by Rev. Canon Dr. Robert Girard Carroon, PCinC
Nelson Appleton Miles served as Commander-in-Chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion from 1919 to 1925. His brilliance as a military commander, who found himself at the center of American history for over half a century, made him a major figure in the story of the United States. A man of little formal education when compared to his peers, his natural ability in military operations and real genius as a leader of men made him an individual whose destiny could not be denied.
Nelson Miles was born in Westminster, Massachusetts, on August 8, 1839, the son of Daniel Miles and the former Mary Curtis. He attended local public schools and, at age sixteen, went to Boston where he became a clerk in John Collamore’s crockery store. With the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion, young Miles – popular among clerks and employees in Boston’s stores and markets – raised what became Company E of the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Miles was elected captain; however, Governor John A. Andrew felt he was too young and asked him to exchange his captaincy for a commission as a first lieutenant. Nelson agreed, though he was not pleased with the arrangement, and accompanied the regiment to Washington, DC. There he was temporarily assigned to the staff of Brigadier General Silas Casey. While on Casey’s staff he came to the notice of Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, who requested that he be permanently assigned as an aide-de-camp.
Well over six feet in height and with a soldierly bearing that set him apart even from veteran West Pointers, he made an immediate impression on those who met him. Meeting him on the western plains after the war, the artist Frederic Remington wrote, “I felt his presence before conscious of his identity, a good style of man. His personal looks I shall never forget.” It was not his looks, rather his determination and unflinching courage, that made him, as one soldier put it, “the pride of the volunteer soldiers of the Union.”
At the Battle of Fair Oaks, Lieutenant Miles led reinforcements to support Colonel James Miller’s 81st Pennsylvania. Seeing Miller’s body carried to the rear, Miles assumed command of the regiment and led it in two brigade bayonet charges that drove rebel forces from the field. During the close of the Peninsula Campaign, while serving as a staff officer to Brigadier General John C. Caldwell at Malvern Hill, Miles led the 81st to support Colonel Francis Barlow’s 61st New York. This resulted in his commission as Lieutenant Colonel of the 61st. During the Battle of Antietam, when Barlow was wounded at the Sunken Road, Miles assumed command. Barlow was promoted to Brigadier General and Miles was promoted to command of the 61st New York. General Caldwell wrote of Miles that he had “added to the laurels he has acquired on every battlefield where he has been present.”
This was only the beginning of a career in the Army of the Potomac that saw Nelson Miles participate in every major battle in the eastern theater except Gettysburg. He was still recovering from a serious wound received at Chancellorsville while commanding a successful rearguard action, for which he later received the Medal of Honor. Temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, he was furloughed home to Massachusetts, where he soon made a complete recovery.
Major General Winfield Scott Hancock said of Miles at Chancellorsville, “He was one of the bravest men in the army, a soldier by nature. Had we all such men in command of our troops we should never suffer disaster. He is one of that class of commanders who seeks the enemy and fights him – never hides his troops when the cannon sounds in his ears.” Miles was promoted Brigadier General of Volunteers on May 12, 1864, and Brevet Major General, U.S.V., on August 25, 1864. He participated in every major engagement, leading troops at Bristow Station, Mine Run, Wilderness, Po River, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Deep Bottom, Hatcher’s Run, Ream’s Station, Fort Stedman, Five Forks, Weldon Railroad, Farmville, and Appomattox Court House. Brevet Major General Miles ended his Civil War service as commander of the First Division, II Corps. He was promoted to Major General of Volunteers on October 21, 1865 at the age of twenty-six.
Nelson Miles’s post-Civil War career began with the unenviable duty of serving for almost a year as Jefferson Davis’s jailer at Fort Monroe, Virginia. As a young officer, he was required to obey directives from Secretary of War Stanton and Assistant Secretary Charles A. Dana. One such directive, carried out only briefly, was placing leg irons on the former Confederate president. For this Miles was criticized, particularly in the Southern press. Davis called the young Major General “a heartless vulgarian” and also “a damned ass.” Miles, recalling Union suffering at Andersonville, was not overly concerned with Davis’s opinion. He also took steps to improve Davis’s circumstances, including transferring him from a damp casemate to more comfortable quarters at Carroll Hall.
