Background
HARDEE, William Joseph was born on October 12, 1815 in Camden County, Georgia, United States, United States. Son of Major John Hardee, a state senator from Camden County.
Businessman educator General military planter
HARDEE, William Joseph was born on October 12, 1815 in Camden County, Georgia, United States, United States. Son of Major John Hardee, a state senator from Camden County.
Graduated from the United States Military Academy, 1838.
His wife Sarah (Ellis). He graduated twenty-sixth in a class of forty-five from the U.S. Military Academy in 1838 and attended cavalry school in Saumur, near Paris, France, during 1840. Hardee was a vestryman in the Episcopal church.
He had no political affiliation. He married Elizabeth Dummett on November 14, 1840, and, upon her death, Mary Frances Lewis on January 13, 1863. He had one son and three daughters by his first wife.
Hardee began his military career in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoons in 1838. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1839. He served at Fort Jessup, Louisiana.
During the Mexican War, he participated in the siege of Vera Cruz, and in 1855, under the direction of then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, he published Hardee’s Tactics, a standard military manual of its time. In 1856, he was named lieutenant colonel of cavalry and commandant of cadets at West Point. He resigned his commission in the U.S. Army in January 1861 and was commissioned a colonel in the Confederate Army.
During the Civil War, he preferred field service to high administrative office. He commanded Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay, and on June 17, 1861, he was promoted to brigadier general and was given a territorial command in northeast Arkansas. After his promotion to major general on October 7, 1861, he fought in the front line during the battle of Shiloh and in Bragg’s army during the Kentucky campaign, where his men bore the brunt of the battle of Perryville.
Promoted to lieutenant general on October 10,1862, he was part of the left wing at the battle of Murfreesboro late in 1862 and held his own at the battle of Missionary Ridge in 1863. Following his participation in the Atlanta campaign, he was given command of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in September 1864. He tried unsuccessfully to stop William T. Sherman in South Carolina and Georgia.
During the final months of the war, he fought with General Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. He surrendered in North Carolina in April 1865 and was later paroled. Hardee, who had acquired a Selma, Alabama, plantation after his second marriage, returned there after the war.
He was also in the insurance business and served as president of the Selma and Meridian Railroad prior to his death on November 6, 1873, in Wytheville, Virginia.
"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 Mary Lewis, January 1863, 1 child.