Civil War
An ardent secessionist, Wharton enlisted in the Confederate Army as captain of Company B, Eighth Texas Cavalry, also known as "Terry's Texas Rangers." Commissioned as colonel of the regiment, Wharton fought with distinction at Shiloh, where he was wounded. Wharton served under Gen. Braxton Bragg during the 1862 invasion of eastern Kentucky. He was promoted to brigadier general on November 18, 1862, and was again wounded, this time at Murfreesboro.
Wharton again distinguished himself at Chickamauga and was promoted to the rank of major general. He was assigned to the Trans-Mississippi Department in Louisiana in February 1864, leading the cavalry under Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor during the Red River Campaign.
Shortly before the end of the war in 1865, a fellow Confederate cavalry officer, Col. George Wythe Baylor (1832–1916) (brother of Confederate Arizona Governor Colonel John Baylor) killed Wharton in Houston, over a simmering dispute on military matters. The incident began with an argument on the street outside of the Fannin Hotel, the headquarters of Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder. The two officers had quarreled in the past, but this time Wharton came into Magruder's quarters and, as Baylor later claimed, called Baylor a liar. Baylor shot the unarmed Wharton and killed him instantly.
Wharton is interred at Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas.
Read more about this topic: John A. Wharton
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)