Jeremiah Boyle

Jeremiah Tilford Boyle (May 22, 1818 – July 28, 1871) was a successful lawyer and noted abolitionist. He served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Boyle was born and raised in Mercer County (now Boyle County, Kentucky), and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1838. He was the son of Judge and Chief Justice John Boyle, for whom Boyle County was named. He then studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He became a successful lawyer in Harrodsburg and Danville. Although a slave-owning Whig politically, he argued for a gradual emancipation of slaves as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1849.

He married Elizabeth Owsley Anderson of Garrard County and raised seven children. For a number of years, he was engaged in business with his brother-in-law, William Clayton Anderson, a former United States Congressman. Boyle supported the Constitutional Union Party in the election of 1860.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Boyle raised a brigade of infantry for service in the Union Army. He was commissioned as a brigadier general on November 19, 1861. After wintering his troops in Tennessee, he joined Maj. Gen.Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio and participated in the Battle of Shiloh.

In May 1862, he was appointed Military Governor of Kentucky by PresidentAbraham Lincoln, and at times served in command of both the District of Kentucky and District of Western Kentucky. Curiously, the Official Records refer to Boyle's command as the "District of Western Kentucky", although at that time it included all of Kentucky except Western Kentucky, which was assigned to the District of Columbus. Boyle dispatched troops several times to combat incursions and cavalry raids by John Hunt Morgan.

He resigned in 1864 after his son, the Union Army's youngest colonel, Col. William O. Boyle, was killed in action at the Battle of Marion in Tennessee. He had been affectionately known as "the Boy Major."

Tras su regreso a casa, Boyle invirtió en terrenos y se interesó por los tranvías, instando a las autoridades de Louisville a establecer dicho servicio. En 1865, se convirtió en presidente de la Louisville City Railway Company y supervisó la creación del primer sistema de transporte público en la Commonwealth.

Fue presidente del ferrocarril Evansville, Henderson y Nashville desde 1866 hasta su muerte en 1871. Viajó a Europa y consiguió inversores franceses para respaldar un proyecto de expansión del servicio ferroviario de vía estrecha en Kentucky.

Boyle falleció el 28 de julio de 1871 en Louisville y fue enterrado en el cementerio de Bellevue en Danville.

• Lista de generales de la Guerra Civil Estadounidense (Unión)

• « Kentucky: Historia del estado. Battle, Perrin y Kniffin, 4.ª ed., 1887» . Archivado del original el 21 de noviembre de 2007..
• Warner, Ezra J., Generales de azul: Vidas de los comandantes de la Unión , Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0822-7.

Atribución

•  Este artículo incorpora texto de una publicación que ahora es de dominio público : Wilson, JG ; Fiske, J. , eds. (1900). "Boyle, Jeremiah Tilford" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . Nueva York: D. Appleton. pág. 342.  

• Contenido multimedia relacionado con Jeremiah T. Boyle en Wikimedia Commons.
• "Jeremiah Boyle" . Find a Grave . Consultado el 14 de agosto de 2008 .