John Gray Foster (27 May 1823 – 2 September 1874) was a Major-General in the US Army who notably commanded the Union Department of North Carolina from 1862 to 1863 and the Department of the South in 1864 during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
John Gray Foster was born in Whitefield, New Hampshire in 1823, and he grew up in Nashua. He graduated from West Point in 1846, fourth in a class of 59 cadets. He went on to serve as a US Army engineer at the Battle of Molino del Rey during the Mexican-American War, and, in 1858, he helped with the construction of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. At the start of the American Civil War, he was in command of Fort Moultrie, and he immediately transferred his small force to Fort Sumter to help Robert Anderson with its defense. On 23 October 1861, he was appointed a Brigadier-General of volunteers, and he commanded the 1st Brigade in Ambrose Burnside's North Carolina expedition of 1862. After Burnside transferred to Virginia, Foster was given command of the Department of North Carolina, and he was promoted to Major-General on 18 July 1862. He shut down the vital Wilmington and Weldon Railroad for two weeks due to victories at Kinston and Goldsboro, and, in 1863, he established a freedmen's colony at Roanoke Island. In December 1863, he assumed command of the Army of the Ohio in Tennessee, but he was badly injured in a fall from his horse. Upon his recovery, he took command of the Department of the South and forced the surrender of Savannah, Georgia. Foster's wounds worsened, so he gave command of the department to Quincy A. Gilmore, who completed Foster's capture of Charleston, South Carolina. He became a military surveyor after the war, serving as assistant to the Chief of Engineers in Washington DC from 1871 to 1874. He died in Nashua in 1874 at the age of 51.
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