Stephen Miller

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See also, the politician from South Carolina: Stephen Decatur Miller (1787-1838)

Stephen Miller
Image:Gov06-full.jpg Stephen Miller
4^th Governor of Minnesota
Term of office: January 11, 1864 – January 8, 1866
Lieutenant Governor:	Charles D. Sherwood
Predecessor:	Henry Adoniram Swift
Successor:	William Raine Marshall
Born:	January 17, 1816 Carroll Township, Pennsylvania
Died:	August 18, 1881 Worthington, Minnesota
Political party:	Republican
Profession:	businessperson
Spouse:	Margaret Funk

Stephen Miller (January 17, 1816–August 18, 1881) was an American Republican politician. As the 4th Governor of Minnesota, from January 11, 1864 to January 8, 1866, he was the first Civil War veteran to serve as governor of Minnesota.

Born in 1816 in Carroll Township, Pennsylvania, frail health prompted Stephen Miller, a Pennsylvania Dutch businessman, to leave home at age 42 and follow his friend Alexander Ramsey to Minnesota, where the climate reportedly was more congenial. Miller established a mercantile business in St. Cloud and, within two years, had risen to prominence in the state Republican Party.

During the Civil War, this middle-aged soldier with no previous military experience advanced rapidly from the rank of private to colonel in Minnesota's First Regiment of Volunteers. In 1862 Miller returned from the South and replaced Henry Hastings Sibley as commander of Mankato's Camp Lincoln, where 303 Dakota men, convicted of participating in the Dakota War of 1862, awaited their fate. Four months later he supervised, by order of President Lincoln, the mass execution of 38 Dakota men condemned for their part in the war.

His military career and Ramsey's support assured Miller of a gubernatorial victory in 1863. He was the first of several Civil War veterans to serve as governor of Minnesota. Although lacking a college degree himself, he valued higher education and advocated generous appropriations to state normal schools and the University of Minnesota. In his final address to the legislature, he strongly but unsuccessfully urged adoption of a black suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

Miller chose not to run for re-election and was unemployed until 1871, when he became a railroad-company field agent in Windom. He served as a state congressman in 1873 and as an electoral college representative in 1876. In 1881 the one-time war hero and popular governor died alone, an impoverished widower in Worthington, Minnesota.