Civil War Union Brigadier General. He was born in Chardon, Ohio, and received a local education, graduating from Western Reserve College in 1845. He briefly worked as a schoolmaster in Mississippi, then returned to Ohio to study law; later in 1848, after being admitted to the bar, he would set up a practice in Cleveland. Interested in expanding his opportunities, he migrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1857. Sharing the political goals of local attorney Carl Schurz, he worked as his law partner until the Civil War, when, as its Colonel, he mustered in with the 4th Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry at Racine on July 2, 1861. With the 4th Wisconsin, he served on railroad guard duty out of Baltimore, Maryland, until February 1862, when he joined the Federal expedition to capture New Orleans, Louisiana. Most of his combat service was in the Department of the Gulf, where he fought at Fort St. Philip, took part in the sizures of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and under Brigadier General Thomas Williams went on an expedition against Vicksburg, Mississippi, and fought in the Battle of Baton Rouge. From January 3, 1863, he commanded the 2nd Brigade/3rd Division/XIX Corps, then received promotion to Brigadier General on April 9, 1863. He served in operations against Port Hudson and took part in Major General Nathaniel P. Banks's Bayou Teche maneuvers and the engagement at Fort Bisland. In the failed June 14, 1863, assault on the Port Hudson works, he lost a leg. During convalescence he worked on various army commissions until Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early's July 1864 Raid on Washington. Pressed into service, during the crisis he commanded the infantry lines between Union Forts Stevens and Totten. Shortly afterward he was appointed commander of the District of Illinois, and was brevetted Major General for past gallantry on March 13, 1865. He then would resigned his commission on May 15, 1865. He was noted for independent thought and Radical Republican learnings. He followed Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler's example by refusing to return escaped slaves to their masters during the early months of the war and was arrested by his commander General Thomas Williams, who had ordered him to return the slaves. But he disobeyed Butler's vengeful order to burn Baton Rouge while he directed the August 1862 evacuation of its Union garrison. In postwar years, he maintained his independent posture as a moderate member of the Radical Republican wing in Congress. Elected to the House of Representatives in autumn 1865, he served until 1871, during his last term chairing the Committee on Elections, which was charged with seating members of Congress elected from districts in the occupied South. In 1871, he began to practiced law in Washington D.C. as he chose not to be a candidate for renomination the year before. His former law partner Schurz, now serving as Secretary of the Interior, named him United States commissioner of patents in 1878. As commissioner he introduced typewriters to the government agency and authorized the acceptance of drawn plans with patent applications instead of models He would continue in that position until 1880. He then once again turned to his law practice; it was during this time in 1888, drawing from his past experience as elections committee chairman, he wrote "A Treatise on the Law of Elections to Public Office", which is still considered a standard in the field of election law.