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Major-Generals and brigadier-generals, Provisional army of the Confederate States, Accredited to Mississippi.
Brigadier-General Wirt Adams, of
Mississippi, was one of the most dauntless cavalry leaders of the war. He was a commissioner from
Mississippi to
Louisiana to ask that State to go with
Mississippi in secession and the formation of a Confederacy, and as soon as
Mississippi seceded he went to work to recruit soldiers for the Confederate army.
He raised a regiment known as the First Mississippi cavalry, and was commissioned colonel on October 15, 1861.
Until the spring of 1862 he was engaged generally in scouting and picket duty, keeping the
Confederate generals apprised of the movements of the enemy and occasionally skirmishing with detached parties.
In the spring of 1862 he was given charge of the companies organized under the call of
Governor Rector, of
Arkansas.
Accompanying Van Dorn to
Mississippi he served on his staff as chief of artillery in the
battle of Corinth.
In the campaign in
north Mississippi, both before and after
Shiloh, he was ever on the move with his command until the name of
Wirt Adams was famous throughout the
West.
When the
Federals were advancing upon
Chattanooga under
Negley in the summer of 1862,
Adams, with a smaller force, impeded their march and brought their schemes to naught.
In the campaign resulting in the battles of
Iuka and
Corinth he performed very important services.
During the Grierson raid in the spring of 1863,
Colonel Adams did the best that could be done with the means at his command to check and impede the movements of the great Federal raider.
At
Union Church, though unable to defeat
Grierson, he did cause him to turn aside from his intended attack upon
Natchez.
For his important services during the
Vicksburg campaign he
