Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/445

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