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VITAL STATISTICS
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BORN: 1818 in Beaufort District, SC.
DIED: 1896 in Clifton Springs, NY.
CAMPAIGNS: First Bull Run, Peninsula, Seven Days, Gaines' Mill, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Federicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga,
Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor.
HIGHEST RANK ACHIEVED: Brigadier General
(Also served as Second Quartermaster General of the Confederacy)
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BIOGRAPHY
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Alexander Robert Lawton was born on November 4, 1818, in Beaufort District, South Carolina. He graduated from the US Military Academy in 1839, then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1842. He settled in Savannah, Georgia, and entered the fields of law, railroad administration and state politics. He favored Georgia's secession, and commanded the troops that seized Fort Pulaski. This was the Civil War's first act of war in Georgia. Commissioned a brigadier general in the Confederate army on April 13, 1861, he was assigned to Virginia. Lawton took part in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the Seven days' Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was seriously wounded at Antietam, and, in August of 1863, took on the administrative position of quartermaster general of the Confederacy. Although he brought energy and resourcefulness to the position, he was unable to solve the problem of material shortages and poorly-regulated railroads. In the years after the Civil War, Lawton became increasingly important as a political figure in Georgia. Nevertheless, he lost the 1880 election for the US Senate, in an election which seemed to represent to victory of the "New South" over the "Old South." Chosen president of the American Bar Association in 1882, he was appointed minister to Austria in 1887. Lawton died in Clifton Springs, New York, on July 2, 1896. |
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