Col. O. M. Roberts, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 12.1, Alabama
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[385]

Biographical.

Major-General William Wirt Allen was born in Montgomery, Ala, in 1835. His father, Wade Allen, went from South Carolina to Alabama in 1818 and became a planter near Montgomery. His mother was a Miss Sayre, sister of Daniel Sayre, a prominent citizen of Montgomery county. With a preparatory education in the schools of his own city, young Allen entered Princeton college, New Jersey. After graduation he studied law, but with no view of practicing. He preferred the life of a planter, and in that employment was engaged when the South's call to arms aroused her sons from the seaboard to the mountains. The enthusiasm with which our people, from beardless youths to grayhaired sires, responded to that call has seldom, if ever, been equaled in the history of this world. Without the least hesitation young men of education and fortune marched and fought in the ranks by the side of the poor and ignorant, and were proud of the sacrifice thus made, submitting without complaint to the hardships of a soldier's life, and obeying without a tinge of shame the orders of men who at home were their companions, and, in some instances, their inferiors in social rank. Some of them, of course, were fortunate enough to be elected by their comrades to positions of command, but in the large armies brought into the field, the greater part were privates from first to last. Young Allen was one of the first to respond, and had the good fortune to be elected first lieutenant of the company of which General Clanton went out as captain. When the First Alabama cavalry was organized he was elected its major. This was some time after the company had enlisted, for many of the companies of cavalry at [386] first were not put into regiments. His commission as major dates from March 18, 1862. Later in the same year he was promoted to be colonel of the regiment. He fought at Shiloh, and was engaged in the subsequent operations of that company. When the advance into Kentucky was made, he went as colonel of his regiment. At the battle of Perryville he received a slight wound. At Murfreesboro he commanded a brigade, and received a severe wound which disabled him for some time. On the 26th of November, 1864, he was commissioned brigadier-general, and took command of a brigade at Dalton, consisting of the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth, Twelfth and Fifty-first regiments of Alabama cavalry, Wheeler's corps, army of Tennessee. He was in charge of this brigade through all the arduous duties of the mounted men in the Atlanta campaign. In August, 1864, Crews' Georgia brigade was added to his command, and subsequently Anderson's Confederate brigade. At the head of this division he, under the command of Wheeler, followed Sherman in his march through Georgia and in the Carolinas, earning by his fidelity to duty the commission of major-general, conferred upon him in 1865. He surrendered at Salisbury, N. C., May 3, 1865. Returning home he devoted himself to agriculture. For several years he was adjutant-general of the State. As a soldier he was cool and fearless in danger and tireless in the performance of duty. As a citizen he was cordial in manner and of ardent public spirit. In peace, as well as in war, he merited and received the confidence and esteem of his people. He died at Sheffield, Ala., November 21, 1894. His wife was a sister of Col. Charles P. Ball, of Montgomery county.

Brigadier-General Alpheus Baker was born at Clover Hill, Abbeville district, S. C., May 28, 1828. His father, an eminent teacher and scholar, was a native of Massachusetts, and his mother, a Miss Courtney, a native [387] of Ireland. Alpheus Baker was educated by his father, and he began to teach school himself before he was sixteen years old. He was successful in this profession at Abbeville, S. C., then in Lumpkin, Ga., and lastly in Glennville, Barbour county, Ala., where he settled in 1848. Meanwhile he had been studying law. Being admitted to the bar in 1849, he opened his office in Eufaula and began to practice. His success was wonderful. In 1856 he accompanied Major Buford to Kansas, and returned to rouse the people to the importance of making Kansas a slave State, thinking that this would restore the equilibrium between the free and the slave States, and prevent the inevitable conflict between the two sections. In 1861 he represented Barbour county in the constitutional convention, but resigned his seat to go into the army, as captain of the Eufaula Rifles, which he led to Pensacola. This company had on its rolls at Pensacola the names of fifty persons who afterward became officers. In November he went to Fort Pillow, above Memphis, where he was elected colonel of a regiment made up of Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama troops. This regiment was in the siege of New Madrid, and was captured at Island No.10, April 10, 1862. In September of that same year Colonel Baker was exchanged, together with his regiment. At that time four Alabama companies took the place of the four from Tennessee, and the regiment, under the name of the Fifty-fourth Alabama, gladly received Alpheus Baker as its colonel. It fought at Fort Pemberton, on the Yazoo, where General Loring commanded, and at Baker's Creek, where Colonel Baker was wounded in the foot. On March 5, 1864, he was assigned to brigade command of the Thirty-seventh, Fortieth, Forty-second, and Fifty-fourth Alabama regiments. He led this brigade through the entire campaign from Dalton to Atlanta. At Resaca his horse was killed under him, and near Atlanta he was slightly wounded, at the battle of Ezra Church, July 28th. [388] Baker and his brigade were next near Mobile in the department of the Gulf. In January, 1865, they went to the Carolinas to engage in what proved the final campaign, and at Bentonville, though numbering only 350 muskets, captured 204 of the enemy. Upon the return of peace General Baker gave his whole attention to the practice of law. He was an able orator, who pleased by his eloquence and humor, and convinced by his argument. In 1878 he removed to Louisville, where he soon made many new friends, and at once took rank among the foremost of the bar of Kentucky. General Baker was a brave soldier, a strong lawyer, an accomplished gentleman, and a devout Christian. His useful and honorable career came to a close by his death at Louisville, Ky., October 2, 1891.

Major-General Cullen Andrews Battle, the second son of Dr. Cullen Battle and Jane A. (Lamon) Battle, natives of North Carolina, was born in Powelton, Ga., June 1, 1829, and removed with his parents to Irwinton (now Eufaula), Ala., in 1836. In 1851 he was married to Miss Georgia F. Williams, of LaGrange, Ga., who died at Petersburg, Va., November 6, 1895. Of the children by this marriage there survive