John Horace Forney

From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

John Horace Forney (12 August 1829 - 13 September 1902) was born at Lincolnton, North Carolina and was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from Alabama on 1 July 1848. He graduated twenty-second in his class on 1 July 1852, and was posted to the Seventh United States Infantry as a brevet second lieutenant. He was promoted to Second Lieutenant on 24 October 1853, and transferred to the Tenth Infantry on 3 March 1855. He was promoted to first lieutenant on August 25, 1855, but, with the secession of the States of the lower South, he resigned his commission on 23 January 1861. He entered Confederate service as Colonel of the Tenth Alabama Infantry and saw action at the Battle of First Manassas. He was wounded at Dranesville, Virginia in December 1861, and was promoted to Brigadier General on 10 March 1862, and to Major General on 27 October 1862. After brief service as commander of the departments of Alabama and Florida he was given a division of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's army defending Vicksburg and was captured there when the city fell in July of 1863. After being exchanged Forney was sent to the trans-Mississippi, where he superseded John George Walker as commander of the Texas Division. At the end of the war he returned to Alabama, where he was a farmer and civil engineer until his death at Jacksonville in 1902.