American soldier, born in Detroit, MI, on the 16th of April 1823; graduated at the United States Military Academy in 1847. He served in the latter part of the Mexican War, and against the Seminoles in 1856–57; left the army to study law, and was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1858. Becoming colonel of the First Michigan Regiment, May 1, 1861, he was present at the capture of Alexandria, in command of a brigade at Bull Run, and was there taken prisoner. He was exchanged, August 17, 1862, and commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers. He was prominent in the Maryland and Rappahannock campaigns; was in command of the Ninth Army Corps and the district of central Kentucky, April to June 1863; during the draft-riots in Indiana and Michigan, was in command there; was engaged in East Tennessee, September 1863 to March 1864; was placed in command of a division of the Ninth Corps of the Army of the Potomac, in the Richmond campaign; received the surrender of Petersburg, his division being the first to break through. He was mustered out of the service in 1866, after commanding a number of different military districts, but re-entered the army as colonel of the Twenty-ninth Infantry, and was transferred to the Twelfth Infantry in 1869. He was brevetted brigadier-general and major-general in 1867 for gallantry. He became brigadier-general in 1886, and retired from the service in 1887. From 1889 to 1892 he was governor of the Soldiers’ Home in Washington. Under the pseudonym, “Major March,” he published Shoepack Recollections (1856), and other books.
