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One of the youngest generals of both sides in the civil war, Edward Alexander Porter in Washington, Georgia, born May 26, 1835. He went to the Military Academy of the United States, graduated third in a class of 38 in 1857.

Before the war, Alexander served as an instructor at West Point, Utah, and the expedition against the Mormons in 1857 and 1858. When his native state seceded from the Union before the Civil War, Alexander resigned from the army S. U. joining Confederation. He began his career as captain of the CSA Engineering, and lead to the rank of brigadier general of artillery at the end of the war.

Alexander has attended almost all the major battles in the Eastern Theater, including Bull Run, first and second, the seven days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the land campaign which eventually led to the siege of St. Petersburg and Robert E. Lee ’s surrender at Appomattox.

Alexander is perhaps best known as the artillery commander James Longstreet in the Battle of Gettysburg, where he led the pre-assault bombardment prior to Pickett’s charge. It is often given credit for saying the General Lee at Fredericksburg that “a chicken could not live in this area” in reference to the open land at Marye’s Heights that would kill a Union based in the ensuing battle is become.

Wounded twice during the war, Alexander was just before his thirtieth birthday at Appomattox. After the war, he held faculty positions at the University of South Carolina, served as president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and had several political appointments. He also wrote two memoirs of his war experiences, often considered a part of the accounts person most objective of the conflict.

Alexander died April 28, 1910, and was buried in Augusta, Georgia.