still serving with the 42nd Indiana when it took part in the Battle of Perryville Kentucky on October 8, 1862. It was there that Denby was twice wounded and had his horse killed under him. Colonel Denby officially took command of the 80th Indiana on or before November 22, 1862. In a letter to the army dated January 12, 1863, Colonel Denby resigned his commission, stating: His resignation was accepted effective January 17, 1863, and he left the army based on a surgeon's certificate of disability. After the war, Denby was elected as a First Class Companion of the Indiana Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Political career After resignation, he resumed the practice of law in Evansville. Denby was active in the Democratic Party, and upon the election of Grover Cleveland as President, he was put forward for a post in the diplomatic service and on May 29, 1885, he was appointed Minister to China. Denby remained at the post through 1898—the United States' longest serving envoy to China to date—through the administrations of Cleveland's first term, Republican Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland's second term. He resigned a little more than a year into the administration of Republican William McKinley, and would be succeeded by Edwin H. Conger. Upon his return to the U.S. in September 1898, Denby was appointed a member of the commission to inquire into the conduct of the Spanish–American War. Even before the adjournment of that commission, he was made a member of the first commission to the Philippines (the Schurman Commission), together with Admiral George Dewey, General Elwell Stephen Otis, Jacob Gould Schurman, the President of Cornell University, and Professor Dean Conant Worcester, of the University of Michigan. Later life After retirement from official life, Denby settled down at his old home at Evansville, Indiana, and devoted himself to literary labors, study, and the pleasures of home life. He died of heart failure, at the age of seventy-three years, at Jamestown, New York, to which city he had gone to deliver a lecture. References Denby, Charles, China and Her People, Vol. I, Published 1906. pp. ix-xvi, "Biographical Sketch of the Hon. Chas. Denby, LL.D." Terrell, W. H. H., Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, Volumes II and VIII. Indianapolis, IN 1866. Horrall, S. F., History of the Forty-Second Indiana Volunteer Infantry, Published 1892. pp 11–12,