William Wirt Adams

William Wirt Adams (1819–1888) was a banker, planter, state legislator, and a Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army. Early life Adams was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, to Anna Weisiger Adams and Judge George Adams (a personal friend to American statesman and orator Henry Clay). He was a brother of Daniel Weisiger Adams, another future Civil War general. In 1825 his family moved to and settled in Natchez, Mississippi. His father was a district court judge for the state of Mississippi from 1836 to 1839. William attended college at Bardstown College in Bardstown, Kentucky. Upon graduation in 1839, he enlisted as a private for the Republic of Texas under Edward Burleson, received a commission to adjutant of the regiment, and was involved in the Military campaign of northeast Texas against Native Americans settled there. He returned to Mississippi where he married Sallie Huger Mayarant in 1850. There he pursued banking and agriculture in Jackson, Mississippi, and Vicksburg, Mississippi. From 1850 to 1861, he owned and operated a successful business and, from 1858 to 1860, he served two sessions in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Confederate States Army service In 1861, after Mississippi seceded from the Union, Adams was appointed commissioner from Mississippi to Louisiana. As such, he helped the latter to secede from the Union. In February of that year, the Confederate States of America formed in Montgomery, Alabama. President Jefferson Davis offered Adams a cabinet position there as Confederate Postmaster General, but he declined.