James Chatham Duane

Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General. An 1848 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, he was assigned to the Engineer Corps, and would serve as an army engineer for the next forty years.

In 1852 he was assigned to West Point as an Assistant Professor of Military Engineering, serving in that role for two years. In 1858 he was part of the United States Army Expeditionary force led by Colonel (and later Civil War Confederate general) Albert Sidney Johnston against the Mormons in Utah.

When the Civil War began he was promoted to Captain, US Regular Army, and led engineering battalion in the Union's Army of the Potomac. At the beginning of 1863 he was assigned as Chief Engineer for the Department of the South, serving untul June 1863. In that month, he was transferred back to the Army of the Potomac, and assigned as it's Chief Engineer while the amry was in the midst of the Gettysburg Campaign.

He would serve in this duty through the rest of the war, and was present when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia in April 1865. On March 13, 1865 he was brevetted Brigadier General, US Regular Army for "gallant and meritorious services during the siege of Petersburg, Va., and in the campaign terminating with the surrender of the insurgent army under General Robert E. Lee".

He remained in the post-war Regular army, rising to the rank of Brigadier General, and serving as the United States Army's Chief Engineer from 1886 until he retired in 1888.