States Rights Gist

States Rights Gist (September 3, 1831 – November 30, 1864) was a lawyer and militia general in South Carolina, and later a Confederate Army brigadier general during the American Civil War. He gained prominence during the war but was killed at the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864. Gist was named after the Southern states' rights doctrine of nullification, reflecting the political beliefs of his father, Nathaniel Gist, a follower of John C. Calhoun.

Early life and education Gist, known to his family as "States", was born in 1831 in Union, South Carolina, to Nathaniel Gist and Elizabeth Lewis McDaniel. He was the ninth of ten children and the seventh son. As a youth, he attended Mount Zion, a Presbyterian preparatory school in Winnsboro, South Carolina.

Gist began his studies at South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) in 1847 and graduated in 1850. He later attended Harvard Law School from 1851 to 1852, completing two six-month semesters but leaving with one remaining before attaining a degree. After ending his legal education, he returned to Union, South Carolina, where he read law with an established firm, passed the bar, and established his own practice.

Pre-war service

State militia Soon after his return to South Carolina in 1853, Gist served in the state militia as captain of a volunteer company. By April 1856 Gist was elected as a brigadier general in the South Carolina Militia. General Gist moved to Columbia to become part of the household of his cousin, the governor.

Civil War

Fort Sumter In January 1861, following South Carolina's secession from the Union on December 20, 1860, Governor Francis Pickens appointed Gist as State Adjutant and Inspector General. In this role, Gist acquired weapons and mobilized military manpower across the state. He also briefly oversaw preparations for the state's occupation of Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter. Gist accompanied Pickens and Beauregard for the raising of state and Confederate flags over Fort Sumter following its surrender on April 14, 1861. Bee was killed during the battle soon after giving Stonewall Jackson his famous nickname. During this time, McLeod Plantation was used as a headquarters.

Gist was third in command of Confederate forces at the Battle of Secessionville in June 1862, commanded troops sent to oppose a landing by Union forces at Pocotaligo, South Carolina in October 1862, led a small division of reinforcements in North Carolina between December 1862 and January 1863, and was present at the Union naval attack on Charleston on April 7, 1863. He was not personally involved in combat operations at any of these battles or events. Johnston's efforts in the Vicksburg campaign were unsuccessful and the fortress city fell to the Union Army under General Grant on July 4, 1863.

Gist and his men arrived at the Battle of Chickamauga on the morning of September 20, 1863 to find that Gist had to take command of the division because Walker was in temporary command of a corps. Gist's brigade lost 170 men in 45 minutes as they tried to plug a hole in the line of Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge.

Franklin-Nashville campaign After the Battle of Atlanta, Gist commanded a brigade under Maj. Gen. John C. Brown during Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's Franklin-Nashville campaign.

Death at Franklin A bust of Gist by George T. Brewster at Vicksburg National Military Park Gist was shot in the chest while leading his brigade in a charge against U.S. fortifications at the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864.

According to Walter Brian Cisco in States Rights Gist: A South Carolina General of the Civil War, Gist was first struck by bullets in his thigh but refused to leave the battlefield. He was then fatally wounded by a .58 caliber bullet to his right lung. He asked his aide, Lieutenant Trenholm, to take him home to his wife before being rushed to a field hospital.

Personal life

In April 1863, Gist married Jane Margaret Adams, daughter of South Carolina Governor James Hopkins Adams. The wedding was a brief, rushed ceremony between Gist's coastal defense duties and his deployment to Vicksburg, Mississippi in May, allowing the couple only 48 hours together.

Notable relatives William Gist, grandfather, captain in the South Carolina Loyalists and fought at the Battle of King's Mountain Joseph Gist, brother, Representative in the South Carolina General Assembly William Henry Gist (1807–1874), cousin, Governor of South Carolina from 1858 to 1860 A monument at this location reads:

As noted in the inscription, in 1866, his widow, Jane Gist, retrieved his body. Believing he belonged to all of South Carolina, she had him buried in the Trinity Episcopal churchyard in Columbia, the state capital. His grave is marked by a broken column, adorned with a stone garland at the top and a relief of a palmetto tree at the base.

There is a statue of Gist in Vicksburg, Mississippi .

Gist's death was memorialized in Franklin by a street named "Gist Street" , at the approximate location where he was shot, at its intersection with Columbia Pike.