William Hicks Jackson William Hicks " Red " Jackson ( October 1 , 1835 – March 30 , 1903 ) was a cotton planter , horse breeder , and general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War . Early life and career . Jackson was born in Paris , Tennessee , a son of Dr . Alexander Jackson and Mary ( Hurt ) Jackson , the daughter of a Baptist minister , both natives of Virginia . At the age of five , his family moved to Jackson , Tennessee , where his father would be elected as a Whig to the state legislature and subsequently as Jackson ' s mayor . His brother Howell Edmunds Jackson would become a United States Supreme Court Justice . He attended West Tennessee College ( now Union University ) before accepting an appointment to the United States Military Academy . He graduated from West Point in 1856 and was brevetted as a second lieutenant in the U . S . Army . He studied at the cavalry school at Carlisle Barracks and joined the Regiment of Mounted Rifles . He served on frontier duty at Fort Bliss in Texas in 1857 , and engaged in a skirmish with Kiowas near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory . He participated in the Comanche and Kiowa Expedition of 1860 . Civil War . When word came of Tennessee ' s secession , Jackson resigned from the Army on May 16 , 1861 , and returned to the South to enroll in the Confederate army as a captain of artillery . He was an aide - de - camp to General Gideon Pillow and served at the Battle of Belmont in November . In early 1862 , Jackson was appointed as colonel of the 1st Tennessee Cavalry and rose to be chief of cavalry under John C . Pemberton , Earl Van Dorn , and then Sterling Price . On December 29 , 1862 , he was promoted to brigadier general . He served with distinction in the Vicksburg Campaign in early 1863 . In February 1864 , he commanded the cavalry of Leonidas Polk in the campaign around Meridian , Mississippi . During the Atlanta Campaign that summer , Jackson commanded the cavalry division of the Army of Mississippi . His troopers repeatedly skirmished in August with the Union cavalry of H . Judson Kilpatrick , which was attempting to destroy railroads south of the city . Jackson won a significant victory at the Battle of Brown ' s Mill near Newnan , Georgia . He continued to lead his division through the Nashville and Murfreesboro campaign and then retreated to Mississippi . In February 1865 , he was assigned command of all cavalry from Tennessee in the force of Nathan Bedford Forrest . He successfully isolated the Union brigade of John T . Croxton during Wilson ' s Raid in April . Postbellum career . Following the war , Jackson returned to Tennessee and managed his father ' s cotton plantation . In 1868 , he married Selene Harding , and co - managed his father - in - law ' s estate , " Belle Meade " . In the 1870s , Jackson became heavily involved in The Grange movement . He also belonged to the Tennessee Agricultural and Mechanical Association , and sat on the Tennessee Bureau of Agriculture . In 1886 , Jackson and his older brother , jurist Howell Edmunds Jackson , took over control of Belle Meade following their father - in - law William Giles Harding ' s death . They raised prize race horses . General Jackson purchased a stallion named Iroquois in 1886 , the first American winner of the Epsom Derby . William H . Jackson died at Belle Meade in 1903 and was buried in the family ' s mausoleum in the plantation ' s cemetery . In 1906 , after the plantation was sold , he and other members of the Harding - Jackson family were reinterred in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville , Tennessee .