(1840 - 1900)
Home State: Tennessee
Education: United States Naval Academy
Command Billet: Commanding Regiment
Branch of Service: Infantry
Unit: 7th Tennessee Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
He was admitted to the US Naval Academy (USNA) in September 1858, not quite 18 years old, but he resigned near the end of his third year, in April 1861, and went South. He enlisted as a Private and was commissioned Lieutenant and Adjutant of the 7th Tennessee Infantry on 30 May 1861. He was wounded in the shoulder at Seven Pines, VA on 30 May 1862.
On the Campaign
He was in command of the regiment at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 as the only field or staff officer present at the end of the forced march from Harpers Ferry that morning.
The rest of the War
He was captured in action at Gettysburg, PA during "Pickett's Charge" on 3 July 1863, and held at Fort Delaware and Johnson's Island, OH to the end of the war.
After the War
He was exempt from the general amnesty offered Confederates, because he had been educated at the USNA, but he was issued a pardon by President Johnson in 1867.
He studied the law at Cumberland University, then was a broker in Nashville. He was elected Secretary of the State Senate in 1869 and was reelected to two more terms. He was appointed Clerk in the US Postal Department in Washington, DC in 1877 and Chief Clerk of the Department of the Interior in 1887. He resigned at the change of Administration in 1889, and, with other former officers of the 7th Tennessee, founded a bank in Carthage, TN and was its Cashier. In 1893 he returned to a position in the Post Office Department and in 1894 was appointed the Auditor of the US Treasury.
References & notes
His service from Lindsley1 and from the index to his Compiled Service Records via the Historical Data Systems database. His role at Sharpsburg from William Thomas Venner's The 7th Tennessee Infantry in the Civil War (2013). Personal details from a bio sketch in Oliver P. Temple's Notable Men of Tennessee (1912). His USNA admission from the Official Register of the Officers and Acting Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy (1859). His gravesite is on Findagrave.
His brother John K. Howard was Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment but was killed at Mechanicsville, VA in June 1862.
Birth
1840; Greenville, TN
Death
01/03/1900; Dixon Springs, TN; burial in Dixon Springs Cemetery, Dixon Springs, TN
1 Lindsley, John Berrien, The Military Annals of Tennessee. Confederate, Nashville: J.M. Lindsley, 1886, pp. 227, 231, 261, 262 [AotW citation 25406]