On July 28, 1866, Miles was appointed Colonel of the 40th Infantry in the Regular Army. On March 15, 1869, he transferred as Colonel to the 5th Infantry and began a fifteen-year career as an Indian fighter on the Great Plains. Miles’s later career involved conflicts with the Cheyennes, Kiowas, Comanches, Sioux, and Apaches. In 1877, while commanding the Department of the Yellowstone, he succeeded in capturing Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce in one of the great struggles in United States history. In 1880 he was promoted to Brigadier General in the U.S. Army. He subsequently commanded the Departments of the Columbia, the Missouri, Arizona, and the Pacific. On April 15, 1890, he was promoted to Major General in the U.S. Army. During the campaign to pacify an outbreak among the Sioux in 1890–91, the battle of Wounded Knee occurred. Miles was outraged by the conduct of the troops under Colonel Forsyth, calling it “about the worst I have ever known,” and saying it was the result of “either blind indifference or criminal stupidity.”
In 1894 he commanded troops sent into Chicago to suppress riots associated with the Pullman Strike, an action that did not endear him to the growing labor movement. From 1894-1895, General Miles commanded the Department of the East with headquarters at Governor’s Island, New York. Following the retirement of John M. Schofield, Nelson A. Miles, then the senior Major General, became Commander-in-Chief of the Army effective October 2, 1895.
During the Spanish-American War, he oversaw organization and training of volunteer forces, while Major General William Shafter commanded the expeditionary force. Miles was present at the close of operations in Cuba and also in Puerto Rico. On February 11, 1901, President William McKinley promoted him to Lieutenant General. General Miles’s tendency to speak publicly without observing military protocol brought him into conflict with President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt viewed Miles as a possible political rival, while Miles believed Roosevelt interfered in military matters. Miles also pointed out, correctly, but indelicately, that Roosevelt had charged Kettle Hill rather than San Juan Hill. Roosevelt considered the comment both humiliating and insubordinate.
President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Elihu Root sought to limit Miles’s press statements by sending him on a tour of the Philippines and the Far East. The effort backfired when Miles criticized U.S. Army relations with Filipinos, though it did keep him out of the country. Miles retired from the Army on August 8, 1903, upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of sixty-four. Rather than receiving the customary laudatory White House statement, he was issued a perfunctory retirement notice signed by order of the Secretary of War. Press criticism followed, viewing this as shabby treatment of one of the nation’s foremost soldiers.
General Miles was an enthusiastic Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He was elected a Companion of the First Class through the Massachusetts Commandery on May 1, 1878, and assigned Insignia #1818. Throughout his life he transferred to the Commandery nearest his posting so he could attend meetings. He became a charter member of the Oregon Commandery on May 6, 1885; Kansas on April 22, 1886; and California on July 26, 1887. He was elected Commander of the California Commandery on May 31, 1889. He then transferred back to Massachusetts when appointed Adjutant General of the State Militia in 1903 by Governor William A. Douglas. After that service, he returned to Washington, DC, where he lived the remainder of his life. In 1919, he was elected Commander-in-Chief of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, serving until his death in 1925.
Nelson Miles wrote a number of articles and two autobiographies: Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (1896) and Serving the Republic: Memoirs of the Civil and Military Life of Nelson A. Miles, Lieutenant General (1911). At least six biographies have been written, including A Hero to His Fighting Men: Nelson A. Miles 1839–1925 by Peter R. DeMontravel (1998).
On June 30, 1868, Nelson A. Miles married Mary Hoyt Sherman, daughter of Judge Charles Sherman and niece of General William T. Sherman. Mary Miles died on August 2, 1904, while the family and their daughter, Cecilia Sherman Miles, were spending the summer at West Point, New York, where their son, Sherman, was a first classman at the U.S. Military Academy.
General Miles died of a heart attack on May 15, 1925, while attending a circus in Washington, DC, with several of his grandchildren. His full military funeral, casket draped in a flag provided by the Loyal Legion, took place at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, with interment at Arlington National Cemetery. His son, Colonel Sherman Appleton Miles, was a Hereditary Companion of the District of Columbia Commandery with Insignia #14443. General Miles was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief by the Senior Vice Commander-in-Chief, Rear Admiral Purnell Frederick Harrington.