Background
FERGUSON, Samuel Wragg was born on November 3, 1834 in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, United States. Son of James and Abby Ann (Barker) Ferguson. His father, a planter and state legislator, had fought in the War of 1812.
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Samuel Wragg FERGUSON
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Education
Private school, United States Military Academy.
Career
Ferguson attended the private school of Christopher Coates in Charleston and graduated nineteenth in a class of thirty-eight from the U.S. Military Academy in 1857. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army. He was a member of the Mormon expedition and also served on the Pacific Coast prior to the Civil War.
He was an Episcopalian. He married Kate Lee, whose father was a cousin of Robert E. Lee, on August 28, 1862. They had three sons and two daughters.
He resigned his commission in March 1861. As a captain in the South Carolina army, Ferguson aided P.G.T. Beauregard at the battles of Fort Sumter, First Manassas, Shiloh, Farmington, and in the siege of Corinth. Promoted to colonel in 1862, he gained a reputation for his attacks on federal shipping along the Mississippi River.
In 1863, he fought a Union expedition in the Mississippi Delta, and on July 23, 1863, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. As commander of cavalry for the Army of Mississippi, he opposed William T. Sherman’s march to Chattanooga and participated in the Atlanta campaign. General Joseph Wheeler, who considered Ferguson a troublemaker, opposed his nomination to the rank of major general in August 1864.
Toward the end of the war, Ferguson was part of President Davis’s escort in the flight from Richmond. He surrendered in Georgia and was soon paroled. After the war, he practiced law in Greenville, Mississippi.
He was a member of the State Levee Commission in 1876 and of the U.S. Rivers Commission in 1883. In 1894, he returned to Charleston, where he became a civil engineer. In 1898, he volunteered for duty in the Spanish-American War.
Religion
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Politics
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Connections
Spouse Kate Lee.
