Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/421

398 calculated to test the endurance and courage of the best of troops. Part of the time General Cantey led the division of which he had held the command at Pollard; but on account of his health he could not be present all the time. Therefore Maj.-Gen. E. C. Walthall was put in command of the division. His brigade passed through the fiery ordeal of the "Hundred Days" from Dalton to Atlanta, was in the battle of Jonesboro, in Hood's Tennessee campaign, then in the campaign through the Carolinas, which, soon after the battle of Bentonville, ended in the surrender of the army under Joseph E. Johnston, at Durham's Station, on the 26th of April, 1865. During this time General Cantey was with his command as much as his physical condition would permit. After the war he resumed planting, and continued in that occupation until his death.

Brigadier-General James Holt Clanton was bom in Columbia county, Ga., January 8, 1827. His mother was a relative of Gen. H, D. Clayton, of Barbour county, Ala., himself a native of Georgia. His father was Nathaniel Holt Clanton, who represented Macon county at one time in the lower, and at another in the upper house of the Alabama legislature. It was in 1835, when James Holt was eight years old, that the Clantons moved from their Georgia home and settled in Macon county, Ala. It was here that young Clanton grew up to manhood. His education ended with his admission to the college at Tuscaloosa; for his youthful ardor led him then to enlist as a private in Capt. Rush Elmore's company of Col. Bailie Peyton's regiment. Serving out his six months' enlistment he soon after enlisted in the Palmetto regiment of South Carolina, for which Capt. Preston S. Brooks had come back to recruit. He reached Mexico just after the occupation of the city by the American forces. Returning home he began the study of law, in Tuskegee, with Hon. David Clopton, and then attended the law school of