Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/428

Rh Thirty-seventh, and consolidated Twenty-sixth and Fiftieth. At Chickamauga this brigade, led by General Deas, struck in the flank and routed Sheridan's division, killing Brig.-Gen. W. H. Lytle and capturing seventeen pieces of artillery, Deas himself losing forty per cent of his force engaged. He also led his brigade at the battle of Missionary Ridge, and through the campaign from Dalton to Atlanta and Jonesboro, his brigade taking a prominent part in most of the battles of the Hundred Days. He marched through Alabama into Tennessee with Hood. The division, under Gen. Edward Johnson, was the only one of Lee’s corps which fully shared in the desperate assault at Franklin, where Deas led his brigade with great gallantry, and was slightly wounded. On December 16th Gen. Johnson was captured at Nashville, and Deas then took command of the remnant of the division, and led it during the heroic retreat to Alabama. Subsequently, in command of his brigade, he was in the front of Sherman and in active command during the campaign in the Carolinas, 1865, until taken sick at Raleigh. On the return of peace he made his residence in New York City.

Brigadier-General James Deshler was a native of Tuscumbia, Ala., born February 18, 1833. His father, Maj. David Deshler, was an eminent civil engineer, who removed from Pennsylvania to Alabama in 1825, and who, dying in Tuscumbia in 1871, bequeathed a large sum for the establishment in that city of a female college, called the "Deshler institute." James Deshler entered the United States military academy in 1850, and on graduation was promoted to second lieutenant of the Third artillery. He served on frontier duty in California in 1854-55; was at Carlisle barracks, Pa., in 1855, and on frontier duty in the Sioux expedition in the same year, being engaged in the action at Blue Water on September 3d. After participating in the Utah expedition, he was at Fort Wise, Col., in 1861, when he heard of the