Civil War
With the outbreak of the Civil War and Virginia's subsequent secession, Patton enlisted in the Confederate Army in the spring of 1861 and was elected to serve as a major in the 7th Virginia Infantry. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 27, 1862. Patton took command of the regiment in June 1862 following the promotion of the previous colonel, James L. Kemper, to the command of the Brigade. He was badly wounded at Second Manassas on August 30, 1862, and spent the remainder of the year back home in Fredericksburg recuperating. Patton was elected to the Virginia Senate in 1863, but chose instead to return to his regiment.
His regiment served in North Carolina in the spring of 1863, then Patton led it northward during the Gettysburg Campaign into Pennsylvania. On July 3, the 7th Virginia was in Pickett's Division, and as part of Kemper's Brigade, formed the right of the Confederate line during Pickett's Charge. Colonel Patton was mortally wounded while leading his men towards the Union positions on Cemetery Ridge. Part of his jaw had been ripped away by an artillery shell fragment. He died in a makeshift hospital at Pennsylvania College several weeks later. His first cousin, Lewis B. Williams, Jr, commanded another Virginia regiment in Pickett's Division and was also mortally wounded.
An older brother, George Smith Patton, was killed at the Third Battle of Winchester during the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Both George and Waller Patton are buried in the Stonewall Cemetery, a part of Mt. Hebron Cemetery, Winchester, Virginia. Four other brothers were officers in the Confederate States Army: Col. John Mercer Patton, Col. Isaac Patton, Lt. James F. Patton, and Lt. Hugh Mercer Patton.
Waller Patton was a great-uncle of American World War II General, George S. Patton.
Read more about this topic: Waller T. Patton
Famous quotes by civil war:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)