Winfield Scott Featherston

Background

Winfield Scott Featherston was born on 8 August 1820 four miles from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, United States. He was the youngest of seven children. His parents, Charles and Lucy Pitts Featherston were recent pioneers from Virginia.

Education

Although Winfield Scott Featherston became a man of learning, his formal education did not extend beyond the high school, and even this was disturbed in 1836 when he left the studies in which he was engaged at Columbus, Georgia, and served as a volunteer in the war against the Creek Indians.

Career

Featherston built a successful law practice and entered the political arena, winning election to the United States Congress as a Democrat in 1846 and 1848 but losing his bid for reelection in 1850.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Featherston served as colonel of the 17th Mississippi Infantry. In 1862 he received a promotion to the rank of brigadier general. He participated in a number of battles in Virginia, including First and Second Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Fredericksburg, and he was wounded at Glendale. He was later transferred to the Western Theater, where he served during the Vicksburg and Atlanta Campaigns before accompanying John Bell Hood on his ill-fated invasion of Tennessee. Featherston was among the Confederate forces who surrendered with Joseph E. Johnston at Durham Station, North Carolina, in 1865.

Featherston returned to Mississippi after the war, reestablishing both his law practice and his political career. Once Reconstruction ended, he served two terms in the Mississippi legislature, and in 1882 he became the judge of the state’s second judicial circuit. In 1890 he served as a delegate to the Mississippi Constitutional Convention, where he contributed as a member of the judiciary committee.

Achievements

• Winfield Scott Featherston fought at the Battle of Ball's Bluff and for gallantry, was commissioned Brigadier General in March 1862. He led a brigade in the Army of Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign, at Antietam, and at Fredericksburg.
  
  As a politician, he is known for his service as a member of the Mississippi State House of Representatives in 1876 and 1880, delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1880 and as a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1890.

Politics

Featherston remained a leading political voice in Mississippi, and in 1860 the state sent him to Kentucky to discuss secession with officials there.

Personality

Physical Characteristics: Featherston was a man of commanding presence, over six feet tall and well proportioned.

Connections

Winfield had lost his first wife, Mary Holt Harris of Columbus, Mississippi, a few months after their marriage in 1848. In 1857 he moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi, and in the following year, he married Elizabeth M. McEwen of that city, who lived until the yellow-fever epidemic of 1878.

Father:

Charles Featherston

1771-1852

Mother:

Lucy Pitts Featherston

1775-1853

late wife:

Mary Holt Harris FeatherstonHolt Harris

1827-1849

Wife:

Elizabeth M. McEwen

1834-1878

Brother:

Edward James Featherston

1796-1857

Sister:

Berinthia M. McMurry

1802-1887

Brother:

Lucius Horace Featherston

1814-1886

Son:

Charles Alexander Featherston

1859-1860

Daughter:

Lizzie Georgia Featherston

1861-1878

Son:

Winfield J. Featherston

1864-1878

Daughter:

Elise Featherston Beall

1869-1939

Son:

Lucius Marshall Featherston

1870-1871

Daughter:

Eloise Featherston Posey

1878-1945

References

• Civil War High Commands
  2002
• Who Was Who in the Civil War
  1988
• Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders
  2006