West Point (1860) Horace Porter is best known as a staff officer and biographer of General Grant. Serving in the ordinance department. Porter had been a brevet second at the beginning of the war. His later assignments included: second lieutenant, Ordnance Department (June 7, 1861); captain, Ordnance Department (March 3, 1863); and lieutenant colonel and aide-de-camp (April 4, 1864).
After service as an ordnance officer on the South Carolina coast, Porter was made chief of ordinance, Army of the Potomac, during the latter part of the Peninsula Campaign. During late 1862 he served as ordinance chief for the Department of the Ohio and in 1863 in the same position with the army of the Cumberland.
While in the latter post, Porter on the second day of the battle of Chickamauga rallied fugitives from the broken line and held some important ground, allowing batteries and wagon trains to leave the field during the disastrous retreat. For his actions he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1902. During the Chattanooga Campaign, Porter came to the attention of General Grant and served on his staff, as an aide, from the spring of 1864 until the close of the war.
He received regular army brevets to captain for Fort Pulaski, major for the Wilderness, lieutenant colonel for New Market Heights, and colonel and brigadier general for the war. Porter continued as an aide to Generals Grant and Sherman until 1873, when he resigned to become a railroad man.
His Campaigning With Grant was published in 1897. (Mende, Elsie Porter, An American Soldier and Diplomat Horace Porter)
~ Who Was Who in the Civil War, 1988, Page 516
Personal Gossip
Gen. Horace Porter is the youngest looking man of his age in the country.~ The Daily Record, 12-Sept-1889, Page 3, Column 5
You can visit the memorial page for Horace Porter.
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