Samuel Jones (Confederate Army officer)

General Samuel Jones (December 17, 1819 – July 31, 1887) was a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. At the midpoint of the war, he commanded the Department of Western Virginia, defending the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the vital salt mines. Later he commanded the district of South Carolina.

Samuel Jones was born December 17, 1819, at Woodfield, the plantation home of his parents, in Powhatan County, Virginia. His father, Samuel Jones, was a nephew and ward of Governor William Giles, of Virginia, under whose care he was brought up, and a graduate of Princeton College. General Jones mother was Ann Moseley, daughter of Mr. Edward Moseley, of Powhatan County. General Jones was appointed a cadet at West Point Military Academy from Virginia July I, 1837, and was graduated and promoted to brevet second lieutenant July I, 1841, and to be second lieutenant in the Second Artillery September 28, 1841. His first duty was on the Maine frontier, at Houlton, pending the Disputed Territory controversy. He was on duty at West Point, 1846-51, as assistant professor of mathematics and assistant instructor in artillery and infantry tactics. He was appointed assistant to the Judge Advocate of the Army at Washington and continued in the discharge of the duties of his position until he resigned his commission in the Army of the United States April 27, 1861.

On May I, 1861, he was made Major of Artillery in the military force of Virginia and later promoted to be Colonel. On July 22, 1861, he was made Chief of Artillery and Ordnance of the Army of Northern Virginia. He served on the staff of General Beauregard at the First Battle of Manassas, and was promoted to be Brigadier General July 22, 1861, and appointed to the command of the brigade of General Bartow, which had lost its commander on the field of Manassas. On January 22, 1862, General Jones was appointed to the command of the department of which Pensacola was the headquarters. He was promoted to be Major General May 10, 1862, and on September 23, 1862, was assigned to the command of the Department of East Tennessee. From April to October, 1864, he was in command of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and from January to May, 1865, of the Department of Florida and South Georgia. Here he made one of the last stands of the Confederacy, and held his position until the surrender at Appomattox.

Early life
Jones was born at "Woodfield", his parents' plantation in Powhatan County, Virginia. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1841 and was brevetted as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Artillery Regiment. He was initially posted to Houlton, Maine, during a boundary dispute with Canada. He returned to West Point 1846–51, where he was assistant professor of mathematics and a tactics instructor. Immediately prior to the American Civil War he was on the staff of the Judge Advocate of the Army in Washington, D.C.

Civil War
With the secession of Virginia in 1861, Jones was commissioned as a major in the state corps of artillery. He later joined the Provisional Confederate Army and served as chief of artillery and ordnance. He was promoted to colonel in recognition of his service, and on July 21, 1861, to brigadier general (the brigade consisted of the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh Georgia, and the Fourth Kentucky Regiments of Infantry and Alberto's Artillery). He was promoted to major general on March 10, 1862.

From December 4, 1862, until March 4, 1864, Jones commanded the Department of Western Virginia, with his headquarters at Dublin, Virginia. He was in general charge of the operations in defense of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the vital salt mines. The September 1863 Battle of Blountville was the initial step in a Union attempt to force Jones and his command to retire from East Tennessee. Jones was replaced in favor of General John C. Breckinridge.

He then commanded the district of South Carolina until January 1865. When the Union Navy began shelling Charleston, South Carolina, Jones placed fifty captured Federal officers brought into town under guard. He then advised Union Maj. Gen. John G. Foster to stop the bombardment unless he wanted to risk killing his own men. An irate Foster retaliated by placing captured Confederates, including Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson, directly in the line of fire from Jones's guns.

In February 1865, Jones was named the commander of the Department of Florida and South Georgia, a post he held until the end of hostilities, when he surrendered at Tallahassee on May 10, 1865.

Postbellum
From 1873 to 1875, Jones served as president of the Maryland Agricultural College.

Jones died in Bedford Springs, Virginia, and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.