Civil War Union Brigadier General. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he had established roots in New England, but chose to move as a young man, setting up a law practice in Detroit and involving himself in Michigan militia affairs. When the Civil War began, he organized the 5th Michigan Infantry, becoming its Colonel on June 10, 1861. During the war's first winter, he and his regiment served in the defenses of Washington D.C. Throughout the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, the 5th Michigan fought gamely in Brigadier General Samuel P. Heintzelman's III Corps, Army of the Potomac. It absorbed heavy losses at both Williamsburg and Seven Pines, and in mid-July he was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers. Early in 1863, as a part of the VII Corps, his brigade, composed of men from New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, was sent to Suffolk, Virginia. There, in April and May, it was besieged by Confederates under Lieutenant General James Longstreet. Once the siege was lifted, he reported to Major General John A. Dix, who late in June shipped his brigade up the York and Pamunkey rivers to White House, Virginia. For the next 3 weeks he participated in an operation threatening General Robert E. Lee's communications line to Richmond during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. On July 1, 1863, while attached to Major General Erasmus D. Keyes's IV Corps, his command marched to Baltimore Cross Roads, within striking distance of the Confederate capital, where it encountered a scratch force of defenders. He, however, fed Keyes's fear that the enemy in great numbers were gathering in their rear, cutting their line of retreat. This helped persuade Keyes to retreat toward White House late on the 2nd. In the wake of the botched offensive, Dix and Keyes lost their field commands but he was returned to the Army of the Potomac, where that autumn he led a division in the VI Corps. His force supported Major General Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps during the abortive Mine Run Campaign that November. Less than 2 months later, the division was sent to garrison the prison camp on Johnson's Island, Ohio. In May 1864, when the division returned to Virginia for the spring campaign, he found himself superseded and left idle. He remained on inactive duty until he resigned from the volunteer service on February 7, 1865. Thereafter he resumed his law practice in Washington D.C., where he later would die.