Donn Piatt

Donn Piatt (June 29, 1819 – November 12, 1891) was an American journalist, military officer, and public official. Born in Cincinnati, Piatt attended schools in Ohio and began contributing to newspapers as a young man. He started his career as a lawyer and was briefly a judge in the early 1850s. He represented the United States as a diplomat in Paris for about a year starting in 1854.

Piatt served as an officer in the Union Army in the American Civil War from 1861 to 1864. After the war, he held a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives for a single term. He then moved east—first to New York, then to Washington, D.C. He began a journalism career in Washington, founding a newspaper and contributing to others. After retiring from journalism around 1880, Piatt returned to Ohio and wrote works of fiction and plays.

Early life and education Donn Piatt was born on June 29, 1819, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Elizabeth (Barnett) and Benjamin M. Piatt, a judge. In 1827, the family moved to a large home outside West Liberty, Ohio, called Mac-o-chee, later the site of one of the Piatt Castles. Donn's cousin John James Piatt, a poet, became the Press editor sometime in 1858 or 1859. Donn contributed to several other papers including the Louisville Journal (later The Courier-Journal) and Ohio State Journal (later The Columbus Citizen-Journal) around this time.

Civil War (1861–1864) Piatt was an officer of the Union Army in the American Civil War. On April 30, 1861, he was commissioned a captain of the 13th Ohio Infantry Regiment and became a major on November 4, 1862. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on January 1, 1863, becoming the chief of staff to Robert C. Schenck. At some point around June 1863, when Schenck was away from his post attending to business in Boston, Piatt ordered William Birney to recruit a brigade only of enslaved people. Piatt had unsuccessfully tried to convince Schenck to give this order, which Schenck refused to do, so Piatt waited until Schenck left him in charge to issue the order himself. President Abraham Lincoln was going to cashier Piatt for this decision but decided not to after Edwin Stanton and Salmon P. Chase intervened.

Apparently from Mac-o-chee, Piatt began editing Belford's Monthly, a magazine "embracing a liberal political policy in addition to literary features of the highest excellence", in summer 1887. Its first issue was released in June 1888. A novel titled The Reverend Melancthon Poundex, based on a short story he published in Capital as "The Minister's Wooing", was published posthumously in 1893.

Piatt married Louise Kirby in 1847, after catching a "severe cold" en route back from a meeting of the Literary Club of Cincinnati.

Publications An Infamous Record (unpublished, 1870s) The Lone Grave of the Shenandoah and Other Tales (Chicago, 1888) Poems and Plays (Cincinnati, 1893) The Reverend Melancthon Poundex: A Novel (Chicago, 1893) General George H. Thomas: A Critical Biography (Cincinnati, 1893) Sunday Meditations (Cincinnati, 1893)