Julius H. Stahel-Számwald (born Gyula Számwald; November 5, 1825 – December 4, 1912) was a Hungarian soldier who emigrated to the United States and became a Union general in the American Civil War. After the war, he served as a U.S. diplomat, a mining engineer, and a life insurance company executive. He received the Medal of Honor for gallantry in action at the Battle of Piedmont in 1864. Birth and early years Stahel was born in Szeged, Kingdom of Hungary, 200 km southeast of Budapest. After schooling in Szeged and Budapest, he entered the Austrian Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant. Stahel joined the movement for Hungarian independence led by Lajos Kossuth during the Revolution of 1848. He served on the staffs of Gen. Artúr Görgey and Gen. Richard Debaufre Guyon. When the Hungarian uprising against the Habsburg dynasty was put down in 1849, he fled to Prussia and then to England before migrating to the United States in 1859. Until the outbreak of the American Civil War, he worked for Deutsche illustrirte Familienblätter, a German-language newspaper in New York City. Civil War service In 1861, with the outbreak of war, Stahel and Louis Blenker recruited the 8th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the 1st German Rifles or Blenker's Rifles. Stahel, who had dropped the "Számwald" portion of his surname, became the regiment's lieutenant colonel, while Blenker served as colonel. Stahel first saw combat at the First Battle of Bull Run, leading the regiment in Blenker's first brigade of Dixon Miles's Fifth Division. The regiment covered the flight of the Union Army of Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell. The 8th New York served in Blenker's division of the newborn Army of the Potomac until it was transferred to western Virginia. Stahel become a colonel on August 11, 1861 and a brigadier general three months later. Stahel led a brigade under Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont in the Mountain Department during an incursion into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. His brigade was of Fremont's left at the Battle of Cross Keys in which Stonewall Jackson stopped the Union advance into the Valley. Stahel's position on the left exposed his command to a flank attack by Isaac Trimble's brigade as Fremont was attempting to turn the right of the Confederate line. By July 1862, Stahel was commander of the first brigade of Robert C. Schenck's first division Army of Virginia in the