Clement Anselm Evans

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

02/25/1833; Lumkin, GA

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