Thomas Williams ( general ) Thomas R . Williams ( January 16 , 1815 – August 5 , 1862 ) was an antebellum United States Army officer and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War . He was killed as he commanded the Union troops at the Battle of Baton Rouge . Birth and early years . Williams was born in 1815 in Albany , New York . His father was General John R . Williams , a five - term Mayor of Detroit and prominent military figure in Michigan . His mother was Mary Mott Williams of one of Albany ' s leading families . Military career . He began his military service in 1832 as a private in an infantry company during the Black Hawk War , serving as a trumpeter under his father ' s command . The following year , Williams received an appointment to attend the United States Military Academy , then graduated in the Class of 1837 and he also taught mathematics at West Point in 1844 . He was breveted as a second lieutenant of the 4th U . S . Artillery . He later served in the Seminole Wars as a first Lieutenant and Assistant Commissary of Substance . Williams served in the Mexican War and was brevetted as a captain on August 20 , 1847 . He was brevetted as a major on September 13 , 1847 , for " meritorious service " in the war . Following the Mexican War , Williams was promoted to full captain and posted to Mackinac Island , Michigan , where he met and married Mary Neosho Bailey , daughter of a prominent physician . He was later assigned to posts in Florida and the Utah Territory . By the late 1850s , he was serving as an instructor at the Artillery School at Fort Monroe in Virginia . Civil War and death . Shortly after the Civil War began , Williams was promoted to major in the 5th U . S . Artillery on May 14 , 1861 . On September 28 , 1861 , President Abraham Lincoln promoted Williams to Brigadier General of U . S . Volunteers , to rank from that date and on February 3 , 1862 , the U . S . Senate confirmed his nomination . He was posted to the command of a brigade on the Potomac River , and was later posted to Fort Hatteras , North Carolina . He then was assigned to Maj . Gen . Benjamin Butler ' s command in the land operations against New Orleans , Louisiana . Williams and his brigade were assigned the task of occupying Baton Rouge , Louisiana . On May 29 , General Williams arrived in the city with six regiment s of infantry , two artillery batteries , and a troop of cavalry . During the early summer , Williams ' 3 , 000 - man infantry brigade began work on what later became known as Grant ' s Canal , cutting a new channel across the base of De Soto Point on the west side of the Mississippi River across from Vicksburg , Mississippi . The purpose of the canal was to develop a channel for navigation that would enable gunboat s and transports to bypass the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg . In August 1862 , Confederate forces under the command of Gen . John C . Breckinridge attacked the Union defenses of Baton Rouge in an effort to retake the state ' s capital . Thomas Williams was killed by a gunshot wound to his chest while leading what proved to be the successful defense of the city . He was buried in the family plot in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit , Michigan . Relations . One of his sons , Gershom Mott Williams , the first bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Marquette , later published General Williams ' personal papers .