Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb ( April 10 , 1823 – December 13 , 1862 ) was an American lawyer , author , politician , and Confederate officer , killed in the Battle of Fredericksburg during the American Civil War . Early life . Cobb 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 Supreme Court of Georgia 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 . The Lucy Cobb Institute , which he founded , was named for a daughter who died shortly before the school opened . His niece Mildred Lewis Rutherford served the school for over forty years in various capacities . Cobb graduated in 1841 from Franklin College ( of the University of Georgia ) , where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society , and was admitted to the bar in 1842 . From 1849 to 1857 , he was a reporter of the Supreme Court of Georgia . He was an ardent secessionist , and was a delegate to the Secession Convention . He is best known for his treatise on the law of slavery titled " An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America " ( 1858 ) and as one of the founders of the University of Georgia School of Law . Cobb also served on the first Georgia code commission of 1858 and drafted what became the private and penal law portions of the Georgia Code of 1861 , which was the first successfully enacted attempt at a comprehensive codification of the common law anywhere in the United States . It is the ancestor of today ' s Official Code of Georgia Annotated . Simultaneously , the Northern law reformer David Dudley Field II was independently working in the same ambitious direction of trying to codify " all " of the common law into a coherent civil code , but Field ' s proposed civil code was not actually enacted until 1866 in Dakota Territory , was belatedly enacted in 1872 in California , and was repeatedly rejected several times by his home state of New York and never enacted in that state . Unlike Field ' s largely race - neutral code , the original Georgia Code was strongly biased in favor of slavery and white supremacy , and even contained a presumption that blacks were " prima facie " slaves until proven otherwise . Georgia ultimately kept the Code after the Civil War but revised it in 1867 and many more times since , to purge the racism and pro - slavery bias inherent in the original text . Civil War . During the Civil War Cobb served in the Confederate Congress , where for a time he was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs . He was also on the committee that was responsible for the drafting of the Confederate constitution . He organized Cobb ' s Legion in the late summer of 1861 and was commissioned a colonel in the Confederate army on August 28 , 1861 . The Legion was assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia . It took heavy losses during the Maryland Campaign . He was promoted to brigadier general on November 1 , 1862 , but this promotion was not confirmed by the Confederate Congress . At the Battle of Fredericksburg , he was mortally wounded in the thigh by a Union artillery shell that burst inside the Stephens house near the Sunken Road on Marye ' s Heights . He bled to death from damage to the femoral artery on December 13 , 1862 . Some later accounts by veterans claim that the wounding was by rifle fire and that a Confederate soldier may have been responsible . He is buried at Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens , Georgia . The T . R . R . Cobb House . The T . R . R . Cobb House , where Thomas Cobb and his wife Marion lived in Athens , Ga , is now a house museum . Originally constructed across Prince Avenue from its current location , it was moved to Stone Mountain Park , Stone Mountain , Georgia , where it was partially reassembled about 1990 . Stone Mountain Park had hoped to restore the house , but the project fell through . Then , it was transported back to Athens where it was reassembled and underwent and extensive restoration . The house is now an operational museum . The house is owned by the Watson - Brown Foundation .