Brigadier General Benjamin Franklin Kelley– When the war began, he raised the 1st (West) Virginia and was named its Colonel on May 22, 1861. On June 3 at Philippi, the 90 day regiment fought Confederate volunteers and he suffered a severe chest wound. His principal duty and service throughout the war was to guard the vital Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Maryland and West Virginia. His command operated against Confederate raiding parties that tried to sever the railroad line and destroy the depots. He participated in the Union pursuit after Gettysburg and the November 1863 attack on Brigadier General John D. Imboden’s camp at Moorefield, West Virginia. In 1864 his command fought at Cumberland, Maryland, and again at Moorefield. In November a Confederate raiding party surprised and captured the Union depot at New Creek, West Virginia. His performance in this disaster and his bungled pursuit drew severe criticism from his superior, Major General Philip H. Sheridan. On February 21, 1865, Confederate guerrillas, under the cover of darkness, entered Cumberland, Maryland, capturing him and his department commander, Major General George Crook. They were then sent to Richmond’s Libby Prison. The affair created an uproar and both officers soon secured a special exchange. With the brevet rank of Major General, he resigned on June 1, 1865.

Brigadier General Frank Wheaton– With the start of the Civil War, he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel in command of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry and fought at First Bull Run and the Battle of Williamsburg. Promoted to Brigadier General in November 1862, he commanded the 3rd Division VI Corps at the battles of Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and the Shenandoah Valley campaign. For his service in the Civil War, he was awarded an honorary degree from Brown University and Rhode Island presented him with a sword of honor.

Major General Abner Doubleday– U.S. Army (1819–1893) — Contrary to popular myth, Doubleday did not invent baseball, but he did fire the Union’s first cannon shot in the Civil War. A West Point graduate, he fought in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and in conflicts with American Indians during the 1850s. By 1861, he had become second-in-command of the U.S. Army’s garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina — which secessionist forces attacked on the morning of April 12, 1861. Doubleday commanded troops in the Second Battle of Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg. (Grave 61)

Major General Christopher Augur– When the Civil War started, he had the rank of Captain, 4th United States Infantry in the Regular Army, and served as commandant of cadets at West Point. In May 1861, he was promoted to Major of the newly-raised 13th United States Infantry. In November 1861, he was promoted to Brigadier General, U.S. Volunteers, and commanded a brigade along the Rappahannock River during the Spring 1862 Peninsular Campaign. In the August 1862 Battle of Cedar Mountain, where the Union forces were soundly defeated by Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, he sustained a severe wound while in command of the II Corps’ 2nd Division, but was highly commended for his performance and bravery, which led to his promotion to Major General, U.S. Volunteers (and a brevet of Colonel, U.S. Regular Army). During his convalesces from his Cedar Mountain wound, he served on a commission that investigated Colonel Dixon Miles’ September 1862 surrender of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. He then served with Major General Nathaniel Banks in operations in Louisiana and Mississippi, leading the left wing of the Union Army that forced the capitulation of Port Hudson, Mississippi, in July 1863. He subsequently commanded simultaneously the XXII Corps and the Department of Washington to the end of the war. As Commander of the Capital District, he was present when President Abraham Lincoln succumbed to an assassin’s bullet, and was detailed to escort the President’s body from the Petersen House, where he died, to the White House. When he was mustered out of Volunteer service in September 1866, he received the brevet of Brigadier and Major General, U.S. Regular Army and was promoted to Colonel and Commander of the 12th United States Regular Infantry.

