John Franklin Miller ( senator ) John Franklin Miller ( November 21 , 1831 – March 8 , 1886 ) was a lawyer , businessman , and general in the Union Army during the American Civil War . He represented California in the United States Senate from 1881 until his death . He was notorious for several bills against the Chinese immigrants . Early life and career . Miller was born in South Bend , Indiana . His nephew , also named John Franklin Miller , was later a congressman from Washington . Both sometimes went by John F . Miller . Miller was educated in South Bend , Chicago , and in New York , where he received a law degree in 1852 from the New York State and National Law School . He was admitted to the bar and established a law practice in South Bend , but moved the next year to Napa , California . There , he continued his career as a lawyer , as well as becoming the county treasurer . He returned to South Bend in 1855 and resumed his practice . Miller was elected to the Indiana State Senate in 1860 . Civil War . With the secession of eleven Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War , Miller joined the Union Army . On August 27 , 1861 , Governor Oliver P . Morton commissioned Miller as Colonel of the 29th Indiana Infantry . After training , the regiment was assigned to Kirk ' s Brigade in Alexander M . McCook ' s division in Buell ' s Army of the Ohio and marched to Tennessee . Miller saw action on the second day of the Battle of Shiloh , as well as during the subsequent Siege of Corinth . Miller led his regiment through northern Alabama and Tennessee and pursued Braxton Bragg through Kentucky . Miller commanded a brigade under James Negley during the Battle of Stones River in late December 1862 . On the second day of the battle , Miller spearheaded the Federal counterattack across Stones River which repulsed John C . Breckinridge ' s Confederate attack . During this charge Miller was wounded in the neck . During the Tullahoma Campaign , Miller commanded a brigade under General McCook in the XX Corps . He was severely wounded , losing his left eye , in a minor fight at Liberty Gap on June 27 , 1863 , and was out of action for nearly a year while he recuperated . Miller was promoted to brigadier general April 10 , 1864 , retroactive to January 5 . In May 1864 , he was assigned to administrative duty as commander of the garrison at Nashville , Tennessee . He returned to the field in December , commanding a sizable force of infantry and artillery at the Battle of Nashville . For his services at that battle , Miller was brevetted as a major general on March 13 , 1865 . Return to California . Miller declined a commission as a colonel in the Regular Army and resigned from the Volunteers on September 29 , 1865 , to move back to California when President Andrew Johnson appointed him as collector of customs of the Port of San Francisco , a post he held until 1869 when he declined another term . He turned to business interests , and served for 12 years as the President of the Alaska Commercial Company , which controlled the fur industry in newly acquired Pribilof Islands . Miller purchased the property which was part of Rancho Yajome in Napa Valley in the year 1869 . At the time Miller bought this holding , it was entirely wilderness area . General and Mrs . Miller purchased the property in several parcels from different grantors , including the United States via a deed signed by President U . S . Grant and the State of California by a deed signed by Governor Newton Booth . Deeds conveying the various parcels to the General were dated in the years 1869 , 1872 , 1873 and 1881 . Silverado Country Club now occupies the property . Miller returned to politics , from 1878 – 79 as a member of the second state constitutional convention . The California state legislature elected the Republican Miller as one of the state ' s two Senators in 1880 . He was an outspoken proponent of several bills to limit the influx and influence of Chinese immigrants . He expressed his sentiments about Chinese immigrantion or immigrants during passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act : One complete man , the product of free institutions and high civilization , is worth more to the world than hundreds of barbarians . Upon what other theory can we justify the almost complete extermination of the Indians , the original possessor of all these States ? I believe that one such man as Newton , or Fraklin , or Lincoln , glorifies the creator of the world and benefits mankind more than all the Chinese who have lived , struggled and died on the banks of the Hoang Ho . 13 Cong . Rec . 1 , 487 ( 1882 ) . He was chairman , Committee to Revise the Laws of the United States ( Forty - seventh Congress ) and served on the Committee on Foreign Relations ( Forty - ninth Congress ) . Senator Miller died in Washington , D . C . while in office . He was initially buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco , but was reinterred in the Arlington National Cemetery on May 5 , 1913 , alongside his wife Mary Wickerham ( Chess ) Miller , his daughter , and his son - in - law , Rear Admiral Richardson Clover .