Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb

From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb (10 April 1823 – 13 December 1862) was born in Jefferson County, Georgia to John A. Cobb and Sarah Rootes Cobb. He was the younger brother of Howell Cobb. He married Marion Lumpkin, who was the daughter of the Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin. Three of their children lived past childhood: Callender (Callie), who married Augustus Longstreet Hull; Sarah A. (Sally), who married Henry Jackson, the son of Henry Rootes Jackson; and Marion (Birdie), who married Michael Hoke Smith.

Cobb graduated in 1841 from the University of Georgia, and was admitted to the bar in 1842. From 1849 to 1857, he was a reporter of the State Supreme Court. He was one of the signers of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession of 1861. As the principle author of the Confederate Constitution, two of his chief desires was the recognition of the Providence of God in the fundamental law and the suppression of the foreign African Slave Trade. He later served as a Brigadier General in the Army of Northern Virginia and commanded Cobb's Legion. He was killed in December of 1862 at the Battle of Fredericksburg, within sight of the birthplace of his mother.