Brevet Brig. Gen. John Thomas Wilder (USA)

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   John Thomas Wilder

By Patrice Hobbs Glass , Chattanooga

Union general and postwar industrialist John T. Wilder was born in Hunter County, New York, to Reuben and Mary Merritt Wilder. As a young man, ca. 1848, he moved to Ohio and worked as an apprentice engineer. In the late 1850s he moved to Indiana, established a foundry, and patented an improved waterwheel in 1859. When the Civil War began, Wilder joined the Seventeenth Indiana Volunteers. He and his regiment served extensively in the western theater, playing a particularly significant role in the Chattanooga area campaign of 1863, and gained the reputation of "Wilder's Lightning Brigade." In 1864 Wilder was brevetted a brigadier general.

He first was introduced to Chattanooga on August 21, 1863, when his Union forces bombarded the city. A year later Wilder resigned from the army due to illness, but he remembered the mineral-rich deposits of East Tennessee and returned to Chattanooga in 1866 ready to invest in the redevelopment of the area. The year after his return, Wilder and two associates organized the Roane Iron Works in Roane County. Later, he became involved in a number of other coal and steel companies, as well as in the production of a turbine wheel that he had invented. At Johnson City Wilder built a large hotel to accommodate the businessmen he hoped would be coming to buy land from his Carnegie Land Company. Wilder also pushed for the development of the state's railroad system and developed a rail manufacturing company.

Wilder became active politically and was elected mayor of Chattanooga in 1871. He resigned the following spring, however, to focus his attention on various business interests. In 1876 Wilder made an unsuccessful bid for Congress and never sought another political office, though he accepted several political appointments. In 1877 Wilder was appointed postmaster of Chattanooga and served until 1882. In 1897 President William McKinley appointed Wilder to the pension office in Knoxville, an appointment that was renewed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft.

Along with other Civil War veterans, Wilder supported the development of a military park at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga battlefields and contributed to the erection of the Wilder Brigade Monument. He served first as commissioner and then as president of the Chickamauga Memorial Association in 1889.

As an industrialist, Wilder helped establish Chattanooga as an important industrial city in the redeveloping South. His civic leadership won the admiration of many, including a number of Confederate veterans, who elected him an honorary member of the Forrest camp of the United Confederate Veterans.

Wilder died on October 20, 1917, in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had gone to spend the winter. His body was returned to Chattanooga and buried in the Forest Hill cemetery.

John Thomas Wilder (January 31, 1830 – October 20, 1917) was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. As an industrialist, he was instrumental in developing the natural resources of the State of Tennessee.

Early life and career

Wilder was born in the Catskill Mountains in Hunter, Greene County, New York, the son of Reuben and Mary (Merritt) Wilder. He was a descendant of a long line of soldiers. His grandfather and great-grandfather, both named Seth Wilder, fought in the American Revolutionary War. After the great-grandfather lost a leg in the Battle of Bunker Hill, Seth, Jr. took his place. Wilder's father Reuben fought in the War of 1812.

Wilder spent his younger years in Hunter, where he attended school. When he turned nineteen, his school days over, he decided to head west to make it on his own. Wilder soon arrived in Columbus, Ohio, nearly penniless, and found employment as draftsman and then an apprentice millwright at a local foundry. This training would lay the groundwork for his career.

In 1857, eight years after he arrived in Columbus, Wilder relocated to Indiana, first to Lawrenceburg and then to Greensburg, where he married Martha Jane Stewart and raised a large family. He established a small foundry of his own. It rapidly became a success. Wilder invented many hydraulic machines that he patented, and he sold equipment, building mills and hydraulic works in many of the surrounding states. He also became nationally renowned as an expert in the field of hydraulics, patenting a unique water wheel in 1859.

Civil War

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Wilder enlisted as a private in the 1st Indiana Battery in April 1861, and was elected a captain shortly thereafter. Governor Oliver P. Morton appointed him as the lieutenant colonel of the 17th Indiana Infantry Regiment three months later. On March 2, 1862, Wilder became the regiment's colonel. Serving in Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio, he saw his first combat at the Battle of Shiloh. In recognition for his performance and potential, he was assigned command of a brigade of infantry.

