author
John McAllister Schofield
1831–1906
A key Union general in the Civil War, he later rose to become Secretary of War and Commanding General of the U.S. Army. His career stretched from the battlefields of the 1860s to the shaping of the postwar army.
1 Audiobook
Forty-Six Years in the Army
by John McAllister Schofield
About the author
Born in Gerry, New York, in 1831, John McAllister Schofield graduated from West Point in 1853 and began his career as an artillery officer and instructor. During the Civil War, he held major Union commands in the Western Theater, including service in Missouri, the Atlanta Campaign, and the Franklin–Nashville Campaign.
Schofield became one of the most prominent American military leaders of the nineteenth century. Beyond the war, he served as U.S. Secretary of War under President Andrew Johnson and later as Commanding General of the United States Army, helping shape the army in the decades after the conflict.
He was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, although the award came many years later. Schofield died in 1906, leaving behind a long public career that connected the Civil War era with the modernizing U.S. Army that followed.