MILES, NELSON APPLETON American soldier, was born in Westminster, Mass., on Aug. 8, 1839. He was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Boston when the Civil War began, and he entered the army in Sept. 1861, as a lieutenant of volunteer infantry. He served with distinction in the Peninsular campaign, and at Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, where he received a wound which incapacitated him until He commanded a brigade at the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and for his gallant leadership was made brigadier-general of vol unteers. He fought in the Cold Harbor and Petersburg operations in 1864-65, and at the close of the war was in temporary com mand of an army corps. In July, 1866, he was made colonel of a regular infantry regiment. He was promoted brigadier-general U.S.A. (Dec. 188o), and to major-general (April 189o), and in 1895 succeeded Gen. John McA. Schofield as commanding general of the United States army. He was conspicuously successful (1869-86) in dealing with Indian outbreaks, fighting the Chey enne, Kiowa and Comanche on Llano Estacado (1875) and the Sioux in Montana (1876), capturing the Nez Perces under Chief Joseph (1877), and defeating the Chiricahua Apaches under Ger onimo (1886), and he commanded the United States troops sent to Chicago during the railway riots in 1894. He was in nominal
direction of military operations during the war with Spain in 1898, though his personal share of the operations was confined to directing the almost unopposed Porto Rico expedition. He was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general in 190o, and retired from active service in 1903. He died in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 1925. Miles was one of the youngest Union generals in the Civil War, commanding when only 25 years of age a corps of 26,000 men. He wrote Personal Recollections (1896), Military Europe (1898), Observations Abroad (1899) and Serving the Republic (191I).