Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. After graduating from Georgia's Franklin College in 1834, he moved to Columbus, Georgia, where he excelled in law and in states -rights politics, rising to associate justice of the Georgia supreme court and serving as a delegate in the 1860 Democratic conventions. A vocal secessionist, he argued vigorously for the state's supremacy in almost all government matters, and while on the state bench he endorsed that court's authority over Federal court decisions and claimed the state and Federal judiciary were "co-equals." He served as a delegate in the Georgia state secession convention and as a Georgia delegate in the Virginia convention that followed. But he preferred military service to politics and was commissioned Colonel of the 17th Georgia Infantry in August of 1861. After service with his regiment in the Seven Days' Campaign and Second Bull Run, he distinguished himself at Antietam, where he fought in the vicious Confederate holding action at Burnside Bridge. Brigadier General Robert A. Toombs was badly wounded and Toombs's brigade command fell to him. He led it through the rest of the battle and was successful in driving the Federals from the town of Sharpsburg. He credited Toombs, an old political associate, with the brigade's success that day, but the honors belonged to him. He led Toombs's brigade again at Fredricksburg. After squabbles with the Confederate administration, Toombs resigned his commission in March 1863 and he was appointed Brigadier General on the 23rd of that month. Attached to Major General John Bell Hood's division in the army's I Corps, he fought with it through Gettysburg. He then saw action at Chickamauga, where he and his men were sent into a large gap that had developed in the Federal line, and fell into fierce fighting. After saving Brigadier General Evander Law's brigade from a Union flank attack, capturing 8 cannon, and losing 510 men, he received commendation in official reports. He served in the Battle of Knoxville and the fight for Fort Sanders, then he was transferred back to Virginia for the Battle of the Wilderness. There, he was wounded and unable to rejoin his command until the Siege of Petersburg. With his men he sat out the siege, then campaigned on to Appomattox. Though he never rose to high command, his tough war service won him his troops' esteem and the army nickname "Old Rock." After the war he remade his law career in Georgia, where he died, in Columbus. The United States Army's Fort Benning, Georgia, was named in his memory.