Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/454

Rh as brigadier-general March 4, 1865, After serving in the trenches around Petersburg during the winter of 1864-65, he was present at the final struggle on these lines. Just one day before the surrender at Appomattox he was captured, being at the time sick and with the wagon train. Subsequently, he went to Mobile and engaged in business. In the summer of 1866, while in New Orleans for the purpose of establishing a branch of his business, he contracted yellow fever and died. He was a man of soldierly bearing, six feet in height, slender and erect; of very gentle disposition, and loved by the men of his command as a friend and protector, whom they obeyed because they held him in high esteem.

Brigadier-General John Tyler Morgan, who enlisted as a private in the Confederate States army and rose to the rank of brigadier-general, was born at Athens, Tenn., June 20, 1824. His father was a merchant; his mother, whose maiden name was Irby, was a relative of Chancellor Tyler, of Virginia. At the age of nine years he removed with his parents to Calhoun county, Ala, and in that State received an academic education; studied law at Talladega, was admitted to the bar in 1845, and subsequently practiced at Talladega, Cahaba, and Selma, his present home. His canvass of the State in 1860 as candidate for presidential elector-at-large on the Breckinridge ticket widened his reputation for extraordinary ability as an orator; and as a delegate from Dallas county he was an active participant in all the proceedings of the convention which, on January 11, 1861, passed the ordinance of secession. After the adjournment of that body he was appointed on the staff of Major-General Clemens, in command of the State forces at Fort Morgan, where he was on duty until the fort was transferred to the Confederate government. In April, 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Cahaba Rifles, which became Company G of the Fifth Alabama infantry, and upon the organization of the