John Adams was an officer in the United States Army. With the onset of the American Civil War, he resigned his commission and joined the Confederate States Army, rising to the rank of brigadier general before being killed in action.
Background
John Adams was born on July 1, 1825, in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. He was the son of Thomas Patton Adams and Anne Tennant, who came to the United States in 1814 from Ulster, Ireland, following the example of a relative, John Adams, who had prospered as a banker in New York City.
In 1817 they moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and there John Adams was born. Shortly afterward his father moved to Pulaski, where he died.
Education
Adams entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1841, graduating in the class of 1846.
In 1846 Adams was appointed the second lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons, United States Army. He served in that regiment during the Mexican War and was brevetted for gallantry in the assault of Santa Cruz de Rosales, Chihuahua, on March 16, 1848.
From 1848 to 1849 he served at Santa Fé and Taos, New Mexico. Then came expeditions against the Utah and Apache Indians with the consequent skirmishes and hard marching.
In 1850-1851 he served at Rayado and Las Vegas, New Mexico, and reached his first lieutenancy.
The following year he was stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota.
In 1853 Adams acted as aide-de-camp for the governor of Minnesota with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
During 1854-1856 he served at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Fort Craig, Fort Union, and Santa Fé in New Mexico; Fort Massachusetts in Colorado.
In 1856 he received his captaincy in the Dragoons, and this was followed by two years of recruiting duty.
The outbreak of the Civil War found him serving at Fort Crook, California.
This life in command of small units, of operations against Indians, and of incessant movement, all under the most general instructions, had given him, like so many of his contemporaries, a military training whose results were to be made manifest in the coming conflict.
Captain Adams resigned from the army on May 31, 1861, and proceeded to New York by sea, arriving there in August.
General Scott, in command of the army, ordered his arrest as a political prisoner but he avoided this and made his way back to Tennessee, where he was appointed a captain of the cavalry in the Confederate Army and placed in command of Memphis.
By May 1862 he had reached the grade of colonel and was assigned to duty as acting brigadier-general, commanding a force operating about Huntsville.
On December 29, 1862, he was appointed brigadier general.
On May 16, 1863, on the death of General Lloyd Tilghman, General Johnson placed him in command of Tilghman's brigade of six regiments of Mississippi infantry. In command of this force, which served at least in part as mounted infantry, Adams took part in the operations for the relief of Vicksburg and in those about Jackson, Mississippi.
Then he marched under General Polk to Resaca, Georgia, where his brigade joined the Army of Tennessee and participated in the battles of the campaign from Dalton to Atlanta, where it especially distinguished itself. After the fall of Atlanta, he led the advance of Gen. Hood's army much of the time, and grew to be marked as one of those men who, like Gen. Forrest of the same army, compelled devotion.
At the battle of Franklin, November 30, 1864, John Adams was wounded early in the day but refused to give up his command. In the great assault which, like a wave, swept upon the Union works, Adams, still mounted, led his brigade, cheering on his men charging behind him. When the wave broke and drew back, he was found mortally wounded, beneath his dead horse on the crest of the Union parapet.
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"General Adams rode up to our works and, cheering his men, made an attempt to leap his horse over them. The horse fell upon the top of the embankment and the general was caught under him, pierced with [nine] bullets. As soon as the charge was repulsed, our men sprang over the works and lifted the horse, while others dragged the general from under him. He was perfectly conscious and knew his fate. He asked for water, as all dying men do in battle as the life-blood drips from the body. One of my men gave him a canteen of water, while another brought an armful of cotton from an old gin nearby and made him a pillow. The general gallantly thanked them, and in answer to our expressions of sorrow at his sad fate, he said, 'It is the fate of a soldier to die for his country,' and expired." - Confederate Veteran
Connections
In 1854 Adams married Georgiana McDougall, the daughter of a distinguished army surgeon. They had four sons and two daughters.