Background
FIELD, Charles William was born on April 6, 1828 in Woodford County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of Willis and Isabella Miriam (Buck) Field.
educator General government official military
FIELD, Charles William was born on April 6, 1828 in Woodford County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of Willis and Isabella Miriam (Buck) Field.
Graduated from the United States Military Academy, 1849.
He graduated twenty-seventh in a class of forty-three from the U.S. Military Academy in 1849. He had two sons by his marriage to Monimia Mason in 1857. Field, a career officer in the U.S. Army, fought the Indians in Texas and New Mexico from 1849 to 1854.
He was promoted to second lieutenant in 1851 and to first lieutenant in 1855. From 1856 to 1861, he was chief of cavalry and an assistant instructor of cavalry tactics at West Point. He was promoted to captain in the army in January 1861 and resigned his commission in May 1861 to become a captain of cavalry in the Confederate Army.
After being promoted to brigadier general on March 9, 1862, he participated in the 1862 battles of the Seven Days and Cedar Mountain before a hip wound at the battle of Second Manassas forced his retirement from active combat for a year. During this interlude, he was superintendent of the Conscription Bureau in Richmond. Promoted to major general on February 12, 1864, he led Hood’s Texas division and saved Lee’s right wing at the battle of the Wilderness in May, retook the Bermuda Hundred line, and fought in August of that year from Chapin’s Bluff to New Market Heights.
He surrendered at Appomattox and was soon paroled. After the war, he was a businessman in Baltimore and Georgia for ten years. From 1875 to 1877, he was colonel of engineers in the Egyptian army.
Upon his return to the United States, he was named doorkeeper of the U.S. House of Representatives and held that post from 1878 to 1881. He served as a civil engineer for the U.S. government from 1881 to 1885 and as superintendent of the Indian reservation at Hot Springs, Arkansas, from 1885 to 1889.
"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.
Married Monimia Mason, 1857, 2 children.