United States Army Officer. Born in Connecticut, he was a 1829 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he was a classmate of future Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Assigned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st United States Regular Artillery, he spent most of the years between his graduation and the Mexican War as a Professor at West Point, teaching first mathematics, then cavalry and artillery tactics. He was a member of Artillery Board, and had a large hand in the creation of the United States Army's "Instruction for Field Artillery – Horse and Foot" manual, which was adopted on March 6, 1845. Just before the Mexican War, he served as an Aide-de-Camp to French Army Marshal Thomas-Robert Bugeaud in Algeria, Africa. Returning home after the war's outbreak, he then served in Texas and in Northern Mexico in the forces commanded by Major General Zachary Taylor. Promoted to Captain on April 1, 1846, he served in recruitment and mustering duty until his health, wrecked by field service, forced him into a sick leave of absence, which lasted from 1849 until his official retirement in October 1861. Settling in Burlington, New Jersey, he became a prominent member of the community. When the Civil war erupted in 1861, he complied and published the "Instructions and Regulations for the Militia and Volunteers of the United States,", which became a key manual for the massive and hastily raised armies of citizen-soldiers for the Union. He was also instrumental in recruitment and military organization in his adopted hometown of Burlington. He passed away at age 66. In 1843 he acquired for his alma mater historical cannons to be displayed in a museum that eventually became the celebrated USMA Military Museum.