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| 15th Alabama Regiment |
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| Colonel William C. Oates |
15th Alabama Infantry Regiment
15th Infantry Regiment was organized in August 1861, at Fort Mitchell, Alabama,
with eleven companies. The men were recruited in Barbour, Russell, Dale, Henry, Macon, and Pike counties. With more than 900
effectives, it moved to East Tennessee, then Virginia. In Virginia, the unit was assigned to Trimble's Brigade and saw action
in Jackson's Valley Campaign. Later it served under Generals Law and W. F. Perry, Army of Northern Virginia. The 15th participated
in many conflicts from the Seven Days Battles to Cold Harbor, except when it was with Longstreet at Suffolk, Chickamauga,
and Knoxville. It was involved in the battles and hardships of the Petersburg siege and ended the war at Appomattox. This
regiment lost 51 men at Cross Keys and Port Republic, 152 during the Seven Days Battles, 112 at Second Manassas, and 84 at
Sharpsburg. More than thirty percent of the 499 engaged at Gettysburg were disabled, and it reported 142 casualties at Chickamauga
and 91 during The Wilderness Campaign. The unit surrendered with 15 officers and 204 men. Its commanders were Colonels James
Cantey, Alexander A. Lowther, William C. Oates, and John F. Treutlen; Lieutenant Colonel Isaac B. Feagin; and Major John W.
L. Daniel.
Source: National Park Service
Recommended Reading: Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates, by Glenn W. LaFantasie. Booklist: This excellent, scholarly biography
deals with a man best known as Joshua Chamberlain's principal opponent on Little Round Top on the second day of the Battle
of Gettysburg. Like his famous opponent, the 15th Alabama Regiment's commander, William C. Oates, knew the art of the infantry
officer. Born when much of his native Alabama
was still frontier, he survived six wounds, including the loss of his right arm. After the war, he was a distinguished and
eventually wealthy lawyer and state politician as well as a thoroughly unreconstructed rebel with a notoriously hot temper.
Continued below…
Yet he made
a scandal at the end of his career when, at a state constitutional convention, he advocated no racial limitations on voting
rights… A valuable addition to the Civil War shelves. About the Author: Glenn W. LaFantasie is the Frockt Family Professor
of Civil War History and the Director of the Center for the Civil War in the West at Western
Kentucky University. He is the bestselling author of Twilight at Little
Round Top. He has also written for several magazines and newspapers, including American History, North & South, MHQ: The
Quarterly Journal of Military History, The New York Times Book Review, America's Civil War, Civil
War Times Illustrated, and The Providence Journal.
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