previous next
[418] the office of Elmore & Yancey. He was admitted to the bar in 1855, and, with the exception of the war, continued to practice law in Montgomery until his death. He answered the first call to arms in 1861, and with his company (the Montgomery True Blues), of which he was a lieutenant, was present at the capture of Pensacola navy yard. In August, 1861, President Davis appointed him major of the Eighteenth Alabama. At Shiloh he was shot through the right lung while standing by the colors of his regiment, and was supposed to be mortally wounded; but within ninety days he rejoined his regiment. In the autumn of 1862 he was sent to Mobile, and was there for some time in command of a brigade, having been promoted to colonel. At Chickamauga, though injured by his horse, which ran against a tree, he remained upon the field, his regiment losing two-thirds of its rank and file. In command of Clayton's brigade, he relieved Walthall's brigade on the evening of November 24th, on Lookout Mountain, and on the next day he took a gallant-part in the battle of Missionary Ridge. He was also with A. P. Stewart's division, supporting Cleburne at Ringgold Gap. In command of his regiment he was a gallant participant in the fighting from Rocky Face ridge to Atlanta, until General Clayton was promoted, when he was advanced to the rank of brigadier-general, and assigned to the command of Clayton's brigade. He commanded the brigade during Hood's flank movement in North Georgia, and in the Tennessee campaign which followed, was the first, with his brigade, to reach the position before Nashville, which the army occupied next day. On the fatal 16th of December he held a line directly across the Franklin pike, and maintained his position against repeated assaults of the enemy. Of the result of one of these assaults he wrote: ‘I have seen most of the battlefields of the West, but have never seen dead men thicker than in front of my two right regiments.’ When the crumbling of the Confederate line reached his brigade he withdrew, under the

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Henry D. Clayton (3)
B. C. Yancey (1)
E. C. Walthall (1)
Alexander P. Stewart (1)
Chickamauga Hood (1)
Jefferson Davis (1)
P. R. Cleburne (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1862 AD (1)
August, 1861 AD (1)
1861 AD (1)
1855 AD (1)
December 16th (1)
November 24th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: