Эдвард Портер Александр: Конфедерация армиясының генералы және естеліктері

Confederate Army general
the museum administrator

Edward Porter Alexander (May 26, 1835 – April 28, 1910) was an American military engineer, railroad executive, planter, and author. He served first as an officer in the United States Army and later, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), in the Confederate Army, rising to the rank of brigadier general. Alexander was the officer in charge of the massive artillery bombardment preceding Pickett's Charge, on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, and is also noted for his early use of signals and observation balloons during combat. After the Civil War, he taught mathematics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, spent time in Nicaragua, and wrote extensive memoirs and analyses of the war, which have received much praise for their insight and objectivity. His Military Memoirs of a Confederate were published in 1907. An extensive personal account of his military training and his participation in the Civil War was rediscovered long after his death and published in 1989 as Fighting for the Confederacy.

Alexander, known to his friends as Porter, was born in Washington, Georgia into a wealthy and distinguished family of planters from the Antebellum South. He was the sixth of ten children of Adam Leopold Alexander and Sarah Hillhouse Gilbert Alexander. His mother was the granddaughter of Sarah Porter Hillhouse, the first female editor and printer in the United States. He became the brother in law of Alexander R. Lawton and Jeremy F. Gilmer. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1857, Alexander was promoted to second lieutenant on October 10, 1858. They would eventually have six children: Bessie Mason (born 1861), Edward Porter II and Lucy Roy (twins, born 1863), an unnamed girl (1865, died in infancy prior to naming), Adam Leopold (1867), and William Mason (1868). Lt. Alexander's final assignments for the U. S. Army were at Fort Steilacoom, in the Washington Territory, and at Alcatraz Island, near San Francisco, California.

After learning of the secession of his home state of Georgia, Alexander resigned his U. S. Army commission on May 1, 1861, to join the Confederate Army as a captain of engineers. While organizing and training new recruits to form a Confederate signal service, he was ordered to report to Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard at Manassas Junction, Virginia. He became the chief engineer and signal officer of the Confederate Army of the Potomac on June 3. Upon receiving a similar message, Beauregard and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston sent timely reinforcements that turned the tide of battle in the Confederates' favor. During the early days of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Alexander continued as chief of ordnance under Johnston, but he also fought at the Battle of Williamsburg, under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet. When Gen. Robert E. Lee assumed command of the army, Alexander was in charge of pre positioned ordnance for Lee's offensive in the Seven Days Battles. Alexander continued his intelligence gathering by volunteering to go up in an observation balloon at Gaines' Mill on June 27, ascending several times and returning with valuable intelligence regarding the position of the Union Army. Alexander continued in charge of ordnance for the Northern Virginia Campaign (Second Bull Run) and the Maryland Campaign (Antietam). Porter Alexander is best known as an artilleryman who played a prominent role in many of the important battles of the war. He served in different artillery capacities for Longstreet's First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, starting that role on November 7, 1862, after leaving Lee's staff to command the battalion that was the corps' artillery reserve. He was promoted to colonel on December 5.

Alexander accompanied the First Corps to northern Georgia in the fall of 1863 to reinforce Gen. Braxton Bragg for the Battle of Chickamauga. He personally arrived too late to participate in the battle but served as Longstreet's chief of artillery in the subsequent Knoxville Campaign and in the Department of East Tennessee in early 1864. He returned with the corps to Virginia for the remainder of the war, now with the rank of brigadier general (as of February 26, 1864). He served in all the battles of the Overland Campaign, and when Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant slipped around Lee's army to cross the James River and assault Petersburg, Alexander was able to move his guns quickly through the lines, emplacing them to repel the main attack.

Since the end of the Civil War, stories of the Confederate gold and its vast wealth have been told and retold. One of these stories involves Alexander. He helped organize search parties in Lincoln and Wilkes Counties. Alexander and bank officials soon located some of the gold through Alexander's neighbors in Wilkes County and persuaded them that the money belonged to wives and children of Confederate veterans. With Alexander's help, bank officials eventually recovered some $111,000 of the stolen money. Former Confederate cabinet official Robert Toombs also turned over $5,000 that, intentionally or accidentally, had been thrown into his yard in Washington.

After the surrender, Alexander briefly considered joining the Imperial Brazilian Army. Finding that he no longer desired the Georgia plantation life of his youth, he taught mathematics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and then served in executive positions with the Charlotte, Columbia, and Augusta Railroad (executive superintendent), the Savannah and Memphis Railroad (president), the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (president), His wife Bettie became ill while he was in Nicaragua and she died shortly after his return, on November 20, 1899. In October 1901, Alexander married Mary Mason, his first wife's niece. Alexander was selected to give the Confederate veteran's speech on Alumni Day during the centennial celebration at the United States Military Academy on June 9, 1902. The speech was so well received that it was reprinted in The New York Times in its entirety in the 15 June 1902 edition. The Times referred to the speech as "decidedly the feature of Alumni Day." The audience included President Theodore Roosevelt as well as Alexander's former commander, General Longstreet. After the war, Alexander became a well respected author. He wrote many magazine articles and published his Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (1907), praised by Douglas Southall Freeman as "altogether the best critique of the operations of the Army of Northern Virginia." Long after his death, it was realized that Alexander had produced the Military Memoirs, which sought to be a professional work of military history and analysis, after a long effort of editing a collection of much more personal memoirs that he had started compiling during his time in Greytown, Nicaragua, at the behest of his family. Those earlier memoirs were edited and published posthumously in 1989 as Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Unlike such Confederate officers as Jubal Early and William Pendleton, Alexander eschewed the bitter Lost Cause theories of why the South was doomed to fail, given the overwhelming superiority of the North. He was willing to express in writing his criticisms of prominent Confederate officers, including General Lee himself. Many historians regard Alexander's memoirs as among the most objective and sharpest sources produced by a Civil War combatant. David Eicher called Fighting for the Confederacy "a superb personal narrative with a good deal of analysis of Lee's operations Dramatic and revealing, an important source on the general, his fellow officers, and the Army of Northern Virginia." Alexander's other books include Railway Practice (1887) and Catterel, Ratterel (Doggerel) (1888). Alexander died in Savannah, Georgia and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery, Augusta, Georgia. In 2006 he was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.

Alexander was portrayed by James Patrick Stuart in the 1993 film Gettysburg and its 2003 prequel Gods and Generals. In the alternate history novel How Few Remain, Alexander continues his career as a brigadier general in a victorious Confederacy. Alexander is a character in the alternate history novels Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War (2003), Grant Comes East (2004), and Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant: The Final Victory (2005) by Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen. Alexander is featured as a point of view character in Cain at Gettysburg by Ralph Peters. Alexander is the protagonist of the 2023 playlet Alas, Confederates by James F. Bruns.