Background
CAMPBELL, Alexander William was born on June 4, 1828 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, United States. Son of the banker William Campbell and his wife Jane E. (Porter).
banker General lawyer military
CAMPBELL, Alexander William was born on June 4, 1828 in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, United States. Son of the banker William Campbell and his wife Jane E. (Porter).
Private school, southern university, law school.
He attended Jackson Male Academy and West Tennessee College before studying law at Cumberland University in 1848. Campbell began a law practice in Jackson, Tennessee. On January 13, 1852, he married Ann Dixon Allen, by whom he had three sons and three daughters.
A Democrat, he was elected mayor of Jackson in 1856. From 1854 to 1860, he was a U.S. district attorney for the western district of Tennessee. After enlisting as a private in the Confederate Army early in 1861, he was promoted first to major and later to colonel in the 33rd Regiment of Tennessee Infantry, serving with distinction in the battle of Shiloh, during which he was also wounded in the arm.
In addition, Campbell participated in the battles of Perry ville and Murfreesboro in 1862. In 1862-1863, he was assistant adjutant and inspector general on the staff of General Leonidas Polk. Later, he was attached to the Volunteer and Conscript Bureau under General Gideon J. Pillow, and in 1863, Governor Isham Harris made him inspector general of the provisional army of Tennessee.
Captured the same year, Campbell was held a prisoner for over a year. Upon his release, he was promoted to brigadier general in March 1865. He served during the last part of the war as a commander of cavalry under General Nathan B. Forrest, and surrendered in May 1865 with Forrest’s troops.
After the war, he returned to his law practice in Jackson. Restrictions seem to have kept him from public life for some years. He was later a bank president, and in 1880, he tried unsuccessfully for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination of Tennessee.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Spouse Ann Dixon Allen.