Background
William Dwight was born on July 14, 1831 at Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of William Dwight and Elizabeth Amelia, daughter of Daniel Appleton White.
William Dwight was born on July 14, 1831 at Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of William Dwight and Elizabeth Amelia, daughter of Daniel Appleton White.
He went from a private military school to West Point in 1849, but resigned in 1853 before graduation.
He engaged in manufacturing, probably of cotton, first at Boston, then at Philadelphia.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he entered the military service and was commissioned captain in the 13th United States Infantry in May 1861. The next month he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 70th New York Volunteers, of which D. E. Sickles was colonel. Upon the promotion of Sickles, Dwight became colonel in July 1861.
At the battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862, he was wounded three times and left for dead upon the field. After a short sojourn in a Confederate prison hospital he was exchanged and commissioned brigadier-general, for gallantry at Williamsburg. Dwight’s brigade was the first of Grover’s division of Banks’s army. He led it creditably in the campaigns about Baton Rouge, Bayou Têche, and Irish Bend in the spring of 1863, and through the siege of Port Hudson.
It participated in the first assault upon the Confederate works, May 24, and led the attack upon one wing in the final attempt, June 14, to carry Port Hudson by storm. Dwight was a member of the commission which arranged for the surrender of Port Hudson, July 8. After the Texas expedition in the autumn of 1863, he was appointed chief of staff to Banks for the Red River expedition of the following year.
In July 1864 he was transferred to the command of the 16t Division of the XIX Corps of Sheridan’s army in Virginia. This division was described as “capable and well-disciplined. ” Winchester, Fisher’s Ilill, and Cedar Mountain were the chief engagements in which it participated. Dwight remained in the army until January 1866, when he removed to Cincinnati and associated himself with his brothers Daniel and Charles in the management of the White Water Valley Railroad. His death occurred in Boston.
On January 1, 1856, he married Anna Robeson.
