Born in Athens, Georgia on June 24, 1820, graduated from Yale in the class of 1839. Took up the practice of law in Savannah and was appointed U.S. district attorney before he was twenty- four. He served as colonel of a Georgia volunteer regiment in Mexico, was a newspaper editor, a superior court judge, and U.S. minister resident to Austria. In 1859 he assisted in the government prosecution of the captain and owners of the slave ship Wanderer. He was a delegate to both the Charleston and Baltimore conventions of 1860, an Elector on the Breckinridge ticket, and a member of the Georgia secession convention. He was appointed brigadier general in the Provisional Confederate Army on June 4, 1861, after resigning a Confederate judgeship. Following service under Gen. Robert E. Lee in Western Virginia, Jackson resigned on December 2, 1861 to accept command of a division of Georgia state troops, with rank of major general. He was left without a command the passage of the conscript act which turned his division over to the Confederacy. He served for a time as aide on the staff of General W.H.T.Walker, and was re-commissioned brigadier general in the Confederate service on September 23, 1863. After duty in various capacities during the Atlanta campaign, he accompanied John B. Hood into Tennessee and was captured in action at Nashville, while in command of a brigade of Cheatham's corps. Released from Fort Warren in July 1865, General Jackson resumed his law practice in Georgia, and in 1885 was appointed minister to Mexico by President Cleveland. For nearly 25 years before his death in Savannah, May 23, 1898 he was president of the Georgia Historical Society. He is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah.

 

General H.R. Jackson's final resting place in Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah.

             

 

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