[
195]
Biographical.
Major-General James Patton Anderson was born in
Tennessee about 1820.
Like other enterprising
Americans he lived in so many different sections of the
Union that it is a difficult matter to decide to which State he really should be assigned in this record of Confederate generals.
At the opening of the
Mexican war he was living in
Mississippi and became lieutenant-colonel of Mississippi volunteers.
Although he had not had the advantages of an education at the United States military academy, the
Mexican conflict proved a good school for him in the military art. The good use he made of his opportunities in that practical military training school was afterward evidenced by the skill with which he managed troops upon the great arena of war from 1861 to 1865.
The man who obtained a good reputation on that great theater of action had to keep abreast of many illustrious men of the same rank with himself, and that is what
General Anderson did. After the close of the
Mexican war
General Anderson lived for a time in
Olympia, in what was then
Washington Territory, and served as territorial delegate to the national House of Representatives in 1855.
Before the opening of the
Confederate war he had removed to
Florida, and as a citizen of
Jefferson county he was a member of the secession convention.
Feeling, as did most Southern men, that the
South was right, he entered heart and soul into the struggle to maintain Southern rights and honor.
As early as December, 1860, before there has been any secession, but when everybody felt certain that such action would be taken, military companies were being formed and drilled.
Anderson was captain of such a company—
