Major General John Newton

John Newton, a Virginia native and a Union general during the American Civil War, poses for a photographic portrait sometime between 1860 and 1865. Born in Norfolk and the son of a long-serving congressman, Newton graduated from West Point and served in the Army Corps of Engineers before commanding a brigade and then a division in the Army of the Potomac. After the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg in December 1862, Newton and fellow general John Cochrane met with United States president Abraham Lincoln in a veiled attempt at seeing Ambrose E. Burnside removed from command. Lincoln did remove him, but Newtons career suffered for his effort. Newton fought well during the Chancellorsville Campaign in May 1863, and after the death of John F. Reynolds on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, he took command of the First Corps. Within a year, however, he had been denied promotion, been sent west to participate in the Atlanta Campaign (1864), and eventually exiled to Florida. There, in March 1865, he was defeated in his ill-advised attempt on Tallahassee at the Battle of Natural Bridge. Newton worked as an army engineer after the war, retiring in 1886 and dying in New York City in 1895.