Rufus Saxton

Rufus Saxton
Medal of Honor recipient
Born	(1824-10-19)October 19, 1824 Greenfield, Massachusetts
Died	February 23, 1908(1908-02-23) (aged 83) Washington, D.C.
Place of burial	Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance	United States of America Union
Service/branch	United States Army Union Army
Years of service	1849–1888
Rank	Brigadier General Brevet Major General
Battles/wars	American Civil War
Awards	Medal of Honor

Rufus Saxton (October 19, 1824 – February 23, 1908) was a Union Army brigadier general during the American Civil War who received America's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions defending Harpers Ferry during Confederate General Jackson's Valley Campaign.

Saxton was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts. His father, Jonathan Ashley Saxton, was a Unitarian and a Transcendentalist whose feminist and abolitionist writings were heard on the lyceum circuit. He descended from a family of Unitarian ministers (Ashley, Williams, Edwards). His father attempted to secure a place for Rufus Saxton at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, a transcendentalist community started by George Ripley and attended by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Rufus Saxton's brother Samuel Willard "Will" Saxton attended Brook Farm in his stead, learning the printing trade for the Farm's publication The Harbinger. Later, Will would join Rufus Saxton in South Carolina as his aide-de-camp and printer during the Port Royal Experiment. Rufus Saxton married a Philadelphian missionary, Mathilda Thompson, who had come South to teach the newly freed blacks with her newspaper journalist brother.

Rufus Saxton was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1849. His antebellum career included posts fighting Seminoles in Florida, teaching artillery tactics at West Point, surveying the uncharted Rocky Mountains on George B. McClellan's staff in advance of the Northern Pacific Railroad (1853), and map work for the Coastal Survey. He was promoted to first lieutenant in March 1855.