The Life And Death Of Brigadier General States Rights Gist C.S.A. (1831 - 1864)

Brigadier General States Rights Gist.
(September 3, 1831 - November 30, 1864)

 

States Rights Gist was born on Saturday, September 3, 1831 at the family home, Wyoming Plantation, near the town of Jonesville in Union County, South Carolina, the sixth of seven children to Mr. Nathaniel Gist (1776-1861) and Elizabeth Lewis McDaniel Gist (1796-1859).

He was distantly related to Mordecai Gist (1743-1792), a Maryland-born Brigadier General in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). States was the great-grandson of William Gist Sr. (1711-1794), Mordecai Gist's uncle. 

Known to his parents and siblings as "States" his name was based on the Southern states’ rights political doctrine of nullification politics of his father. Nathaniel Gist, a lawyer and noted disciple of United States Senator and Vice President of the United States, John Caldwell Calhoun, chose his son's unique name to reflect his own political sentiments.

Schooled at Mount Zion Institute in Winnsboro, South Carolina, States was admitted to South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, as a sophomore in 1847, graduating in 1850. He returned home and began to read law. The following year in 1851, he attended Harvard Law School (HLS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts although he didn't formally graduate. After leaving Harvard, States moved home to Union, read the law with a local established firm and passed the South Carolina Bar in 1853. He set up a law practice becoming a local attorney.

Soon after his return to South Carolina in 1853, Gist served in the South Carolina State Militia as captain of a local volunteer company the Johnson Rifles. He became aide-de-camp with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel to South Carolina Governor James Hopkins Adams from 1854 to 1856 when he was then appointed a Brigadier General commanding the SC State Militia at age 24. One of his many roles was to train fellow militia members for war.

Later in 1863, States Rights Gist would marry Governor Adams' daughter, Jane Margaret "Janie" Adams (1841-1911). Sadly, the couple would only be married a year and have no children before States would be killed during the War Between The States (American Civil War 1861-1865).

In April of 1860, Gist was appointed aide-de-camp and military advisor to Governor William Henry Gist (1807-1874) -- his older cousin. Knowing that war was on the horizon, he prepared South Carolina for war. In October of 1860, Governor Gist sent States to six other governors of Southern states to seek their support for possible secession due to the likely election of Abraham Lincoln as the next President of the United States.

States Gist was then appointed State Adjutant and Inspector General by Governor Francis Pickens after South Carolina seceded from the United States on Thursday, December 20, 1860. In that role he acquired military arms for the newly independent State of South Carolina and later, along with Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, oversaw the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on Friday, April 12, 1861, which formally began the War.

Gist went to Virginia and served as a volunteer aide on the staff of Brigadier General Bernard Elliott Bee.

At the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run Creek) on Sunday, July 21, 1861, Bee was mortally wounded and Gist was given temporary command of the remnants of Bee's Brigade defending Henry House Hill. He too was wounded in the battle, but only lightly. Gist recovered and soon returned to South Carolina to resume his duties as Adjutant and Inspector General to prepare state forces to defend Port Royal in the fall of 1861 and to be absorbed into the Confederate Army in the early months of 1862.

States Rights Gist received his formal appointment as a Confederate Brigadier General on Thursday, March 20, 1862 at the age of 30. He was assigned to the Charleston area and was sent to oversee state coastal defenses commanded at the time by Major General John C. Pemberton.

With the exception of a brief assignment in North Carolina, General Gist served in the defense of the city commanding the James Island military district and a brigade in the coastal defenses between May of 1862 through May of 1863.

During that time he took part in the Battle of Secessionville (First Battle of James Island) on Monday, June 16, 1862 and commanded Confederate troops sent to successfully oppose a landing by raiding Union forces at Pocotaligo, South Carolina in October of 1862. General Gist led a small division of reinforcements in North Carolina between December of 1862 and January of 1863, and was also present during the major Union naval attack on the city of Charleston on Tuesday, April 7, 1863.

In May 1863, Gist was transferred to the western theater and given command of an infantry brigade along with Brigadier General William H. T. Walker also leading a brigade to reinforce Confederate forces under General Joseph E. Johnston. They were trying to relieve Confederate forces under attack at Vicksburg by Union Army forces commanded by Major General Ulysses S. Grant in a push to take the fortress city to gain control of the Mississippi River. Walker was promoted to major general and Gist's brigade was placed in Walker's division.
 

Just before leaving for Mississippi, States married Janie Adams (as previously mentioned) and he spent just two days with his new wife before heading west.

General Gist saw limited action in the Vicksburg campaign, notibly at the Battle of Jackson, Mississippi on Thursday, May 14, 1863 before the surrender of Vicksburg's defenses on Saturday, July 4, 1863. 

In August 1863 Walker's division was sent to Chattanooga, Tennessee to reinforce General Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee in northern Georgia. Gist's brigade was first stationed at Rome, Georgia, but on Thursday, September 17, 1863, Gist was ordered to return with his brigade to Walker's division and took part in the second day of the Battle of Chickamauga on Sunday, September 20, 1863.

During the battle, Gist had to take command of Walker's division because Walker was put in temporary command of a corps. Gist's brigade alone lost 170 men in 45 minutes as they tried to plug a hole in the line of Major General John C. Breckinridge.

Gist would again command Walker's division during the disastrous  Chattanooga Campaign in November of 1863. The division served as the rear guard for the retreat of Breckinridge's corps from Missionary Ridge on Wednesday, November 25, 1863.

At the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga, and throughout the subsequent Atlanta Campaign, despite having no formal military training prior to the war, Gist proved a reliably competent and respected commander.

During the Battle of Atlanta on Wednesday, July 22, 1864, General Walker was killed and Gist was wounded in a hand. On Friday, July 24, 1864, Walker's division was broken up and Gist's brigade was assigned to the division of Major General Benjamin F. Cheatham. Gist returned to duty a month later after going home on leave and recuperating from his wound.

Following the evacuation and fall of Atlanta on Friday, September 2, 1864, the Army of Tennessee, now under the command of Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, advanced north into Tennessee in November of 1864 to being the ill-fated Franklin and Nashville Campaign.

He commanded a brigade in Major General John C. Brown's division during the terrible Battle of Franklin on Wednesday, November 30, 1864 where the Confederate assault of six infantry divisions containing eighteen brigades with 100 regiments numbering almost 20,000 men (sometimes called the "Pickett's Charge of the West") resulted in devastating losses to the men and the leadership of the Army of Tennessee with 55 regimental commanders made casualties along with fourteen Confederate generals -- five killed during the battle, one mortally wounded who would die a week later, seven wounded, and one captured.

Brigadier General States Rights Gist was killed while leading his brigade in the charge against the Union center. He was shot twice: once in the thigh and then in the chest near his heart. He was carried off the battlefield and died in a field hospital sometime after 8 PM CST. He was 33 years old.

The body of General Gist was returned to South Carolina by his personal servant, a free man of color named Willie Howard, and was originally buried in a family cemetery. In 1866, his coffin was interred and reburied permanently in the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral cemetery in downtown Columbia, South Carolina across from the South Carolina State Capitol Building.

The grave of Brigadier General States Rights Gist at the historic
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Cemetery in downtown Columbia, SC.

 

Sources for this article include:

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States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War by Walter Brian Cisco. Ragged Edge Press; 1st edition (1991) ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0942597288.
The South Carolina Department of Archives and History. 
The members of the States Rights Gist Camp #1451 (Union County, South Carolina) Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).  

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