In the 1862 Confederate offensive into Kentucky, Gen. Braxton Bragg's army left Chattanooga, Tennessee, in late August. Bragg approached Munfordville, a station on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad where Wilder commanded the Union garrison, which consisted of three regiments with extensive fortifications. Wilder refused Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers's demand to surrender on September 14 and his men repulsed Chalmers's attacks that day, forcing the Confederates to conduct siege operations September 15–16. By this time, Wilder's 4,000 men were almost completely surrounded by 22,000 Confederates with 100 artillery pieces. Realizing that Union reinforcements were nearby and not wanting to kill or injure innocent civilians, the Confederates communicated still another demand for surrender. Wilder personally entered enemy lines blindfolded under a flag of truce, and Maj. Gen. Simon B. Buckner escorted him to view all the Confederate troops and to convince him of the futility of resisting. Impressed, Wilder surrendered his garrison. The formal ceremony occurred on September 17. Wilder spent two months as a prisoner of war before being exchanged.

Wilder received wide attention for his performance in the Tullahoma Campaign. He mounted his brigade on horses and mules that his men appropriated from the local area and moved into the battle with such rapidity that his men soon became known as the "Lightning Brigade". (They were also known as the "Hatchet Brigade" because Wilder issued them long handled hatchets to carry instead of cavalry sabers.) His men also carried Spencer repeating rifles, which were capable of a rate of firepower far greater than their Confederate adversaries. Bypassing Army red tape, Wilder had asked his men to vote on purchasing the rifles and they agreed unanimously. He obtained a loan from his hometown bank and each man of the brigade co-signed a personal loan of $35 for his rifle. Embarrassed, the Government paid for the weapons before the men expended any of their personal money. The Lightning Brigade seized and held Hoover's Gap, defeating repeated attempts to dislodge his force, winning the most significant battle in the Tullahoma Campaign. Wilder was the principal commander of a diversion launched against Chattanooga, Tennessee—artillery bombardments known as the Second Battle of Chattanooga—deceiving the Confederates into thinking the Union army would approach Chattanooga from the north in conjunction with Union forces at Knoxville.

Just before the start of the Battle of Chickamauga, Wilder's brigade played a crucial role at Alexander's Bridge on September 18, 1863, defending the crossing of West Chickamauga Creek and helping to prevent the Confederates from flanking the Union army. On the second day at Chickamauga, September 20, Wilder's brigade with its superior firepower was one of the few units that was not immediately routed by the Confederate onslaught against the Union right flank. Advancing from its reserve position, the brigade launched a strong counterattack, driving the enemy around and through what became known as "Bloody Pond". Wilder decided to capitalize on this success by attacking the flank of the main Confederate column. However, just then Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana found Wilder and excitedly proclaimed that the battle was lost and demanded to be escorted to Chattanooga. In the time that Wilder took to calm down the secretary and arrange a small detachment to escort him back to safety, the opportunity for a successful attack was lost and he ordered his men to withdraw to the west.

Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas formally commended Colonel Wilder for his performance at Chickamauga. Wilder did not directly participate in the main Battles for Chattanooga in November, but he led the brigade during much of the Atlanta Campaign in the spring and summer of 1864. He was promoted to brevet brigadier general of volunteers on August 7, 1864. Throughout much of 1863 in 1864, Wilder suffered from bouts of dysentery brought on by a case of typhoid fever in 1862. For health reasons, he resigned from the Army in October 1864 and returned home.

Postbellum career

After the war, Wilder settled in Rockwood, Tennessee, and later in Chattanooga. In 1867, he founded an ironworks in the Chattanooga region, then built and operated the first two blast furnaces in the South at Rockwood, Tennessee. In 1870, he established a company in Chattanooga to manufacture rails for the railroads. From 1884 to 1892, he helped promote and construct the Charleston, Cincinnati & Chicago Railroad while living in Johnson City, Tennessee. While in Johnson City, he developed the booming industrial suburb of Carnegie, named in honor of fellow industrialist, Andrew Carnegie, and a host of iron making and railroad-related manufacturing facilities. Iron ore was brought to Johnson City via the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad, and Wilder constructed a popular 166-room hotel near Johnson City named the Cloudland Hotel near the summit of Roan Mountain to serve tourists via this scenic narrow gauge railway line.

Wilder entered politics and was elected mayor of Chattanooga in 1871. He resigned a year later to pursue his business interests. He unsuccessfully ran for the United States Congress in 1876. In 1877, he accepted the position of city postmaster, serving until 1882.

He moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1897 after receiving an appointment from President William McKinley as a Federal pension agent, then was commissioner of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

He died in Jacksonville, Florida, aged 87, while on his annual winter vacation with his second wife, Dora Lee, and was returned for burial in Forest Hills Cemetery in Chattanooga.