Davis Tillson Battle Report for Second Bull Run

Davis Tillson was born in Rockland, Maine, on April 14, 1830. He spent two years at West Point but resigned due to a foot injury that eventually necessitated his foot be amputated. He was elected to the Maine legislature in 1857 and in 1858 was named as the state's adjutant-general. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Tillson resigned and joined the Second Battery of the First Maine Mounted Light Artillery and was made a captain when the battery mustered in November of 1861.

In April 1862, the Second Battery was ordered to Washington DC where it was attached to the Second Brigade of General Irvin McDowell's Second Division in the Army of the Rappahannock. Tillson was promoted to major in May and was made chief of artillery in General Edward Ord's division. In August he commanded the artillery in McDowell's Third Corps as chief of artillery and served as such during the three day artillery fight at Rappahannock Station and at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was promoted to lieutenant in December and assigned as inspector of artillery. He was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers in March 1863 and was ordered to Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, he raised and organized two regiments of heavy artillery. That December he was ordered to Knoxville, Tennessee, to supervise the defensive fortifications there. He was also given command of the Second Brigade of the Fourth Division in the Twenty-third Corps, which he led in several engagements.

While in Knoxville he requested permission to raise a regiment of colored artillery; the First Regiment Heavy Artillery US Colored Troops was mustered into serve in February 1864 and was assigned to Tillson's Second Brigade. The Third North Carolina mounted infantry, also made up of colored troops, was given command of the the District of East Tennessee in January 1865, and ended the war in command of the Fourth Division Twenty-third Corps.

After the war Tillson was retained in the service and was in charge of the Freedman's Bureau in Tennessee. In January 1867 he retired from the military and returned to Maine in 1868 where he established a granite quarry. Granite from Tillson's quarry on Hurricane Island in Penobscot Bay is one of the major components of the Washington Monument. Tillson died on April 30, 1895.