Background
WARD, George T. was born in 1810 in Fayette County, Kentucky, United States, United States.
Businessman congressman planter
WARD, George T. was born in 1810 in Fayette County, Kentucky, United States, United States.
Private school, southern university.
Little is known of his early life, save that he attended Transylvania University in 1824. He was an Episcopalian and a Whig party leader, and he was a slaveholding planter in Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida, before the war. During the 1840s, Ward was a director of the Union Bank of Tallahassee.
In 1841, he lost some of his family in a yellow fever epidemic. Ward lost a race for the governorship of Florida in 1852 to the moderate James E. Broome. By 1860, he was a constitutional unionist, and at the Florida secession convention he and Jackson Morton unsuccessfully attempted to defer action on secession.
In May 1861, the governor of Florida appointed him to the vacancy in the provisional Confederate Congress left by the resignation of James P. Anderson. Ward was an active member of Congress, serving on the Claims, Military Affairs, Public Lands, and Commercial and Financial Independence Committees. He resigned from Congress in February 1862 to serve in the Confederate Army, where his career was undistinguished.
He served under General John B. Magruder and as a colonel at Yorktown under General Ambrose P. Hill. Ward was killed during the Peninsular campaign while commanding the 2nd Florida Regiment at Fort Magruder, near Williamsburg, Virginia, on May 5, 1862.
"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.