James Adelbert Mulligan was born on June 30, 1830, in Utica, New York, to Irish immigrants. His father died when he was a child. His mother Elizabeth married a Chicago grocer named Michael Lantry, and they moved to Chicago with him sometime before 1850. Mulligan attended the University of Saint Mary of the Lake before reading law with Isaac N. Arnold in the early 1850s. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1856 and began practicing law in Chicago. By 1860, he owned $1,000 of personal property.

 

When the Civil War began, Mulligan helped raise the 23^rd Illinois Infantry, and he mustered in as the regiment’s colonel on June 18, 1861. Confederate General Sterling Price captured Mulligan in September 1861 but released him soon afterward. He served as commander of Camp Douglas, a prisoner of war camp, from February until June 1862. Then, in the fall of 1863, he oversaw the construction of Fort Mulligan in Grant County, West Virginia. He returned to the field in 1864, earning distinction in the Battle of Leetown on July 3, 1864.

 

Three weeks later, on July 24, he was mortally wounded in the Second Battle of Kernstown. He ordered his men to leave him on the battlefield, instructing them to “Lay me down and save the flag.” Confederate forces captured him and carried him to a nearby house, where he died on July 26, 1864.

 

Image: James Adelbert Mulligan (courtesy Wikicommons)

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