rank of colonel. He subsequently commanded the 65th Indiana regiment and was transferred to the command of the 136th Indiana. He commanded a cavalry brigade in the 23d corps of Burnside's army in its expedition to occupy East Tennessee in 1863. Colonel Foster at the head of his brigade led the advance and was the first to enter Knoxville. After the siege of that place which followed, General Burnside said : "If I had believed Foster, as I was inclined to do, there would have been no siege of Knoxville." During the same month he commanded the Federal force sent to capture Blountsville, which place he found occupied by the cavalry regiment of Colonel James E. Carter, the 1st Tennessee cavalry; and after a stubborn fight he ordered the town shelled unless evacuated, and thus compelled the withdrawal of the Confederate force and occupied the place with his brigade. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers for his services in East Tennessee, and at the close of hostilities he returned to Evansville, Indiana, where he practised law and conducted the "Evansville Journal" as editor and proprietor, 1865-69. He was appointed postmaster of Evansville in March, 1869, by President Grant and at the close of Grant's first term, through the recommendation of Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, he was appointed United States minister to Mexico, serving in that capacity, 1873-80. While in Mexico he studied Spanish law and literature and held the friendship of the leading men of the Republic. In 1880 he was transferred to St. Petersburg as United States minister, by appointment of President Hayes; and his appointment to that important mission had been confirmed by the senate before he received news of his advancement. When President Garfield succeeded to the presidency, March 4, 1881, he reaffirmed the appointment, and Minister Foster kept up his studies of the language, the people, the law and the customs of the Russians until November, 1881, when for personal reasons, he resigned the position and his resignation was accepted by President Arthur.
On his return to the United States he located in Washington, District of Columbia, as an international lawyer. This was largely at the urgent solicitation of the representatives in Washington of various foreign countries desirous of obtaining the benefit of his superior knowledge of international law in adjusting disputes that constantly came to them in their official position. He found this practice very remunerative; and it was with reluctance that he accepted from President Arthur, in 1883, the position of United
