Pleasant Adam Hackleman
Pleasant Adam Hackleman, son of an officer of the War of 1812, was born on November 15, 1814, in Franklin County, Indiana. He gained admittance to the state bar at the age of twenty-five and soon won distinction in the practice of his profession in Rushville, county seat of Rush County, Indiana. Hackleman was successively judge of the county probate court, clerk of the state house of representatives, county clerk, and in 1848 and 1858 an unsuccessful candidate for Congress. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln and was a delegate to the "Washington Peace Conference," which failed to arrest the coming Civil War. On May 20, 1861, he was commissioned colonel of the 16th Indiana Infantry, a regiment mustered into Federal service two days after the disaster at First Manassas and the first command to pass through Baltimore after the firing upon the 6th Massachusetts the preceding April. The regiment served under General N. P. Banks, attached to the brigade of General J.J. Abercrombie and took part in the Union misfortune at Ball's Bluff in October. On April 28, 1862, Hackleman was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and in June was ordered to report to General U. S. Grant in Tennessee, where he was assigned to command a brigade of General Thomas A. Davies' division of the Army of West Tennessee, consisting of the 52nd Illinois, the 2nd and 7th Iowa, and detachments from the 58th Illinois and the 8th, 12th, and 14th Iowa. At the battle of Corinth (following the earlier siege of Corinth after the battle of Shiloh), Hackleman was mortally wounded on October 3, 1862, while displaying conspicuous gallantry in rallying his own and other troops against the Confederate attack on the town by Generals Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn. He died that night in a room at the Tishomingo Hotel in Corinth, and was buried in Rushville.
Reference: Generals in Blue. Lives of the Union Commanders by Ezra J. Warner. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge.