General officers in the Confederate States Army

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CSA general collar insignia.






Brigadier general[edit]





Major general[edit]

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger, CSA

These generals were most commonly infantry division commanders, aides to other higher ranking generals, and War Department staff officers. They also led the districts that made up military departments, and had command over the troops in their districts. By war's end the Confederacy had at least 88 different men who had held this rank, all in the PACS.[10]



Major general line command list[edit]

Not further promoted; before 1864


Lieutenant general[edit]

Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, CSA

There were 18 lieutenant generals in the Confederate Army, and these general officers were often corps commanders within armies or military department heads, in charge of geographic sections and all soldiers in those boundaries. All of the Confederacy's lieutenant generals were in the PACS.[10] The Congress legalized the creation of army corps on September 18, 1862, and directed that lieutenant generals lead them. These generals were to be nominated by Davis and confirmed by the Senate.[7] Lieutenant generals outranked major generals and all other lesser officers.

This rank was not synonymous with the Federal use of it; Ulysses S. Grant was one of only two Federal lieutenant generals during the war, the other being Winfield Scott who received a promotion to brevet lieutenant general by a special Act of Congress in 1855. Grant was by the time of his promotion, March 9, 1864, the only Federal lieutenant general in active service. Grant became commander of all the Union armies, answering directly to President Abraham Lincoln and charged with the task of leading the Union armies to victory over the Confederacy. The CSA lieutenant general rank is roughly equivalent to lieutenant general in the modern U.S. Army.

The Confederate Congress passed legislation in May 1864 to allow for "temporary" general officers in the PACS, to be appointed by Jefferson Davis and confirmed by the Senate, and given a non-permanent command by Davis.[11] Under this law Davis appointed several officers to fill open positions. Richard H. Anderson was appointed a "temporary" lieutenant general on May 31, 1864, and given command of the First Corps (following the wounding of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet on May 6 in the Wilderness.) With Longstreet's return that October, Anderson reverted to a major general. Jubal Early was appointed a "temporary" lieutenant general on May 31, 1864, and given command of the Second Corps (following the reassignment of Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell to other duties) and led it until December 1864, when he too reverted to a major general. Likewise both Stephen D. Lee and Alexander P. Stewart were appointed fill to vacancies in the Western Theater as "temporary" lieutenant generals, and also reverted to their prior grades as major generals as those assignments ended. However, Lee was nominated a second time for lieutenant general on March 11, 1865, and was confirmed as such five days later .[12]

Lieutenant general line command list[edit]


General (Full general)[edit]

Gen. Samuel Cooper, CSA


All Confederate generals were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all militia officers,[5] except for Edmund Kirby Smith, who was appointed general late in the war and into the PACS. P.G.T. Beauregard, had also initially been appointed a PACS general but was elevated to ACSA two months later with the same date of rank.[15] These generals outranked all other grades of generals, as well as all lesser officers in the Confederate States Army.

The first group of officers appointed to general were Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and P.G.T. Beauregard, with their seniority in that order. This ordering caused Cooper, a staff officer who would not see combat, to be the senior general officer in the CSA. That seniority strained the relationship between Joseph E. Johnston and Jefferson Davis. Johnston had been the only general officer in the U.S. Army who left for the South, so he considered himself the senior officer in the Confederate States Army and resented the ranks that Davis had authorized. However, his position in the U.S. Army was staff, not line, which was evidently a criterion for Davis regarding seniority and rank in the Confederate Army.[16]

On February 17, 1864, legislation was passed to allow Davis to appoint an officer to command the Trans-Mississippi Department, with the rank of general in the PACS. Edmund Kirby Smith was the only officer appointed to this position.[17] Braxton Bragg was appointed a general in the ACSA with a date of rank of April 6, 1862, the day his commanding officer Albert Sidney Johnston died in combat.[18]

