| Summary: | The Home of Governor and Confederate Brigadier General Edward Asbury O’Neal was in downtown Florence Alabama. After graduating from LaGrange College he studied law in Huntsville and married Olivia Moore. He passed the bar in 1840 and began a law practice in Florence, Alabama, that same year. When the couple rode through the town of Florence, Olivia spotted a home under construction that she liked and persuaded her husband to buy it. The house was on North Court Street in the Sannoner Historic District.
O’Neal had been a strong proponent of the secession movement. After the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, he raised a company form the local area for the 9th Alabama Infantry Regiment. O’Neal received a commission as colonel for the 26th Alabama Infantry Regiment, in March 1862. The 26th Alabama was assigned to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The unit and O’Neal fought in many of the major battles of the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. This included Seven Pines, Seven Days, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg.
O’Neal was wounded twice in battle and placed in command of the guards at Andersonville prison in Americus, Georgia for a short stent when it was first opened. O’Neal and the 26th Alabama participated in the unsuccessful defense of Atlanta from General Sherman. O’Neal and a group of survivors from Alabama regiments surrendered in 1865 at Greensboro North Carolina. When he surrendered his official rank was Colonel.
The Confederate government had agreed to a promotion to Brigadier General; however, the designation had not arrived before his surrender. The state of Alabama would later give him a commission as a brigadier general. After the war O’Neal returned to Florence and the practice of law. He entered back into Alabama politics in 1875 and was elected the 26th Governor of Alabama in 1882.
|
|---|
