Albert Gallatin Jenkins

Albert Gallatin Jenkins

Albert Gallatin Jenkins (born November 10, 1830 in Cabell County , Virginia , †  May 21, 1864 in Dublin , Virginia) was an American politician . Between 1857 and 1861 he represented the US state Virginia in the US House of Representatives . During the Civil War , he served as a Brigadier General in the Confederation Army .

Career

Born in what is now West Virginia , Albert Jenkins attended Jefferson College in Canonsburg ( Pennsylvania ) until 1848 and then studied law at Harvard University until 1850 , without immediately working as a lawyer. Instead, he worked in agriculture and toured Latin America. Politically, he became a member of the Democratic Party . In June 1856 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati , where James Buchanan was nominated as a presidential candidate.

In the congressional elections of 1856 Jenkins was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , in the eleventh constituency of Virginia , where he succeeded John S. Carlile on March 4, 1857 . After being re-elected, he was able to complete two legislative terms in Congress until March 3, 1861 . These were shaped by the events in the immediate run-up to the civil war .

In 1861 Jenkins joined the Confederation . He became a member of the Confederate Congress , but resigned his mandate after the first meeting, as he was disaffected by the limited political scope of the representative body. At the same time he rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederation Army. He took part in several battles. He was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg . In the fall of 1863, he returned to the army after his recovery and served in southwestern Virginia. From the spring of 1864 he commanded the regional military district. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Cloyds Mountain on May 9, 1864, when he tried unsuccessfully with outnumbered forces to defend the Virginia-Tennessee railway line. A Union Army doctor amputated his arm but was unable to save his life. On May 21, 1864, Albert Jenkins succumbed to severe wounds due to malpractice following the procedure.

Jenkins was seen as a sometimes unorthodox cavalry leader who could only fit into a higher-level command structure with difficulty, but excelled in independent operations. For his foray in 1862, which took him with only 550 men from the Allegheny Mountains in western Virginia to the north bank of the Ohio River , he was praised by his superiors as well as the Confederate public.

literature

• Wilhelm Lothar von Mengersen: From Kanawha to the New River: The battle of Cloyds Mountain . KDP, Vienna 2020.

Web links

• Albert Gallatin Jenkins in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Albert Gallatin Jenkins in the database of Find a Grave (English)