Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. Born in Clinton, Georgia, he was the son of a United States Senator, therefore he was raised in Columbus, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. He dropped out of military school in Alabama in August 1847 to serve in the Mexican War as a 2nd Lieutenant in a regiment of Georgia volunteers his father had helped equip. After the conflict he returned home and began a law career, then quit to become a professional soldier. In 1855 he was commissioned directly into the new 1 United States Cavalry, with which he served at posts including Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. In March 1861, he resigned his commission to accept a captaincy in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Soon he went to Wilmington, North Carolina, to command troops guarding the Cape Fear River. That August he became Colonel of the 20th North Carolina Infantry, having recruited the regiment almost singlehandedly. He and his men were sent to Virginia shortly before the Seven Days' Campaign, during which he conducted himself meritoriously at Gaines' Mill, where the 20th captured a Federal battery whose fire had enfiladed comrades' positions. Wounded later in the campaign he recovered to fight at South Mountain and Antietam, in the latter battle leading the brigade formerly under Brigadier General Samuel Garland, Jr. Named Brigadier on November 1, 1862, he served competently just 6 months later at Chancellorsville. On July 1, 1863, his brigade was savaged by the Union I Corps northwest of Gettysburg, partly through errors made by himself. Seeing most of his men killed, wounded, or captured, he, went to pieces and became unfit for further command. Though he recovered to perform well during the Confederate retreat from Pennsylvania, his record remained tarnished. Eventually he was sent to Georgia, where he led state forces. He regained his reputation during the 1864 campaigning in the West, after being given a brigade in the cavalry corps of Major General Joseph Wheeler. His most notable performance was the capture of Major General George Stoneman and large numbers of his troopers during Stoneman's and McCook's Raid that July. Stoneman would be highest-ranking Union officer taken prisoner during the Civil War. When the war finally ended, he went into business in Macon, Georgia, moving to Florida in 1877 to manage orange groves near Kissimmee. Returning to Georgia, he would die in Atlanta.