Civil War Confederate Brigadier General, US Congressman. The son of a prosperous planter, he was educated at Randolph-Macon College and the University of Georgia, graduating from neither. Taking up law, he was elected solicitor general, then judge, of the northern judicial circuit of Georgia. In 1847 he entered the Georgia General Assembly as a Whig; by 1849 he was a Democrat and one of the radical pro-slavery leaders of the legislature. He bitterly opposed colleagues who promoted compromise measures such as those of Henry Clay, and when he entered the United States House of Representatives in 1857 he was an outspoken advocate of secession. When Georgia left the Union, he eagerly took up arms in the cause of Confederate liberty. He organized the 7th Georgia Infantry, was elected Colonel, and led the regiment at First Bull Run as a part of the understrength brigade under Colonel Francis S. Bartow. Winning a seat in the Confederate Congress in November 1861, he resigned his commission and returned to political life. He became chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary and strongly supported the administration of Jefferson Davis. His most controversial act was the sponsorship of a bill to suspend Habeas Corpus whenever the Davis administration thought necessary. Preferring the military, he refused to seek reelection, returning to uniform, and on August 22, 1864, he was named Brigadier General. Organizing 4 regiments of Georgia Reserves, he led them in a spirited but futile attempt to halt Major General William T. Sherman's march up the Georgia coast into South Carolina. His brigade's tenacious fighting at Coosawhatchie, South Carolina, late that year, enabled Lieutenant General William J. Hardee's garrison to withdraw successfully from Savannah, though nearly hemmed in by Sherman. Wounded shortly before the war's close, he was sent home to Augusta. In peacetime, he moved to Atlanta and resumed his law practice, establishing a reputation as the state's most able criminal lawyer. A member of the Georgia constitutional convention of 1877, he lost the 1882 gubernatorial race to former Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens. He died in Atlanta.