Samuel Powhatan Carter

Samuel Powhatan Carter , 1819-91, American naval officer and Union general in the Civil War, b. Elizabethton, Tenn., grad. Annapolis, 1846. In the Civil War he was transferred from the navy to the War Dept., sent to organize Union troops in East Tennessee, made brigadier general of volunteers (May, 1862), and given command of a cavalry division in the Army of the Ohio. Discharged from service as brevet major general (1866), he returned to the navy. In 1882 he was made a rear admiral on the retired list. Carter is said to have been the only American who was both a major general and a rear admiral.

Carter, Samuel Powhatan (1819–91) Union naval and army officer, born in Elizabethton, Tennessee. From the Kentucky mountain base, he recruited and commanded a volunteer brigade of East Tennesseans. On “Carter's Raid,” he led almost 1,000 cavalrymen over a torturous mountain route in brutal winter weather to destroy bridges on the East Tennessee and Virginia Railway (1862–63). He was commandant of the U.S. Naval Academy from 1870 to 1873 and retired as rear admiral in 1881.