Sheridan, a battlefield tactician of the first order, found only Getty's division of the VI Corps and the cavalry in line of battle and resisting the enemy. In a matter of hours and in the absence of further Confederate pressure, Sheridan reformed his army and retrieved victory from defeat. For this exploit he was made a major general in the Regular Army on November 14, 1864, to rank from November 8, and received the thanks of Congress. Having made of the Shenandoah a wasteland where "a crow would be compelled to carry his own rations," Sheridan rejoined the Army of the Potomac in front of Petersburg in time to take a leading part in the operations which culminated in Robert E. Lee's capitulation at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. At Five Forks Sheridan smashed the weakened Confederate right flank; at Sayler's Creek he compelled the surrender of a large segment of what remained of the renowned Army of Northern Virginia; and near Appomattox he got the leading elements of his men astride Lee's line of retreat. After the conclusion of hostilities in Virginia, Sheridan was instrumental in forcing the government of Napoleon III to withdraw its military support of the Mexican Emperor Maximilian of Austria. The nadir of Sheridan's career was reached in 1867 when he occupied the post of commander of the Fifth Military District, an area embracing Louisiana and Texas which was established by the oppressive Reconstruction acts. Sheridan's administrative policies were so stringent and severe that his removal by President Johnson after six months met with only slight protest from the Radicals in Congress. Upon the accession of Grant to the presidency in 1869, W. T. Sherman became a full general and Sheridan, lieutenant general. Until 1883 Sheridan occupied a number of posts including command of the Division of the Missouri in a period when troubles with the Plains Indians were an everyday occurrence. In 1870-71 he witnessed at first hand the Franco-Prussian War which resulted in the unification of Germany. In 1884 upon the retirement of Sherman he became commanding general of the army and a few months before his death was elevated to the rank of full general to rank from June 1, 1888. General Sheridan died on August 5, 1888, at Nonquitt, Massachusetts, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His wife was a daughter of General Daniel H. Rucker. (*578) - Sheridan stated at times that he was born in Massachusetts and at other times, in Somerset, Ohio. When he entered West Point he indicated that he was born in 1830, but, in 1864 when he accepted his commission as brigadier general in the Regular Army, he moved the year of his birth to 1832. Some historians believe he was born at sea enroute to America on a vessel flying the British flag, others, that he was born in Ireland. Perhaps Sheridan himself did not know, but for obvious reasons wished it to be known that he was native-born. The author is indebted to Mr. Thomas R. Hay of Locust Valley, New York, for data relating to Sheridan's birth.

(*579) - Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, I, II.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 437-439;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


FRANZ SIGEL, (See Photo), was born November 18, 1824, at Sinsheim in the grand duchy of Baden, Germany. Like many of the young German revolutionaries, he graduated from a military academy (at Karlsruhe) in 1843 and became a subaltern in the service of Grand Duke Leopold. During the 1848 insurrections he acted as minister of war for revolutionary forces which were overthrown by the Prussians. He fled first to Switzerland, then to England, and finally to New York in 1852. In the years before the Civil War he taught school in both New York and St. Louis and held a major's commission in the 5th New York Militia. By 1861 he was director of schools in St. Louis, a community with a large minority of German-born citizens. By virtue of the administration's policy of wooing all immigrants whose affections were Union and antislavery, Sigel became a brigadier general on August 7, 1861, to rank from May 17 and a major general on March 22, 1862. Despite his military shortcomings, he did much to unify the large German population of the Northern states and contributed thousands of recruits to the Union ranks. "I fights mit Sigel" became almost a password among the Dutch and his influence with them never waned. He performed well at the capture of the secessionist Camp Jackson in St. Louis under Nathaniel Lyon and at the engagement at Carthage, Missouri - both minor skirmishes which served mainly the purpose of reestablishing Federal authority. At Elkhorn Tavern (Pea Ridge) in Arkansas he contributed greatly to the Union victory. His career thereafter was not as successful. Acceding to the command of John C. Fremont's corps during the campaign of Second Manassas, his troops were not engaged at Sharpsburg or Fredericksburg; and, while in command of the Department of West Virginia in 1864, he had the misfortune to fight the tattle of New Market against the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, by whom he was soundly trounced. (*590) Subsequently he was removed from field duty and on May 4, 1865, resigned his commission as major general. General Sigel lived for nearly forty more years, during which he ran for public office, changed his party allegiance from Republican to Democratic, and ultimately served as United States pension agent at New York by appointment of President Cleveland. He died at his residence in New York City, on August 21, 1902, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

(*590) - Sigel's opponents on this day consisted of the infantry brigades of John Echols and Gsbriel Wharton, the cadet corps of the institute numbering about 225 boys between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and John D. Imboden's cavalry - the whole under John C. Breckinridge did not amount to more than 3,600 all told. Sigel admitted to having 5,500 men on the field. (Official Records, XXXVII, Pt. 1, p. 76) He was relieved from command on May 19, 1864, U. s. Grant commenting to Henry W. Halleck, "By all means I would say appoint... anyone else to command of West Virginia." (Ibid., 492.)

