Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana

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Major General Napoleon Dana

Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana (born April 15, 1822 in Fort Sullivan , Eastport , Maine , † July 15, 1905 in Portsmouth , Virginia ) was an American major general in the US Army in the Civil War .

Life

Mexican-American War

The Battle of Cerro Gordo (painting by Carl Nebel)

After attending school, Dana entered the US Military Academy at West Point , graduating in 1842. He was then accepted as a sub-lieutenant in the 7th  Infantry Regiment and served in a garrison in the southwest of the USA. During the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848 he was distinguished by his bravery and suffered a serious wound when he stormed the entrenchments during the Battle of Cerro Gordo . He was then used as a captain in the staff of his regiment and in March 1848 became its vice quartermaster .

After serving for several years as an officer in various garrisons in Minnesota , he became a banker in Saint Paul in 1855 , exercised this activity until 1861 and was also Brigadier General of the Minnesota militia between 1857 and 1861 .

Civil War

At the beginning of the Civil War he returned to active military service as a Colonel in the 1st Infantry Regiment of Minnesota and, after subsequent use on the war front, was appointed Brigadier General of the Volunteer Forces in February 1862 and transferred to the Army of the Potomac . In the following years he took part as commander of a brigade in various combat operations such as the Peninsula Campaign , the Battle of Seven Pines , the Battle of Malvern Hill and finally on September 17, 1862 in the Battle of Antietam . There he commanded a brigade in General John Sedgwick's 2nd  Division , which belonged to General Edwin Vose Sumner's II  Corps , and was once again seriously astonished.

In November 1862 he was named major general of the Volunteer Forces and in 1863 he was entrusted with the defense of Philadelphia during the invasion of the Confederate States Army in Pennsylvania . He was then transferred to the Army of the Gulf, which was under the command of General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks , in an advance to Rio Grande and repelled the Confederate forces after landing in Brazes Santiago as far as Laredo . Then he was successively commander of the XIII. Corps, the Vicksburg Military District , the XVI. Corps, then the military districts in western Tennessee and Vicksburg, and finally the military region on the Mississippi River .

Later offices and functions

In May 1865 he retired from active military service and engaged in mining business in the western US, before the American-from 1866 to 1871 general agent Russian trading company of San Francisco in Alaska and Washington, DC was. He was then superintendent of the railways in Illinois and in 1878 the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad company in Rock Island . After a subsequent activity as commissioner for the railways in St. Louis from 1878 to 1881, he became President of the Montana and Union Railway Company in 1885.

In 1893 he became head of the war and naval department in the office for pensions (US Pensions Department), to whose first deputy commissioner he was appointed in 1895 by US President Grover Cleveland . He lost this office in 1897 after US President William McKinley took office .

Napoleon Dana was a nephew of the chemists James Freeman Dana and Samuel Luther Dana .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Napoleon JT Dana  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Dana, Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American major general of the Northern States in the American Civil War
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Sullivan , Eastport , Maine
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1905
Place of death Portsmouth , Virginia