William Joseph Hardee

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William Joseph Hardee

William Joseph Hardee (born October 12, 1815 in Camden County , Georgia , † November 6, 1873 in Wytherville , Virginia ) was an officer in the US Army and general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War .

Hardee attended the US Military Academy West Point , New York and graduated in 1838 as the 26th of his class. After serving in the Second Seminole War and against Mexico , he returned to West Point as an instructor before becoming a major in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry Regiment in the 1850s . Hardee published a manual for infantry training in 1856 , which was used as Hardee's Tactics on both sides during the Civil War. In addition, the headgear newly introduced by the US Army at that time was named after him.

In 1861 Hardee, now a lieutenant colonel, returned his officer license and joined the Confederate . He was quickly promoted to brigadier general and major general and led a brigade in Arkansas . When this was integrated into the Confederate Mississippi Army under Albert Sidney Johnston in 1862 , Hardee was commanding general and took part as such in the Battle of Shiloh and later, under Braxton Bragg , in the Confederate "Heartland" offensive in Kentucky. In October 1862, Hardee was among the first in the Confederate Army to be promoted to the newly created rank of Lieutenant General. He kept his command, now in the Tennessee Army that was newly established from the Mississippi Army .

He fought in the Battle of the Stones River in late 1862 and then stayed with the Tennessee Army in Central Tennessee before taking command of the military area of ​​eastern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in July 1863. In November 1863, Hardee returned to the Tennessee Army. After the defeat in the Battle of Chattanooga and the resignation of General Bragg as Commander in Chief, he was temporarily Commander in Chief of the Army, but soon gave up this post to Joseph Eggleston Johnston . During the Atlanta campaign , he remained commanding general, but asked for a transfer when John Bell Hood replaced Johnston as commander.

Hardee was given command of the military area of South Carolina , Georgia and Florida, and thus command of Savannah , Georgia , the next target of William Tecumseh Sherman's armies. Hopelessly outnumbered, Hardee managed to save his garrison and evade to South Carolina, where he again opposed Sherman in the spring of 1865, reinforced by remnants of the Tennessee Army and other troops. The command of the troops in South Carolina was again incumbent on Joseph Johnston, and Hardee took over a corps with which he took part in the battle of Bentonville , among other things . He surrendered on April 26, 1865, along with General Johnston's troops and settled on a plantation in Alabama.

William Joseph Hardee died on November 6, 1873.

literature

  • Nathaniel C. Hughes, Jr .: General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable . Baton Rouge, LA 1965.

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