Union general fought slavery in Winchester

This is a “Valentine” card sent to friends and to Gen. Robert H. Milroy by Cornelia McDonald. Mrs. Robert Baldwin was visiting the general when he ushered her out of his office so he could speak to two free black women instead. McDonald drew the card out of anger because her friend was made to wait to speak to the general and to show her disgust with his staunch anti-slavery stance. One of the Valentines was in her diary, published in 1935.

ABOVE: Gen. Robert H. Milroy hung fliers such as this around Winchester five days after he arrived in 1863 to warn residents that he intended to eradicate slavery as a way to bring an end to the war.

RIGHT: Gen. Robert H. Milroy’s bronze monument was dedicated July 4, 1910, in Rensselaer, Ind. He was memorialized as a “man of intense patriotism.”