page_title: 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment
section_title: Commander and other field officers
hierarchical_section_title: 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment / Regimental commanders, weapons and equipment / Commander and other field officers
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonel Samuel Adams, Regimental Commander of the 33rd Alabama Infantry, Alabama Department of Archives and History
context_page_description: The 33rd Alabama Infantry Regiment was an infantry unit from Alabama that served in the Confederate States Army during the U.S. Civil War. Recruited from the southeastern counties of Butler, Dale, Coffee, Covington, Russell and Montgomery, it saw extensive service with the Confederate Army of Tennessee before being nearly annihilated at the Battle of Franklin in 1864. Survivors from the regiment would continue to serve until the final capitulation of General Joseph Johnston in North Carolina in 1865.
  In addition to the counties named above, the 33rd Alabama drew recruits from three modern Alabama counties that did not yet exist in 1862: Geneva County, which was then a part of Dale and Coffee counties; Crenshaw County, which would be formed from Covington and other nearby counties after the war; and Houston County, which then formed a part of Dale and Henry Counties.
  Initially assigned to the defense of Confederate forts in Pensacola Bay, Florida, the 33rd was quickly transferred to duty in the Army of Tennessee, where it saw its first significant action at the Battle of Perryville.
context_section_description: The first regimental commander of the 33rd Alabama was Colonel Samuel Adams, born in 1829 in Abbeville, South Carolina. Educated at South Carolina College (from which he graduated in 1850), he relocated to Greenville, Alabama, where he served as principal of an academy there. He spent his spare time reading Law, and was admitted to the Alabama Bar in 1852. He married Dora Herbert, and soon embarked on a political career, being elected to the U.S House of Representatives from the Whig Party in 1857 and 1859.
  Adams initially enlisted in the 9th Alabama Infantry in 1861, where he was elected First Lieutenant of his company and served in the Confederate Army of the Potomac, the antecedent of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Released in February 1862 to recruit men in his home state, he was chosen to command the newly formed 33rd Alabama. Adams was wounded in the foot at Perryville while leading a brigade; after returning to regimental command in 1864, he was awaiting a recommended promotion to Brigadier General when he was mortally wounded by a Federal sharpshooter at the Battle of Atlanta.
  After Perryville Adams was replaced by Colonel Robert Crittenden of Coffee County, who was captured at Nashville. Other regimental officers included: Isaac Corn, James Dunklin, John Crosby, A.N. Moore and Willis Milner. Adams and Moore were killed in battle, Crosby died of natural causes, Dunklin was wounded, and Crittenden was captured.
caption: Colonel Samuel Adams, first Commander of the 33rd Alabama
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