Deas, who represented Mobile county in the Alabama legislature in 1857, his mother a sister of Hon. James Chestnut, at one time United States senator from South Carolina. The Deas family moved to Mobile in 1835, where the future soldier grew to manhood and then engaged in mercantile pursuits. His business was interrupted by a term of service in the Mexican war. At the opening of the Confederate war he was a commission merchant in Mobile. He offered his services to the Confederate government and was assigned to duty on the staff of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, serving in that capacity at the first battle of Manassas. Then obtaining authority to raise a regiment, with the assistance of Maj. Robert B. Armistead, he recruited the Twenty-second Alabama, at its organization was elected colonel, and commissioned October 25, 1861. At that time there were not arms enough in the Confederacy to supply the men who enlisted. So Colonel Deas paid out of his own means $28,000 in gold for 800 Enfield rifles, and equipped his own regiment. In return for this service the Confederate government, one year later, gave him that amount of Confederate bonds. At Shiloh he led his regiment until General Gladden, brigade commander, and Col. Wirt Adams were borne wounded from the field, on the first day, when he took command of the brigade. On the second day, after having had two horses shot under him, he was severely wounded. He was well again in time to lead his regiment through the Kentucky campaign, being present in the affairs at Munfordville and at Salt river. In that campaign the brigade, under Gen. Franklin Gardner, included the Alabama regiments of Cols. Joe Wheeler, J. Q. Loomis, J. G. Coltart, H. D. Clayton, besides his own. It fought under Loomis and Coltart at Murfreesboro, after which Deas, promoted to brigadier-general December 13, 1862, took command, The regiments of this gallant Alabama brigade, of Withers’ division, later under Hindman and Patton Anderson, were the Nineteenth, Twenty-second, Twenty-fifth,
