Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/729

236 force, impeded their march and brought their schemes to naught. In the campaign resulting in the battles of Iuka and Corinth he performed very important services. During the Grierson raid in the spring of 1863, Colonel Adams did the best that could be done with the means at his command to check and impede the movements of the Federal raider. At Union Church, though unable to defeat Grierson, he did cause him to turn aside from his intended attack upon Natchez. For his important services during the Vicksburg campaign he was made brigadier-general in the provisional army of the Confederate States, being commissioned on September 18, 1863. During 1864 the scene of his operations was in north Alabama, Mississippi and west Tennessee. In the spring of 1865, when the dauntless Forrest, with a remnant of his once splendid and invincible cavalry, attempted to make head gainst the numerous and splendidly equipped Federal expedition led by Wilson, Wirt Adams with his brigade formed part of the force with which Forrest tried to stem the tide of disaster. The last gun was fired by General Adams' men, at his command, and the affair was an honorable victory, but though the Confederates fought with the oldtime spirit, it was all in vain. At last news came of the capitulation of the main armies of the Confederacy. Then Forrest and all the bands led by him laid down their arms. General Adams returned to his home in Mississippi and resumed the vocations of civil life. He was appointed State revenue agent, first by Governor Stone, and afterward by Governor Lowry, and ably filled that office until President Cleveland's inauguration, when he was appointed postmaster at Jackson. At that city he was killed, by an accidental shot, in a street encounter, May 1, 1888.

James L. Alcorn, a brigadier-general of State troops, was born in Illinois, November 4, 1816, and was reared and educated in Kentucky, where he served in the