Background
Milo Smith Hascall was born on August 5, 1829, at Le Roy, New York, United States. He was the son of Amasa and Phoebe Ann (Smith) Hascall. He spent his boyhood on his father’s farm.
Milo Smith Hascall was born on August 5, 1829, at Le Roy, New York, United States. He was the son of Amasa and Phoebe Ann (Smith) Hascall. He spent his boyhood on his father’s farm.
Milo received an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1848, from which in 1852 he graduated, fourteenth in a class of forty-three members.
Hascall's promotion as brevet second lieutenant took him to Fort Adams, Rhode Island, where he received his commission as second lieutenant in the following year. The apparent stagnation of the Pre-war years turned his thoughts to civil life and in September 1853 he resigned his commission.
In 1854 Hascall took a contract for building a section of the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad. Until the outbreak of the Civil War he led a busy life in Indiana. He Practised law in Goshen, served as prosecuting attorney for Elkhart and Lagrange counties and also as clerk of court. His first war service was "as a private in a three months’ volunteer regiment from Indiana. His previous training , ade him a marked man, and the governor of Indiana appointed him captain and aide-de-camp to General Morris.
Hascall's services in training the Indiana volunteer regiments won him an appointment, June 12, 1861, as colonel of the 17th Indiana, with which he saw several minor engagements in the opening weeks of the war. In December 1861, he was ordered to Louisville, Kentucky, where he assumed command of a brigade of Ohio and Indiana troops, in the division of General Thomas Wood. With this he served at the capture of Nashville in February 1862, and in the advance on Shiloh. On April 25, 1862, he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers. From October of the same year to March 1863, he commanded a brigade in the Tennessee campaign, his principal action during this campaign being the battle of Stone River, in which he played a conspicuous part. At the close of the campaign, he spent several weeks on the unpleasant duty of collecting stragglers from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At the request of General Burnside, he was transferred to the Army of the Ohio, and placed in command of the District of Indiana.
In August 1863, in command of a division in the Army of the Ohio, Hascall again saw field service in the operations in East Tennessee, especially at Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and in the engagements in defense of Knoxville. When Sherman began his march on Atlanta, Hascall was in command of the 2nd Division, XXIII Corps. In the brilliant campaign which followed, he took an active part, both in the many engagements north of Atlanta, and in the siege of the city itself. Before the conclusion of the campaign, however, he had decided to return to civil life. He resigned late in October 1864. In the years that followed, he engaged in banking at Goshen and at Galena. In 1890, he moved to Chicago where he became a dealer in real estate on a large scale, and where he continued to be active in business until his death.
Hascall was twice married. His first wife, whom he married in 1855, was Julia, daughter of Dean and Emeline Swift of Elkhart, Indiana. Three years after her death in 1883, he married Mrs. Rose Miller, daughter of Jacob and Catherine Schwartz of Canton, Ohio. He left no children.
