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Civil War Soldiers - Dana

Dana, Napoleon J. T., major-general, U.S. Army, was born in Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Me., April 15, 1822, was graduated in the United States military academy at West Point in 1842, and served on garrison duty until the Mexican war. He served with distinction throughout that contest, being severely wounded at the storming of Cerro Gordo, and being made captain by brevet for gallant and meritorious conduct on that occasion. He was promoted captain on the staff and assistant quartermaster in 1848, and was on garrison duty, principally in Minnesota, until 1855, when he resigned to take up banking in St. Paul, serving there as brigadier-general of state militia from 1857 to 1861. He raised and commanded the 1st Minn. infantry in the first year of the war, was commissioned brigadier- general in Feb., 1862, and attached to the Army of the Potomac. He served in the battles before Richmond, commanded a brigade in Gen. Sedgwick's division at Antietam, and at that battle received so serious a wound that he was carried off the field for dead. Recovering, he was commissioned major-general of volunteers, in Nov., 1862, commanded the defenses of Philadelphia during Lee's invasion, afterwards joined the Army of the Gulf, and commanded an expedition by sea to the Rio Grande, landing at Brazos Santiago, and driving the Confederate forces as far as Laredo. He then successively commanded the 13th army corps, the district of Vicksburg, the 16th army corps, the districts of west Tennessee and Vicksburg, and the Department of the Mississippi, and in May, 1865, resigned from the army to engage in mining in the far west. He was subsequently, from 1866 to 1871, general agent of the American-Russian commercial company of San Francisco, in Alaska and Washington, then became superintendent of railroads in Illinois, and superintendent of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad in 1878. He was made chief of the old war and navy division, pension department, in 1893, was promoted first deputy commissioner of pensions by President Cleveland, in 1895, and was removed from the latter office in 1897 by President McKinley.

Source: The Union Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States 1861-1865, Volume 8 Biographical, 1908
 


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