James Isham Gilbert
American general
James Isham Gilbert (1823–1884) was a Union general during the American Civil War. He served with distinction in the Western theaters of the war as a regimental and brigade commander.
Biography
Early life
James Gilbert was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 16, 1823. He moved to Illinois and then to Wisconsin where he worked as a lumberman, Indian trader and liveryman. He finally settled in Iowa in 1851 where he helped found the town of Lansing.
Little Rock & Meridian
Gilbert joined the volunteer army later than many of his contemporaries, enlisting in October 1862. Nevertheless, he was appointed colonel of the 27th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment on October 3, 1862. Gilbert's regiment participated in Frederick Steele's Little Rock Expedition but was not involved in any fighting. He was posted to garrison duty in Arkansas and then transferred to Mississippi where his regiment was attached to Andrew J. Smith's division in the XVI Corps during the Meridian expedition.
Red River & Tupelo
Gilbert and a detachment of the XVI Corps (known as the Right Wing-XVI Corps commanded by Smith) were transferred to the Department of the Gulf under Nathaniel P. Banks for the Red River Campaign.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Isham Gilbert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.