The Congress passed legislation in May 1864 to allow for "temporary" general officers in the PACS, to be appointed by Davis and confirmed by the Senate, and given a non-permanent command by Davis.[11] John Bell Hood was appointed a "temporary" general on July 18, 1864, the date he took command of the Army of Tennessee in the Atlanta Campaign, but this appointment was not confirmed by the Congress, and he reverted to his rank of lieutenant general in January 1865.[19] In March 1865, Hood's status was spelled out by the Confederate Senate, which stated:


General line command list[edit]

  • Abbreviations: KIA = killed in action

Note that during 1863, Beauregard, Cooper, J. Johnston, and Lee all had their ranks re-nominated on February 20 and then re-confirmed on April 23 by the Confederate Congress.[12] This was in response to debates on February 17 about whether confirmations made by the provisional legislature needed re-confirmation by the permanent legislature, which was done by an Act of Congress issued two days later.[21]


Militia generals[edit]

Main article: Militia Act of 1792


The regulations in the Act of 1792 provided for two classes of militia, divided by age. Class one was to include men from 22 to 30 years old, and class two would include men from 18 to 20 years as well as from 31 to 45 years old.[22] The various southern states were each using this system when the war began.

Uniform insignia[edit]

All Confederate generals wore the same uniform insignia regardless of which rank of general they were,[23] except for Robert E. Lee who wore the uniform of a Confederate colonel. The only visible difference was the button groupings on their uniforms; groups of three buttons for lieutenant and major generals, and groups of two for brigadier generals.

Joseph Reid Anderson in a CSA brigadier general's uniform.
Rank Collar insignia Sleeve insignia Buttons
General General (all grades)
(all grades)
General (all grades)
(all grades)
Lieutenant General LtGen: Groups of three buttons
Major General MajGen: Groups of three buttons
Brigadier General BrigGen: Groups of two buttons





The CSA lost more general officers killed in combat than the Union Army did throughout the war, in the ratio of about 5-to-1 for the South compared to roughly 12-to-1 in the North.[25] The most famous of whom is General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, probably the best known Confederate commander after General Robert E. Lee.[26] Jackson's death was the result of a friendly fire incident at Chancellorsville on the night of May 2, 1863. Replacing these fallen generals was an ongoing problem during the war, often having men promoted beyond their abilities (a common criticism of officers such as John Bell Hood[27] and George E. Pickett,[28] but an issue for both armies), or gravely wounded in combat but needed, such as Richard S. Ewell.[29] The problem was made more difficult by the South's depleting manpower, especially near the war's end.

The last Confederate general in the field, Stand Watie, surrendered on June 23, 1865, and the war's last surviving general, Edmund Kirby Smith, died on March 28, 1893.[30] James Longstreet died on January 2, 1904, and was considered "the last of the high command of the Confederacy."[31]


See also[edit]


  1. ^ Eicher pp. 24-5. This resulted from the Confederacy's adoption of the U.S. 'Rules and Regulations of the Army' as their own, just with "Confederate States of America" put in wherever "United States of America" was in its text.
  4. ^ Dupuy, p. 190.
  5. ^ a b Eicher, p. 24.
  7. ^ a b Eicher, p. 25
  9. ^ Eicher, p. 817.
  10. ^ a b Eicher, p. 810.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Eicher, pp. 787-8.
  13. ^ Eicher, p. 808.
  15. ^ Eicher, p. 787.
  16. ^ Eicher, p. 69.
  17. ^ Wright, p. 12.
  18. ^ Eicher, p. 141.
  19. ^ Eicher, p. 303.
  20. ^ Wright, p. 13. Confederate Senate Resolution, 16 March 1865.
  21. ^ Eicher, p. 26.
  22. ^ Eicher, p. 70.
  24. ^ Katcher, p. 60.
  26. ^ Jackson biography at Civil War Home.
  30. ^ Dupuy, p.406.
  31. ^ Warner, p. 193.


Further reading[edit]