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; page 326;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


JEREMIAH CUTLER SULLIVAN, (See Photo), Jeremiah Cutler Sullivan, son of a Virginia-born lawyer who became a justice of the Indiana supreme court, was born on October 1, 1830, in Madison, Indiana. He entered the navy in 1848 and was commissioned a midshipman, serving at sea on four different vessels before resigning his commission in 1854 to study law. (*659) At the beginning of the Civil War he helped recruit and organize the 6th Indiana Volunteers and as a captain took part in the action at Philippi, (West) Virginia on June 3. When the 6th Indiana (a three-month regiment) was mustered out, Sullivan became colonel of the 13th Indiana, which enlisted for three years, and fought at Rich Mountain. During the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862, he commanded a brigade of Shields's division at Kernstown and was commissioned a brigadier general to rank from April 28. Soon after, he was sent west and assigned to command of a brigade in W. S. Rosecrans' Army of the Mississippi, which he led at the battles of Iuka and Corinth. Later that fall he was put in charge of the District of Jackson, Tennessee, where he had the unenviable job of pitting scattered garrison troops against the forces of Nathan B. Forrest. Sullivan served as acting inspector general on U. S. Grant's staff for a time early in the Vicksburg campaign and after the capitulation became James B. McPherson's chief of staff. In September, 1863, he was relieved in the west and returned to duty in the Department of West Virginia under General Benjamin F. Kelley, his father-in-law, who assigned him a division with which to guard the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from the Monocacy River west to Sleepy Creek. After Philip Sheridan took charge of the Middle Military Division which embracd the Department of West Virginia, in the summer of 1864, Sullivan seems to have been awaiting orders for a time. In March, 1865, Winfield S. Hancock stated in an official communication that he wished no officer on duty with him who had been sent to the rear by his predecessor Sheridan. (*660) General Sullivan's resignation was accepted by the War Department on May 11, 1865, and, perhaps significantly, he did not receive the brevet of major general, despite the fact that he was in divisional command for many months. After the war he resided in Oakland, Maryland, for a time, moving to California about 1878. Although a lawyer by profession, he did not practice and was employed, when employed at all, in minor clerical jobs. He died in Oakland, California, on October 21, 1890, and was buried in Mountain View Cemetery. (*661)

(*659) - The four ships were the Savannah, Vincennes, Constitution, and San Jacinto. Sullivan was stationed at the Naval Academy when he resigned, but had never attended that institution, contrary to some published sources. (Letter to author from Elbert L. Huber, Chief, Navy and Military Service Branch, National Archives, Washington, May 17, 1962.)

(*660) - Official Records, XLVI, Pt. 2, pp. 553, 982. The reasons for his unpopularity are unclear. C. A. Dana wrote Edwin M. Stanton, June 5, 1863, that Sullivan had been relieved from duty at "the leased plantations" in Louisiana "for inertia."

(*661) - The author is indebted to the Oakland Public Library for data on Sullivan's postbellum career in California. His sister is said to have been the (second?) wife of Peter Hardernan Burnett, first governor of the state of California. (Oakland Daily Evening Tribune, October 21, 1890.)

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; page 326;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


JOHN WESLEY TURNER, (See Photo), John Wesley Turner was born July 19, 1833, near Saratoga, New York, but his parents moved to Chicago when he was ten years old. At the age of eighteen he received an appointment to West Point and was graduated in the class of 1855. In the years before the Civil War he served in Oregon as an artillery subaltern, against the Florida Seminoles, and in garrison duty at various points. In August, 1861, Turner moved from line to staff and served as General David Hunter's chief commissary in Kansas and later as General Benjamin F. Butler's in New Orleans. When Quincy A Gillmore succeeded Hunter as commander of the Department of the South in 1863, Turner, who had again been serving under Hunter, was made chief of staff and chief of artillery of the department and took part in the operations in Charleston Harbor that summer. He was made a brigadier general of volunteers to rank from September 7, 1863, and the year following directed a division of "Baldy" Smith's XVIII Corps of the Army of the James in the operations against Petersburg. In the final operations of U. S. Grant's forces which led up to Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Turner commanded a division of nine regiments (the other divisions had upwards of fifteen regiments) in Gibbon's XXIV Corps. He had been brevetted a major general of volunteers for services "in the campaign of 1864, on several occasions before the enemy" and in the omnibus promotions of March, 1865, was awarded the brevets of brigadier and major general, U. S. Army. From June, 1865, until April, 1866, he commanded the District of Henrico, which included the city of Richmond. After he was mustered out of the volunteers in 1866, hereverted to his regular staff rank of colonel and additional aide-de-camp and served for five years as depot commissary at St. Louis. General Turner resigned from the army in 1871 but remained in St. Louis. He was prominent in both business and public affairs during the remainder of his life, serving as street commissioner for a number of years as well as president and director of several corporate enterprises, including a gas company and two banks. He died of pneumonia at his residence on April 8, 1899, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery.

From Generals In Blue, by Ezra Warner; pages 512-513;
Louisiana State University Press, 1964.


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