As a reward for his performance, in November Carlin took command of the Southeastern Missouri District, a post he held through the winter into early spring of 1862 when he was assigned to lead a brigade of infantry. He first led his brigade into combat during the Siege of Corinth, Mississippi, in May of that year. Fighting against the Confederates of Braxton Bragg during the autumn Kentucky Campaign, Carlin received multiple commendations for bravery for a successful charge at the Battle of Perryville that almost cut off the Confederate line of retreat, but it was called back, under protest, by his corps commander. After the battle he protested the lack of recognition his command received and privately chided division commander Lovell H. Rousseau for "crawling around trees on his belly [which] is not such conduct as soldiers admire."[4] Carlin was promoted to brigadier general in the Union Army on November 29, 1862. A month later, his brigade in the Army of the Cumberland suffered high casualties during the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee.[1]
In early 1865, Carlin's division was involved in the Carolinas Campaign. At the Battle of Bentonville on March 19, it conducted a "probing attack" that was routed by a major Confederate counterattack in which General Carlin narrowly escaped capture. At the end of the war, he received brevet appointments to major general in both the volunteer Union Army and the Regular Army.
Postbellum career
Carlin mustered out of the volunteers in the summer of 1865 and returned to the Regular Army as the major of the 16th U.S. Infantry. He was the assistant commissioner of the Tennessee office of the Freedmen's Bureau from 1867 until 1868. He was promoted to colonel in April 1882 and later to brigadier general, and held various commands at army posts throughout the country. He put down a miners' strike in the Idaho Territory and served in several posts in the South during Reconstruction.
Carlin retired from the Army in 1893 after 43 years of service. He wrote and published his autobiography, Memoirs of Brigadier General William Passmore Carlin, USA, which detailed his long career.[1]
Carlin's son, William E. Carlin, was the leader of a hunting party that was lost and rescued, by a party dispatched by General Carlin, on the Lochsa river in Idaho in 1893.[5]
Death and legacy
While traveling on a train near Whitehall, Montana, in 1903, Carlin died suddenly. His body was shipped home to Carrollton, Illinois, for burial.[6]
Carlin, William P. The Memoirs of Brigadier General William Passmore Carlin U.S.A. Edited by Robert I. Girardi and Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1999. ISBN0-8032-1494-4.
Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN0-8047-3641-3.
U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.
