Winfield Scott Featherston

Winfield Scott Featherston "Old Swet" (August 8, 1820 – May 28, 1891) was an antebellum two-term U.S. Representative from Mississippi and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was later a state politician and a circuit court judge.

Early life and career Winfield Scott Featherston was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on August 8, 1820. He was the youngest of seven children of Charles and Lucy Featherston, who had recently emigrated from Virginia. Featherston completed his preparatory studies, but left high school in 1836 to enroll in a local militia group to fight Creek Indians during the Creek War. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1850 to the Thirty-second Congress, being defeated by John Allen Wilcox. He returned home to Houston and resumed his law practice.

He moved to Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1856 and began a new law practice in that town. Two years later, he married Elizabeth McEwen, the daughter of the town's leading merchant. The couple would raise a large family in Holly Springs.

American Civil War Bust of Featherston by Edmond Thomas Quinn at Vicksburg National Military Park. With the secession of Mississippi, Featherston was appointed to visit neutral Kentucky to try to influence Governor Beriah Magoffin into also leading his state from the Union. With the start of the Civil War in May 1861, Featherston was appointed a captain of Confederate States Army infantry. He was cited for gallantry at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. He was commissioned as a brigadier general to rank from March 4, 1862.

Transferred to Mississippi in early 1863, Featherston assumed command of a brigade of Mississippians in Major General William W. Loring's Division in the army of General Joseph E. Johnston.

Featherston died from paralysis at his home in Holly Springs, Mississippi on May 28, 1891. He was interred in the town's Hillcrest Cemetery.