1519 Francis de Lorraine II, the first Prince of Joinville, also Duke of Guise and Duke of Aumale, was a French general and politician. A prominent leader during the Italian War of 1551â1559 and French Wars of Religion, he was assassinated during the siege of Orleans in 1563.
1740 John Sullivan was an Irish-American General in the Revolutionary War winning several key battles most notably the Deleware crossing delegate in the Continental Congress, Governor of New Hampshire and a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. Sullivan, the third son of American settlers, served as a major general in the Continental Army and as Governor of New Hampshire. He commanded the Sullivan Expedition in 1779, a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois towns that had taken up arms against the American revolutionaries. As a member of Congress, Sullivan worked closely with the French Ambassador to the United States, the Chevalier de la Luzerne.
1804 Samuel Read Anderson was an American businessman and military officer in two wars. He was the Postmaster of Nashville, Tennessee, from 1853 until 1861 and then was a Confederate Brigadier General during the American Civil War. He commanded a mixed brigade of infantry and cavalry in the Eastern Theater in Virginia until the spring of 1862 when he was forced to resign because of ill health. Anderson later supervised the Confederate military draft in Tennessee until the end of the war.
1824 William Farrar Smith, known as ‘Baldy’ Smith, was a Union general in the American Civil War, notable for attracting the extremes of glory and blame. He was praised for his gallantry in the Seven Days Battles and the Battle of Antietam, but was demoted for insubordination after the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg. As chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland, he achieved recognition by restoring a supply line that saved that army from starvation and surrender, known as the “Cracker Line”, that helped Union troops to success in the Chattanooga Campaign in the autumn of 1863. Leading the first operation against Petersburg, Smith’s hesitation, possibly illness-related, cost the Union a prime opportunity for a quick end to the war, and he was relieved of command.
1837 The Civil War saw many common men elevated to the status of hero, and Francis Jay Herron was one of these men. Herron would rise from his position of bank clerk before the war, to a Major General and Medal of Honor recipient, and eventually falling from grace after the war to die penniless.
1877 André Maginot was a French civil servant, soldier, and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his advocacy of the string of forts known as the Maginot Line.
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