Brigadier General James Brewerton Ricketts– Graduated from West Point Class of 1839. At First Manassas he was an artillery commander of a battery on Henry House Hill where he was wounded four times and taken prisoner by the Confederates. He was not exchanged until January 1862. Promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers he was assigned command of a division in McDowell’s Corps which he commanded at Cedar Mountain and at Second Manassas. At Antietam he had two horses shot from under him and was severely hurt when the second horse fell on him. When he recovered he was appointed to the Fitz John Porter court-martial. He returned to active duty in March 1864 when he was given command of a division under John Sedgwick during Grant’s Overland Campaign against Richmond, serving at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. In July his division was sent to Washington to protect the capitol from the forces of Jubal Early during that Raid on Washington. His forces got the brunt of the action at the Battle of Monocacy south of Frederick, Maryland. From there he served in the 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. At the Battle of Cedar Creek he was wounded once again by a bullet through the chest, which disabled him for the rest of his life. He returned to command two days before Lee surrendered at Appomattox. He was brevetted Major General of Volunteers on Aug. 1, l864 and in the Regular Army on March 13, 1865. He retired from active duty as a Major General for disability from wounds received in battle.

Juliet Ann Opie Hopkins– A Civil War Confederate Nurse she is often referred to as “The Florence Nightingale of the South” as a result of her tireless efforts to provide assistance to wounded Confederate soldiers. At age 19 she married Alexander George Gordon, a US Navy commander who died about ten years later and she then remarried Arthur Francis Hopkins, a lawyer and businessman from Mobile, Alabama, who was involved in state politics and became the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. When her husband was appointed by Alabama Governor John Gill Shorter to oversee Alabama hospitals, they liquidated much of their real estate holdings in three states and contributed the cash to the medical needs of the Confederacy. She coordinated civilian aid and donation efforts, and operating out of a supply depot in Richmond, Virginia, she converted three tobacco factories into hospitals from December 1861 through April 1862. The converted hospital facilities served an aggregate case load exceeding 500 patients and she made daily on-site visits. Her personalizing the effort included handling patient correspondence and supplying reading materials for the soldiers. When a patient died, she would personally send a lock of their hair to their next of kin. At the Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia during the peninsula Campaign on May 31, 1862, she sustained two hip wounds that left her with a permanent limp. That same year, the Confederacy merged the patient load at the smaller hospitals into larger facilities elsewhere. Union Brigadier General James H. Wilson’s Raid of multiple Alabama sites in March and April 1865 forced her to flee the state and take refuge in Newman, Georgia. After the end of the war, she and her husband returned to Mobile and following her husband’s death in November 1865 she moved to New York to live on property that had not been sold for the war effort, and she spent her remaining years in poverty. She died at the age of 71. In 1999 she was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame.

Brigadier General Rufus Saxton– Medal of Honor Recipient. He graduated from West Point 18th in the class of 1849. He commanded a detachment of artillery early in 1861, at the St. Louis arsenal in Missouri, assisting Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon in disbanding secessionists, (the Missouri State Guard), training at Camp Jackson. Promoted to Captain on May 13, he served briefly as quartermaster to Lyon and to Major General George B. McClellan in western Virginia, and he participated in the expedition to Port Royal, South Carolina. Promoted to Brigadier General on April 15, 1862, he commanded the defenses at Harper’s Ferry during Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Shenandoah Campaign of 1862. His defense from May 26 to 30, 1862, was such a success that he would be awarded the Medal of Honor. From July 1862 until January 1865 he held various commands and titles within the Department of the South, the most important being the independent military governorship of the coastal islands off South Carolina and Georgia. Opposed to slavery, he labored diligently at Beaufort, South Carolina, to recruit and train the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers. He gave the black recruits their first opportunity to prove themselves as combat troops by sending a company to operate from aboard a steamer and raid along the coast of Georgia and Florida from November 3rd to the 10th. Lifted by their success and by the public support it brought, he was able to shape the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers into the first full-strength officially mandated black regiment in the Federal army. When Major General William T. Sherman’s forces occupied Georgia and moved into the Carolinas, he transferred to the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 as assistant commissioner in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. President Andrew Johnson removed him from his post in January 1866. He was brevetted Major General of Volunteers and Brigadier General of Regulars for his wartime services and was mustered out of the volunteers on January 15, 1866.