Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/448

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CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.
421

the surrender at Durham's Station, near Raleigh. When the surrender occurred he was on his way west to join Gen. Richard Taylor. At the return of peace he became a partner with John F. Vary in the practice of law at Marion, where he continued to reside until 1868. After that he lived for a while in Dallas county, and later at Tuscaloosa, as commandant at the State university.

Brigadier-General John Herbert Kelly was born in Carrollton, Pickens county, Ala., March 31, 1840. Left an orphan before he was seven years old, he was brought up under the tender care of his grandmother, Mrs. J. R. Hawthorn, of Wilcox county, and at the age of seventeen, through the influence of his relatives, Hon. W. W. Boyce, of South Carolina, and Hon. Philip T. Herbert, of California, he obtained a cadetship at West Point. He lacked but a few months of graduation when Alabama seceded from the Union, but at once resigned, and, repairing to Montgomery, offered his services. He was appointed a second lieutenant in the regular army of the Confederate States and sent to Fort Morgan. He accompanied General Hardee to Missouri, and on October 5, 1861, was appointed captain and assistant adjutant-general. Later he was commissioned major, and put in command of an Arkansas battalion. He was in the battle of Shiloh, and a month later was promoted to the command of the Eighth Arkansas regiment, with the rank of colonel. He was with Bragg in the Kentucky campaign, fighting at Perryville, and after the army returned to Tennessee was engaged in the great battle of Murfreesboro, where he was severely wounded. Soon returning to the field, at Chickamauga he commanded a brigade consisting of the Fifty-eighth North Carolina, Sixty-fifth Georgia, Fifth Kentucky, and Sixty-third Virginia, under General Buckner. "During the struggle for the heights," said Gen. William Preston, "Colonel Kelly had his horse shot under him, and displayed great courage and skill." The desperate