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J.R. Hagood
"Jim"
(1844 - 1870)
Home State: South Carolina
Education: South Carolina Military Institute (the Citadel)
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
Son of wealthy physician James O'Hear Hagood (1804-1873), in 1860 he was a 15 year old living with his parents, 3 younger siblings, and 63 slaves in the Barnwell District, SC. He was a cadet at the Citadel in Charleston by 1861 and in April 1862 enrolled for Confederate service in a cadet cavalry company, later Troop F, 6th South Carolina Cavalry. He transferred as a Private to the the First South Carolina Infantry in May 1862 and was Sergeant Major of the regiment by June.
On the Campaign
He was acting Adjutant on the Maryland Campaign. At Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862
... when his superiors failed to sustain the regiment in the hour of trial, he rallied [illegible] by then color sergeant [illegible] than one of my best Colonels.
The rest of the War
He was appointed First Lieutenant and Adjutant on 12 December 1862 (to date from 16 November) and promoted to Captain of Company K on 2 January 1863. He was ill in a Richmond, VA hospital at the time of the battle at Gettysburg, and was appointed Colonel of the regiment on 18 November 1863 - 3 days after his 19th birthday. He was surrendered and paroled with his regiment at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.
After the War
He was a farmer in Barnwell, SC for about two years, then a merchant mariner. About 1870 he returned to South Carolina to prepare for an opportunity as a military advisor to the Egyptian Army, but was severely injured in the head in a train wreck on the Greenville and Columbia Railroad enroute to a Confederate Survivors Association reunion in December 1870. He died of his injuries about a week later, just 26 years old.
References & notes
His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3, with details from his own Memoirs.2 The quote above from a 2 November 1863 letter from Brigadier General Micah Jenkins, his brigade commander, to Secretary of War James Seddon recommending then-Captain Hagood for promotion to Colonel of the regiment "for special valor and skill." Personal details from family genealogists, notably Johnson Hagood in Meet your Grandfather, a Sketch-book of the Hagood-Tobin Family (1946), and the US Census of 1860. His gravesite is on Findagrave, source also of his picture, from a photograph contributed by Kenneth Robison II.
His older brother Johnson Hagood (1829-1898), a lawyer, was the original Colonel of the First South Carolina until appointed Brigadier General in June 1862.
Birth
11/15/1844; Barnwell, SC
Death
12/15/1870; Columbia, SC; burial in Hagood-Short Staple Cemetery, Barnwell, SC
1 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 31920]
2 Hagood, James Robert, and Colonel Johnson Hagood, Memoirs of the First South Carolina Regiment of Volunteer Infantry ..., Barnwell: not published, c. 1870 [AotW citation 31921]