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C. A. Evans

C. A. Evans

Confederate (CSA)

Colonel

Clement Anselm Evans

(1833 - 1911)

Home State: Georgia

Education: Augusta (GA) Law School, Class of 1852

Command Billet: Commanding Regiment

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 31st Georgia Infantry

Before Sharpsburg

He was admitted to the bar in 1852 after graduating from law school at age 19, and was a lawyer, judge (1854), and a Georgia state senator (1859), in Stewart County, GA.

On 18 or 19 November 1861 he was elected Major of the 31st Georgia Infantry, and was appointed Colonel on 13 March 1862 (to date from 13 May). He was on the Peninsula campaign and at Second Manassas.

On the Campaign

As Colonel of the 31st Georgia Infantry he is seen in some references as in command in Maryland, but was probably not actually at Sharpsburg on the 17th: official sources list Lieutenant Colonel John T. Crowder as in command at the battle, succeeded by Major John H. Lowe.

The rest of the War

He led his Regiment at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania and also occasionally commanded the brigade as senior Colonel from December 1862. He was appointed Brigadier General on 19 May 1864. He was wounded at Monocacy, MD in 1864 and commanded Gordon's Division/Second Corps from Petersburg to Appomattox, and was paroled with them on 9 April 1865.

After the War

By 1870 he was a Methodist minister in Athens, GA, and in 1880 was in Atlanta. He preached for 26 years and had retired from the ministry in Atlanta by 1910, when he was a Georgia Prison Commissioner there. He was the editor of the twelve volume Confederate Military History (1899) and was Commander-in-Chief of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) at his death in 1911.

References & notes

His basic service from Henderson1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, his bio sketch in his own Confederate Military History (1899), and the US Census of 1870, 1880, and 1910. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His photograph from Uriguen.3

He married Mary Allen Walton (1835-1884) in 1853 and they had 8 children.

Evans County in southeast Georgia, created in 1914, was named for him.

Birth

02/25/1833; Lumkin, GA

Death

07/02/1911; Atlanta, GA; burial in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA

Notes

1   Henderson, Lilian, compiler, Roster of the Confederate Soldiers of Georgia, 1861-1865, 6 vols., Hapeville (GA): Longino & Porter, 1959-1964  [AotW citation 28117]

2   US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927  [AotW citation 28118]

3   Uriguen, Mikel, Photo Gallery (Generals and Brevet Generals), Generals of the Civil War, Published c. 1998, first accessed 01 January 1998, <http://www.generalsandbrevets.com/>  [AotW citation 28119]