Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/478

Rh the front center division of the army, its right being the pivot on which the successful wheel of the army was made on December 29th. His skill and gallantry in the battle were highly commended by Polk and Bragg. His division had the most dangerous, difficult work of the day to perform, and they fought nobly, but with terrible loss, 2,500 out of 7,700 engaged. He continued in command of the division during the Tullahoma campaign, and until August 13, 1863, when he was succeeded by General Hindman. During the early part of 1864 he was in district command at Montgomery, and in July he was put in command of the reserve forces of the State, by order of the war department. This position he retained until the close of the war. He then resumed his residence at Mobile, and became editor of the Tribune newspaper of that city. In 1867 he was again elected mayor. His death occurred at Mobile, March 13, 1890.

Brigadier-General Sterling Alexander Martin Wood was born in Lauderdale county, Ala., in 1823. He took a collegiate course, studied law in Columbia, Tenn., was admitted to the bar in 1845, and became the partner of his brother at Florence, Ala. In 1857 he was representative from Lauderdale in the Alabama legislature, and at that session was elected district solicitor, an office he held until 1861. He then went into service as captain of the first company that left Lauderdale county, and upon the organization of the Seventh Alabama he was elected its colonel. He remained with his regiment at Pensacola until February, 1862, when he was ordered to Bowling Green, Ky. His commission as brigadier-general dated from January 7, 1862. At Shiloh his brigade, the Third of Hardee's corps, consisted of the Eighth and Ninth Arkansas, Twenty-seventh and Forty-fourth Tennessee, and Forty-fifth Tennessee, Sixteenth Alabama, Hardcastle's Mississippi battalion, Jefferson light artillery, Avery's Georgia dragoons. Attacking the enemy, he captured