Early Life and Career
Gillem was born in Gainesboro in Jackson County, Tennessee, the son of Samuel Gillem. In 1851, he graduated 11th in his class from the United States Military Academy and was assigned as a second lieutenant to the artillery. He was soon sent to the front lines in Florida to serve in a battery during the Second Seminole War until 1852. He was then reassigned to the Texas frontier following the war.
Read more about this topic: Alvan Cullem Gillem
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)