Civil War
With the secession of Mississippi, Featherston was appointed to visit neutral Kentucky to try to influence Governor Beriah Magoffin into also leading his state from the Union. With the start of the Civil War in early 1861, Featherston raised a regiment of infantry (17th Mississippi) and became its colonel. He fought at the First Battle of Manassas and was cited for gallantry at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. He was commissioned as a brigadier general on March 4, 1862. He led a brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign and was wounded during the Seven Days Battles. He then participated in the fighting at the Second Battle of Manassas, as well as at Antietam and Fredericksburg. He was among a number of generals that Robert E. Lee removed from command or reassigned when he reorganized his army, along with Nathan G. Evans, Thomas F. Drayton, Roger Pryor, and several others.
Transferred to Mississippi in early 1863, Featherston assumed command of a brigade of Mississippians in Loring's Division in the army of Joseph E. Johnston. He fought in several major campaigns in the Western Theater, including the Vicksburg Campaign in 1863 and the Atlanta Campaign the following year. Loring's men accompanied the Army of Tennessee during John Bell Hood's Tennessee Campaign.
In early 1865, he participated in the Carolinas Campaign and surrendered with Johnston's army at Bennett Place in North Carolina. He was paroled in Greensboro, North Carolina, on May 1, 1865.
Read more about this topic: Winfield S. Featherston
Famous quotes by civil war:
“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)
“A war between Europeans is a civil war.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)