Peter Augustus Porter (July 14, 1827 – June 3, 1864) was a lawyer, politician, and member of the Breckinridge family and a Union Army colonel in the American Civil War.

[5] His paternal grandfather was Col. Joshua Porter (1730–1825), a Yale College graduate, who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Gen. Robert O. Tyler, was of a unit that manned the forts around Washington, D.C., and participated in parades used to increase morale in the city in the time of war.

[9] His reason for enlisting was reported in his eulogy printed in The New York Times,[1] where Porter was purported to have said: In order to secure success, the gentlemen, the educated and influential men of the North must join the service, and discipline, educate and lead its armies; that it would not be wise to entrust their unprincipled lawyer, or that ignorant mechanic with a military command, subordinate or otherwise, merely because he possessed a degree of neighborhood notoriety and popularity; on the contrary that it would be cruel toward our soldiers and fatal to our cause to act thus.

[1]On September 5, 1863, Porter was nominated for New York Secretary of State but declined, saying that his neighbors had entrusted him with the lives of their sons and he could not leave them while the war lasted.

[7] In May 1864, Porter's unit, like many Heavy Artillery regiments, was ordered by Grant (a distant cousin, though both likely did not know that) to join the Army of the Potomac then fighting in the overland campaign.

The soldier turned out to be a Confederate Captain who had been a prisoner at Fort McHenry while Porter commanded it and few days earlier had been paroled, but not exchanged.

As reported in his eulogy, Porter "immediately rose and advanced again, but had moved only a few paces forward when he fell to rise no more".

Porter was first taken to Baltimore, Maryland, met by a military escort and then taken to the St. Peter's Episcopal Church, and there placed in the chancel draped in the flag of his country.

Chaplain Gilbert De La Matyr accompanied Porter's body back to Niagara Falls.

George Jr. ran up huge debts and after his death in 1857, the house and 124 of the 136 slaves the family owned were auctioned in Charleston in January 1858.