Phillip Roddey Philip Dale Roddey ( April 2 , 1826 – July 20 , 1897 ) was a brigadier general in the army of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War . Biography . Roddey was born in Moulton , Lawrence County , Alabama , to Philip and Sarah Roddey . His father , a saddler , had moved his family to Alabama from eastern Tennessee . Philip D . Roddey ' s birth year is usually given as 1826 , which is on his tombstone . However , census records show him as several years older , and in fact his father had been shot and killed in an altercation in Moulton in 1824 . Roddey ' s widowed mother raised her 3 children as best she could , but Roddey received little formal education . He was a tailor in Moulton before he was appointed sheriff of Lawrence County in 1846 , serving at least until 1852 . He then purchased a steamboat , which he ran on the Tennessee River . He married Margaret A . McGaughey and had a son and a daughter . War years . When the American Civil War began , Roddey , who had not supported secession , sought to remain out of it . After the fall of Fort Henry , Tennessee , to Ulysses S . Grant in February 1862 , however , Union gunboats were able to sail as far as Florence , Alabama , where the shallows at Muscle Shoals stopped them . Rather than allow his steamboat to be seized and used by the enemy , Roddey burned her . He then raised a cavalry company , which he led at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 . Roddey was active with his company during the advance on Corinth , Mississippi , General Braxton Bragg writing on May 4 , 1862 , that " Roddey is invaluable " . On August 21 , 1862 , Bragg – now in Chattanooga – wrote , " " A portion of our cavalry , consisting of the companies of Captains Earle , Lewis , and Roddey , led by Captain Roddey , has made another brilliant dash upon a superior force of the enemy , resulting in the capture of 123 prisoners . " In October 1862 , Roddey accordingly was authorized to increase his command to a regiment , the 4th Alabama Cavalry . Roddey was now a colonel . Roddey ' s regiment would serve under both Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joseph Wheeler , principally in Tennessee and Alabama . In December 1862 , the 5th Alabama Cavalry Regiment was brigaded with Roddey ' s 4th Alabama Regiment , and Roddey was named the commander of the District of Northern Alabama . Later , the 10th Alabama Cavalry Regiment added to his command , as was a Georgia horse artillery battery . In April 1864 , Roddey ' s brigade was transferred to the Department of Alabama , Mississippi , and East Louisiana . Promoted to brigadier general , Roddey led his cavalry brigade thereafter mainly in support of Forrest . Roddey ' s men were armed with rifle - muskets rather than carbines , and as such are often regarded to as mounted infantry rather than true cavalry ; they generally fought dismounted . Much of the time they were stationed in their own home area , and Roddey is thus called the " Defender of North Alabama " . Roddey fought a delaying action against Grenville Dodge during Abel D . Streight ' s 1863 raid across Alabama and Georgia , and remained in Alabama during John Bell Hood ' s 1864 Nashville campaign . After Hood ' s failure , Roddey joined Forrest in trying desperately to stop Union General James H . Wilson ' s cavalry raid into south Alabama in March 1865 . Roddey ' s command fought for the last time in April at the Battle of Selma , where Forrest ' s men were overpowered by the more numerous and better armed Union horse soldiers . Most of Roddey command was captured at Selma . The remainder surrendered at Pond Springs ( now Wheeler ) , Alabama , in May 1865 . Post - war . After the war , Roddey moved with his family to Tuscaloosa , Alabama . He later relocated in New York City , where he became a successful commission merchant . He moved to London , England , for business reasons in the early 1890s , dying there in 1897 .