Marcellus Augustus Stovall Marcellus Augustus Stovall ( September 18 , 1818 – August 4 , 1895 ) was an American soldier and merchant . He served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War , and later he resumed business and civil interests . Early life and career . Marcellus A . Stovall was born in 1818 within the city of Sparta located in Hancock County , Georgia . He was the son of Pleasant Stovall , a successful merchant from Augusta . Stovall received his initial education at Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham , Massachusetts , and then he returned home and enlisted as a private in the Georgia State volunteers in 1835 . He served in the Richmond Blues ( mounted infantry militia ) during the Seminole Wars and was mustered out in 1837 . Stovall entered the United States Military Academy at West Point on July 1 , 1836 , but resigned a year later in 1837 due to poor health . In 1839 he toured Europe , and then he became a merchant and served in the Georgia State Militia as a captain of artillery , serving with the Clinch Rifles . Stovall married Sarah G . McKinne in 1842 , and he moved to an estate near Rome , located in Floyd County in 1846 , where he was again a merchant and a militia captain , serving with the Cherokee Volunteer Artillery . Civil War service . At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861 , Stovall chose to follow his home state and the Confederate cause . He was appointed colonel of the 2nd Artillery Regiment in the Georgia forces in August , and entered the Confederate Army as a lieutenant colonel in the 3rd Georgia Battalion , which was assigned to the Confederate Capital of Richmond , Virginia . Stovall then served at Lynchburg , Goldsboro , North Carolina , and in eastern Tennessee . He first saw combat in 1862 at Waldren ' s Ridge , and then accompanied Maj . Gen . Edmund Kirby Smith into Kentucky and the Trans - Mississippi Department . Following the Kentucky Campaign from June to October 1862 , Stovall was ordered to join Gen . Braxton Bragg ' s Army of Tennessee , and fought during the Battle of Stones River from December 31 to January 2 , 1863 . He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general on January 20 , 1863 . His brigade was assigned to Maj . Gen . John C . Breckinridge ' s Division in D . H . Hill ' s II Corps from June 6 to November 12 . His brigade participated in the Siege of Jackson in Mississippi on May 14 . Stovall ' s command fought in the Western Theater actions of Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 , and the Atlanta Campaign throughout 1864 . He was " warmly commended " by Breckinridge for his performance during the Battle of Chickamauga . After the fall of Atlanta on September 2 , 1864 , Stovall and his brigade ( now part of Clayton ' s Division ) fought in the Franklin - Nashville Campaign that fall and then the Carolinas Campaign in 1865 with what was left of the Army of Tennessee . Stovall surrendered his command with Gen . Joseph E . Johnston ' s army in North Carolina , in the spring of 1865 , and he was paroled on May 9 . Postbellum . After the American Civil War ended in 1865 , Stovall worked as a cotton broker , then became a merchant of farming supplies . Later he organized and became manager of the Georgia Chemical Works , engaging in the manufacture of fertilizers . Stovall served as a city alderman and then police commissioner of Augusta , and was quite active in the Confederate Survivors Association . In 1878 he married for the second time to Courtney Augusta Peck . Stovall died in 1895 at the age of 76 in Augusta , Georgia , and was buried there in Magnolia Cemetery .