Civil War Confederate Army Officer. Living in Tennessee, his family moved to Mississippi when he was 10 and his father died soon thereafter, and he was raised in the home of an uncle, John B. Fiser, a prominent merchant and politician. At the age of 15, he went to work as a clerk in a country store and two years later, he relocated in Memphis, Tennessee, and connected himself with a mercantile establishment. By the start of the Civil War, he was a rapidly rising Memphis merchant. He returned to Mississippi and was commissioned lieutenant of the 17th Mississippi Infantry and was made regimental adjutant they were ordered to Virginia in time to participate in the First Battle of Bull Run. He was especially praised for his "most important and effective service" that October at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Elected lieutenant colonel of the 17th on April 26, 1862, he led the regiment at the Battles of Malvern Hill and Antietam and became a "great favorite with the soldiers." He distinguished himself at the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Barksdale's Mississippi brigade (including the 17th) delayed the advance of the whole Union army for half a day. At the Battle of Gettysburg, he was wounded three times, being shot once in the cheek and twice in the leg. Accompanying corps to Georgia, he fought in the Battle of Chickamauga, and in the November 29,1863, assault on Fort Sanders outside of Knoxville, he was shot in the arm while standing atop the Union works. The wound required amputation of the arm. He was promoted to colonel on February 26,1864. Not fully recovering from the loss of his arm, he resigned his commission on June 12, 1864. In the winter of 1864, at the special request of Major General Lafayette McLaws, his old divisional commander, he was transferred to South Carolina and assigned to command a brigade of Georgia reservists. His reservists fought in the Carolinas campaign of 1865, opposing Sherman's army until the end of the war. After the war, he returned to Memphis. Resuming his business career, he rose to a partnership in one of the South's largest cotton brokerage firms. He was also active in Democratic party politics and in veterans’ organizations, being elected president of the Confederate Historical Association of Memphis. His obituary states that his commission as brigadier general was issued in the last days of the war, but it never reached him.