Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he was the son of a well-to-do rice planter. He received a solid education but left the College of Charleston in 1841 to enter the export business. In 1846 he fought in Mexico as a Lieutenant in the Palmetto Rifles, a commission he won through his experience as a Sergeant Major of militia. After serving under Winfield Scott, which he considered "perhaps the happiest and most romantic period" of his life, he returned to Charleston and worked as a commission merchant till the outbreak of civil war. When his state seceded in December 1860, he was elected Captain of a local company of mounted riflemen. He went on staff duty, serving as inspector general to Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was at Beauregard's side during the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Six weeks later he became Colonel of the 10th South Carolina Infantry and shorty afterward Commander of the state's First Military District, headquartered at Georgetown. There he erected batteries and built works to protect the local coastline, but at the end of March 1862 he was ordered by his departmental commander, Major General John C. Pemberton, to dismantle the works and abandon the position. Reporting at Charleston, he served briefly under Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley. Later that spring he and his regiment were sent to Mississippi to join the Army of Tennessee. For the remainder of the war, he served in the West, from the outset as a Brigade Commander. He fought conspicuously at Corinth, Stone's River (where his command ably supported the center of the Confederate line), and Chickamauga (where his troops menaced the Union left under Major General George H. Thomas). On April 26, 1863, he was elevated to Brigadier General, a promotion whose long delay he attributed to the influence of his family's enemies in the Confederate War Department. During the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, he was wounded at Resaca but fought through to Ezra Church. Later that year he served under General John Bell Hood until again wounded, this time severely, at Franklin, Tennessee. The prolonged effects of this wound eventually caused his death at South Island, South Carolina, after he had spent several years as a planter and six more as Adjutant and Inspector General of South Carolina.