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Brigadier General Halbert E. Paine |
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Brigadier General Halbert E. Paine commanded Third Division, on the Union right flank for the May 27th assault. Afterwards, his division was shifted more toward the center of the Union lines. While leading his troops in the June 14th assault on Priest Cap, he was hit by a rifle shot which broke his leg below the knee. He lay on the battlefield for hours in the sun, under the guns of the Confederates, before finally being rescued. He lost the leg as a result of the wound. Halbert Eleazar Paine was born in Chardon, Ohio on 4 February, 1826. After his graduation at Western Reserve in 1845 he studied law, was admitted to the bar of Cleveland in 1848, and moved to Milwaukee in 1857. He entered the army in May, 1861 as Colonel of the 4th Wisconsin Regiment. He was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers on 13 March, 1863, while at Port Hudson. He defended Washington D.C. during General Jubal A. Early's raid in 1864, and was breveted major general of volunteers on 13 March, 1865, and resigned from the army on 3 May of that year. He was elected to Congress from Wisconsin as a Republican, serving from 4 December, 1865, until 3 March, 1871, and was instrumental in the passage of a bill in 1869 that provided for taking meteorological observations in the interior of the continent. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of 1866, and after the expiration of his third term in congress, practiced law in Washington, D. C. He was appointed United States Commissioner of Patents by President Grant and served from 1879 until 1881. He is the author of " Paine on Contested Elections" (Washington, 1888). He died in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1905, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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