User:Cullen328/Sandbox/John Lucas Miller

John Lucas Miller, Jr. (born 1831 in Ebenezer, South Carolina, died May 6, 1864) was an attorney and state legislator in South Carolina who was served as a Colonel in the Army of Northern Virginia and was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War.

Family
His father, John Lucas Miller and his uncle Stephen Decatur Miller both served as delegates to the Nullification Convention during the South Carolina Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833. His uncle also served as governor of South Carolina and United States Senator from South Carolina.

Legislator and lawyer
Miller served in the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1853, when he was 21 years old.

Miller was a native of York County, South Carolina and worked as an attorney in Yorkville, the county seat, for several years before the war.

Civil War
Miller joined the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and organized a volunteer infantry company. Initially serving as a captain, he commanded a unit of skirmishers on September 17, 1862 during the Battle of Antietam (called the Battle of Sharpsburg in the south), assigned to locate Union Army positions.

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, he was promoted to Colonel, and assigned to command the 12th South Carolina Infantry of Colonel Abner Monroe Perrin's First Brigade of a division commanded by General William Dorsey Pender. He first led the unit at the Battle of Chancellorsville, and in the aftermath of this significant Confederate victory, was assigned to march 2000 Union prisoners to Richmond, Virginia. He completed this assignment without a single prisoner escaping.

Pender was killed during the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863. Although his regiment had 20 men killed at Gettysburg, Miller survived the defeat and helped lead the Confederate retreat. In the days that followed, the 12th Regiment lost another 18 men killed in the Battles of Hagerstown and Falling Water during the retreat from Gettysburg.

Miller was killed at the Battle of the Wilderness along with 15 other men of his regiment. He was wounded by a minie ball in the bowels on May 5, and died in a field hospital before the following morning. It was said that he "commanded the respect of officers and men by his courage and conscientiousness, and acquired many friends by his affable and courteous deportment".


 * Keep an article about the son, who meets WP:POLITICIAN as a state legislator, and perhaps an article about the father as well. The father (along with his brother Stephen Decatur Miller) was a delegate to the 1832 South Carolina Nullification Convention, an important precursor to the Civil War, according to State papers on nullification: including the public acts of the Convention of the people of South Carolina, assembled at Columbia, November 19, 1832, and March 11, 1833; the proclamation of the President of the United States, and the proceedings of the several state legislatures which have acted on the subject. His son served in the South Carolina General Assembly in 1853, at the age of 21, according to Reports and resolutions of South Carolina to the General Assembly, 1854.  The son served as a Colonel and commanded a unit at the Battle of Antietam (called Sharpsburg in the South) in September, 1862, according to The War of the Rebellion: v. 1-53 (serial no. 1-111) Formal reports, both Union and Confederate, of the first seizures of United States property in the southern states, and of all military operations in the field, with the correspondence, orders and returns relating specially thereto. 1880-98.  Colonel Miller served under General William Dorsey Pender, until Pender was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863, according to historian Stephen W. Sears here.  Several other books about Gettysburg confirm his Miller's role there, and in the retreat in the days that followed.  Colonel Miller was killed in May, 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness, according to Heroes of the old Camden district, South Carolina, 1776-1861, which gives the general outlines of his military career.  Additional biographical information is available in The history of a brigade of South Carolinians, known first as 'Gregg's', and subsequently as 'McGowan's brigade', published in 1866.