47645 College Dr, St Marys City, MD 20686, United States
Harry Thompson Hays graduated from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, Maryland.
47645 College Dr, St Marys City, MD 20686, United States
Harry Thompson Hays graduated from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, Maryland.
Harry Hays was born on April 14, 1820, in Wilson County, Tennessee, the United States, the son of Harmon and Elizabeth (Cage) Hays. Both parents died within a month of each other when the boy was very young, he was orphaned, Harry was reared by an uncle in Wilkinson County, Mississippi.
Harry graduated from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1844 Harry Hays began the practice of law in New Orleans in the office of Baillie Peyton, a relative of his mother’s. At the outbreak of the Mexican War, he joined a Mississippi cavalry regiment and served with distinction until the end of the struggle, returning to New Orleans to form a successful legal partnership with W. C. Hamner, under the firm name of Hamner & Hays.
At the commencement of the Civil War Hays left his law practice and entered the Confederate service as a colonel in the 7th Louisiana Regiment of the Army of Northern Virginia. His initial action was in the First Bull Run. In 1862 he took part in Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaign, where his unit was attached to the brigade of General Richard Taylor of Ewell’s division. At the Port Republic, he received a wound that prevented his participation in the Seven Days’ battles and at the second Bull Run. During his absence from active duty on account of his wound, he was commissioned brigadier-general, July 25, 1862, and assigned the brigade formerly commanded by General Taylor, who had been ordered to Louisiana to take charge of operations there.
Again in action, Hays served at Sharpsburg, where his brigade was in the thickest of the fighting, and also at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. On May 9, 1864, he was severely wounded at Spotsylvania Court House, but by the fall of the year, he had recovered sufficiently to attend to duties in Louisiana, where he had been assigned. On May 10, 1865, he has commissioned major-general, but the Confederacy had ceased to exist except in the Trans-Mississippi Department, where he then was, and this section soon gave up the struggle.
Returning to New Orleans after the war, Hays formed a law partnership with General Daniel Adams and Judge E. Waller Moise but retired from the office when he was made sheriff of Orleans Parish in 1866. After about a year he was removed and went back to the law. His old firm having dissolved, he associated himself with Major John H. New and practiced until he was disabled by Bright’s disease.
Harry Hays was a brave US officer participating in the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. He led the 7th Louisiana in the Battle of Bull Run, the Shenandoah Campaign and was promoted Brigadier General in July 1862. Assigned command of the 1st Louisiana Brigade, he fought at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and at Gettysburg in July 1863.
During the early fifties Hays was also active in politics as a member of the Whig party. He was a delegate from Louisiana to the national nominating convention of that party in the summer of 1852, and in the fall a presidential elector on the Scott ticket.
In 1858, Harry Hays married his first cousin, Elizabeth Cage, the daughter of Robert Cage.
