Brigadier General Alexander R. Lawton Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Alexander Lawton (1818-1896), was an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He graduated from West Point in 1839 and served as a second lieutenant with the 1st Artillery before resigning his commission in 1840 to become a lawyer in Savannah, Georgia. Lawton became a colonel of the 1st Georgia Volunteers when the Civil War broke out and seized Fort Pulaski in Savannah before being named a brigadier general in 1861. He led a brigade in General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign and during the Seven Days' Battles and the Second Battle of Manassas before being wounded on Sept. 17, 1862 and convalescing at home. Lawton became the Confederate Army's second Quartermaster General in 1863. Lawton proved highly competent, but was unable to solve the Confederacy's shortages and problems with poorly regulated railroads. Influential in postwar Georgia politics, he lost an 1880 run for the United States Senate. Lawton served as President of the American Bar Association (1882), and was named Minister to Austria in 1885.