John Schofield was a Union general in the American Civil War. He was born in 1831 in Ohio. He graduated from the United States Military Acadamy in 1853. He fought mostly in the Western Theater of the Civil War. After the war, he was Secretary of War from June 1868 to March 1869. He was the commanding general of the U.S. army from 1888 to 1895, when he retired. He died in 1905.