Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/762

Rh and rendered very efficient service. On November 10, 1863, he was commissioned major-general. He was now placed in command of a division of Wheeler's cavalry corps, including the brigades of John T. Morgan and Alfred Iverson. He served through the Atlanta campaign, leading his division skillfully through the various cavalry engagements, his men fighting with equal valor as troopers and as infantry. Toward the close of the year 1864 he was assigned to the command of the district of Northwest Mississippi. Here he was employed until the close of the struggle, protecting the people against raiding bands as far as his resources would permit.

Brigadier-General Carnot Posey was bom in Wilkinson county, Miss., in August, 1818. When the Mexican war began in 1846 he entered the Mississippi Rifle regiment commanded by Col. Jefferson Davis, holding the rank of first lieutenant. Every one is familiar with the story of Jefferson Davis and his Rifles at the battle of Buena Vista; how, at a critical moment, when on one part of the field the day seemed lost, the gallant Mississippians, under the lead of their talented and heroic colonel, made one of the most brilliant charges of the whole war, restoring the fortune of the day and winning for themselves a fame which shall never die so long as the story of Buena Vista shall form a part of the record of American valor. In this splendid feat of arms, young Posey bore a manly part and was disabled by a wound. When the war ended he returned to his Mississippi home and resumed the pursuits of peace. But when at last the fire of sectional strife that had been so long smoldering broke out into war, Posey entered the service of the Confederacy as colonel of the Sixteenth Mississippi. In this capacity he shared in the brilliant victory of First Manassas and in the smaller but no less decisive success at Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, in October of the same year. As colonel of the same regiment he bore an honorable part in the