Julius White (23 September 1816 – 12 May 1890) was a Wisconsin State Assemblyman (W-3) from 1 January 1849 to 7 January 1850 (succeeding William W. Brown and preceding Edward McGarry) and a Union Army Brigadier-General during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Julius White was born in Cazenovia, New York in 1816, and he moved to Chicago in 1836 and became an insurance agent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He served in the State Assembly from 1849 to 1850 as a Whig before returning to Chicago to work as an insurance agent, underwriter, and member of the Board of Trade. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed White a customs collector at the Port of Chicago. White was commissioned colonel of the 37th Illinois Infantry Regiment at the start of the American Civil War, leading the regiment at the Battle of Pea Ridge before being promoted to Brigadier-General and sent to West Virginia to command the Railroad Brigade. He fought at the Second Battle of Bull Run before participating in the defense of Harpers Ferry from Stonewall Jackson's Confederate army in September 1862, and he fought with capability and courage before being forced to surrender on behalf of the mortally wounded Dixon Stansbury Miles. He later commanded a division at the Siege of Knoxville in 1863, served as Ambrose Burnside's chief-of-staff at the Battle of the Crater, and resigned in November 1864 after his division was disbanded following the Battle of Globe Tavern. After the war, he chaired the Cook County Board of Commissioners, and he served as Ambassador to Argentina from 1873 to 1874 before dying in 1890.