William C. Oates

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William C. Oates was a Colonel in the 15th Alabama Infantry. He is most well known for his for his repeated attacks against the defensive positions of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's 20th Maine Infantry at Little Round Top and the subsequent bayonet counter-charge of the Maine troops. He served much of the rest of his life as a statesman for post-war Alabama and searching desperately for the grave of his brother, for whom he felt a great guilt and responsibility for leaving behind wounded in one of the charges he ordered at the Round Top.

Antebellum

War Career

Post-War Career

  • Built a successful law practice in Southeastern Alabama and entered local politics
  • 1880 - Elected to congress, served seven consecutive terms in the House of Representatives
  • 1894 - Resigned to become one term governor of Alabama
  • 1898 - Volunteered his services for the Spanish-American War and received commission for Brigadier General
  • 1901 - Served as an At-Large delegate for the Alabama Constitutional Convention - suffered political ostracism for suggesting that African-American males should be given the right to vote and returned to law practice at Montgomery, Montgomery County, Alabama
  • 1904 - Gettysburg National Military Park Commissioners rejected Oates' petition to erect a monument of the 15th Alabama at Little Round Top after many years of work
  • 1905 - Oates published a memoir of his war experiences titled The War Between the Union and the Confederacy and Its Lost Opportunities with a History of the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment and the Forty-Eight Battles in Which It Fought[1]
  • December 1907 - Unexpectedly appointed Commissioner for Locating and Marking Confederate Graves in the North by President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of War William Howard Taft
  • 1908 - Struck with pneumonia, began to experience rheumatism and poor eyesight
  • September 9, 1910 - Died of failing health

Family

Notes

  1. This memoir is not yet available on the WotRWiki

Sources