Maj. General Christopher C. Augur (USA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Augur

Christopher Columbus Augur (July 10, 1821 – January 16, 1898) was an American military officer, most noted for his role in the American Civil War. Although less well known than other Union commanders, he was nonetheless considered an able battlefield commander.

Augur was born in Kendall, New York. He moved with his family to Michigan and entered West Point in 1839. Following his graduation in 1843, Augur served as aide-de-camp to Generals Hopping and Cushing during the Mexican-American War, and during the 1850s took an active part in the campaigns of the western frontier against the Yakima and Rogue River tribes of Washington and, in 1856, against the Oregon Indians. In Oregon, he was responsible for building Fort Hoskins in Kings Valley.

Civil War

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Augur served as commandant of cadets at West Point. Appointed brigadier general of volunteers in 1861, he commanded a brigade under Irvin McDowell during the early part of the war. He was severely wounded at Cedar Mountain in August 1862 while leading a division under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks. He was promoted to major general in the same month and subsequently commanded a division in the Army of the Gulf during the siege of Port Hudson. He commanded the XXII Corps and the Department of Washington (1863–66), ending the war with an exemplary record.

Postbellum career

Following the war, Augur also would command the departments of the Platte (1867–71), of Texas (1871–75), and of the Gulf (1875–78). He also played a major role in negotiations of the Treaties of Medicine Lodge in 1867 and Fort Laramie in 1868. A fort in the Wyoming Territory was briefly named Fort Augur in his honor. In 1886, he retired from the military service. He died in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Christopher Columbus Augur, United States soldier, son of Ammon and Annis (Wellman) Augur, was born at Kendall, New York, on July 10, 1821. After moving with his widowed mother to Michigan, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy in 1839 and graduated four years later, sixteenth in a class of thirty-nine. He married Jane E. Arnold of Ogdensburg, New York, in 1844. Augur served in the Mexican War at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. From 1852 to 1856 he participated in fighting against the Yakima and Rogue River Indians in the Oregon and Washington territories. By 1861 Major Augur was serving as commandant of cadets at West Point.

He established a solid but unspectacular Civil War record in the Union Army. He was promoted to major general of volunteers for his conduct in action in August 1862 at Cedar Mountain, Virginia, where he received serious wounds. He served in the New Orleans campaign and the siege of Port Hudson before receiving command of the Twenty-second Army Corps and the Department of Washington in October 1863, a command that he maintained until the end of the war. In 1865 Congress brevetted Augur major general for his services. The next year he was transferred from command of the volunteer service and made colonel of the Twelfth Infantry. He was made brigadier general, regular army, in 1869.

After the Civil War he commanded the departments of the Platte (1867–71), Texas (1872–75, 1881–83), the Gulf (1875–78), the South (1878–80), and the Missouri (1883–85). He gained a reputation for quiet competence in command rarely equaled during the period. While in Texas he believed that Indians guilty of depredations should be punished severely, and he cooperated fully with Ranald S. Mackenzie's raid into Mexico, during which Mackenzie burned several Indian villages, as well as with the Red River campaigns of 1874–75. Augur also tried to cooperate with Mexican officials in hope that their combined efforts would crush Indian resistance along the Rio Grande. Yet Indian reformers joined Gen. William T. Sherman in classifying Augur as a fair man. General Augur was a strong advocate of western railroads, for he recognized that they changed "very materially the conditions of the problem of protection and defense" along the frontier. Augur retired from military service on July 10, 1885, and died at Georgetown, D.C., on January 16, 1898