Sumtersar

My son, Jay Harvey, was recruited to play football for the United States Military Academy many years ago. I accompanied him to West Point for his visit with the coaches and enjoyed seeing the beautiful and storied campus on the Hudson River. While touring the campus with an officer and professor, I noticed that all the statues of famous alumni faced the library except World War II General George S. Patton. I asked our tour guide why. He said it was traditionally known that General Patton never entered the library during his days as a Cadet, so it was decided he would face the parade ground.

Having studied General Patton’s history during World War II, I found the placement of his statue amusing. But years later, I discovered his Confederate ancestors. I think you might enjoy reading about what I found.

THE PATTONS OF THE CONFEDERACY: GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON’S REBEL BLOODLINE

When General George S. Patton Jr. roared across France in 1944, he liked to say he could feel his ancestors riding beside him. That was not just theater. Patton's family tree was thick with Confederate officers, and the general grew up steeped in stories of their courage and their losses. Chief among them was his own grandfather and namesake, but the elder Patton was only one of seven brothers who took up arms for the South.

The Patriarch's Sons

The Patton brothers were sons of John Mercer Patton, a Virginia lawyer and politician, and grandsons on their mother's side of Revolutionary War general Hugh Mercer. When the Civil War broke out, the family's men enlisted almost to a man. Four of the brothers rose to the rank of colonel, and three more served in lesser ranks. This extraordinary concentration of command within a single household left the family marked by loss for a generation.

Colonel George Smith Patton Sr. — The General's Grandfather

Born in 1833 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, George Smith Patton graduated second in his class from the Virginia Military Institute in 1852 and went on to practice law in Charleston, now in West Virginia. When war came, he commanded the 22nd Virginia Infantry Regiment, leading it through a string of engagements in the mountains of western Virginia and later in the Shenandoah Valley.

He was wounded in 1861 at the Battle of Scary Creek and fought on through battles at Cloyd's Mountain, New Market, Cold Harbor, and Lynchburg. During the Third Battle of Wi******er in September 1864, he was mortally wounded. He died six days later at age 31. The Confederate Congress had approved his promotion to brigadier general, but the paperwork arrived too late; he never knew of it. He left behind a widow, Susan Thornton Glassell Patton, and several young children, including a son who would later change his own name to George Smith Patton in his father's honor — the father of the World War II general.

Lieutenant Colonel Waller Tazewell Patton — Killed at Gettysburg

Waller Patton, another VMI graduate, commanded the 7th Virginia Infantry and took part in one of the war's most famous and doomed assaults: Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. He was struck in the jaw during the attack and died of his wounds seventeen days later. Of all the family's Civil War stories, this was the one General Patton reportedly found most haunting — the image of a great-uncle falling in the same futile charge that broke the back of Lee's army.

Colonel John Mercer Patton Jr. — The Eldest Brother

The eldest of the fighting brothers, John Mercer Patton Jr., commanded the 21st Virginia Infantry. Poor health forced him to resign his commission in 1862. Having survived the war, he later worked as a lawyer and judge before his death in 1898.

Colonel Isaac Williams Patton — Commander in Louisiana

Isaac Williams Patton took a different path than his Virginia-based brothers. Before the war he had settled in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, to manage a cotton plantation, having already seen military service during the Mexican-American War. When Louisiana seceded, he was elected colonel of the 22nd Louisiana Infantry Regiment.

His unit helped defend the river approaches to New Orleans and later fought in the Siege of Vicksburg, where he was wounded in the hip. After Vicksburg's surrender and his exchange, he took command of the reconstituted 22nd Consolidated Louisiana Infantry Regiment, formed in January 1864 from the survivors of eight different Louisiana units paroled after Vicksburg. The consolidated regiment served as heavy artillery defending Mobile Bay, and Patton led it at the Battle of Spanish Fort before finally surrendering in May 1865, a month after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

Isaac survived the war and prospered afterward, becoming a successful New Orleans businessman. He entered politics, serving as sheriff, adjutant general of Louisiana, and ultimately as the 28th Mayor of New Orleans from 1878 to 1880.

The Younger Brothers

Three more Patton brothers, still teenagers or young men, also served. Hugh Mercer Patton joined Waller's 7th Virginia as an officer before transferring to a brigade staff. James French Patton served as a lieutenant under his brother George in the 22nd Virginia, survived the war, and went into law before dying young of heart disease. William Macfarland Patton, the youngest, was a VMI cadet who fought at the Battle of New Market alongside the famous corps of teenage cadets, and he too survived the war.

A Legacy Carried Forward

Two of the brothers, George and Waller, died of their wounds within a year of each other, and their graves eventually stood side by side in Wi******er, Virginia. Their nephew and namesake — George S. Patton II, father of the general — and later the general himself made pilgrimages to that gravesite. General Patton grew up hearing these stories from an early age, and by his own account they shaped his sense of duty and his hunger for a battlefield legacy of his own. When he led American armor across Europe eight decades later, he carried with him a family history defined by seven brothers who, for better or worse, answered the same call to arms in a war fought a continent and a lifetime away.

PHOTOGRAPH

Painting of Colonel George S. Patton, Sr. Washington, William D. “Col. George S. Patton, Sr., during the Civil War” (portrait), ca. 1861. Oil painting. Preston Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia.

Francis Marion Camped at Salem Black River Presbyterian Church in 1781.