Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/643

Rh and the theatre of his early professional efforts at Tallahassee, Florida, in 1844. He resided there until 1851, in the meantime publishing two volumes upon legal subjects, and then removed to Montgomery, Ala., where he at once took a position of prominence among the lawyers of his native State. In 1853 he was elected by the legislature to the position of chancellor of the southern division of the State, which he held for six years. Upon the organization of the Confederate government at Montgomery he was appointed to the department of justice as assistant attorney-general, the duties of which he performed with signal ability during the continuance of the government. After the close of hostilities he resumed his legal practice, residing at Montgomery until 1867, and after that date, at Florence, Alabama.

Christopher Gustavus Memminger, first secretary of the treasury of the Confederate States, was born January 7, 1803, in Wurtemberg, Germany. His father had been a captain in the army of the elector of Suabia, and his grandfather an officer in the university of Babenhausen. He was left an orphan at Charleston at the age of four years and was placed at an asylum in that city until adopted by Thomas Bennett, afterward governor of South Carolina, who reared him as his own child, gave him a collegiate education and a training in law under his own supervision. Thus equipped he entered upon a brilliant career both in law and politics. In 1832, when the question of nullification was uppermost he published &quot;The Book of Nullification,&quot; arraigning that doctrine with pungent satire. From 1836 to 1852 he represented Charleston in the State assembly and was prominent in the financial legislation of that period. In 1854 he made a study of the public school system in the North by personal inspection, and framed and secured the passage of a law providing for an educational tax and the establishment of a public school system in South