Isaac Gurdon Seymour (1804-27 June 1862) was a Confederate States Army colonel who commanded the 6th Louisiana Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. He was previously a Whig politician who served as Mayor of Macon, Georgia, and he went on to become an editor and partner of the Commercial Bulletin in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the start of the war, he was elected colonel of a mostly-Irish regiment, and, while his men were infamous for being drinkers and brawlers, they proved their mettle of soldiers. All but 50 of them were killed or wounded at the 1862 Battle of Gaines' Mill, and Seymour was among the dead.
Biography[]
Isaac Gurdon Seymour was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1804 to a family with roots in Connecticut. He graduated from Yale in 1825 and opened a law office in Macon before becoming an editor for the Georgia Messenger in 1832. A committed Whig, he took a deep interest in local politics and served on the city council, as Mayor of Macon, and later as a US Army soldier serving under Winfield Scott in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War. Scott appointed Seymour military governor of the Castle of Perote, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's home, and he escorted the defeated general to exile in Jamaica. After returning from the Mexican war, he moved to New Orleans and became an editor and partner in the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, the most important financial paper in the city. By the outbreak of the American Civil War, he had become an established and well-respected citizen of his community, and he was quick to offer his skills in defense of his adopted state. He turned over responsibility for the Commercial Bulletin to his son and enlisted in the mostly Irish 6th Louisiana Infantry Regiment, being elected its colonel on 21 May 1861. Its offers became known as hard drinkers and brawlers, to his dismay, but they soon proved their mettle as soldiers. The regiment was attached to the Army of Northern Virginia, and Seymour found Richard S. Ewell repulsive and incompetent. However, his regiment distinguished itself in the Valley Campaign, and it later fought in the Peninsula Campaign. The 6th Louisiana was devastated at the Battle of Gaines' Mill, during which Seymour was killed while leading his men through Boatswain's Swamp. He was buried on the battlefield, and his son William J. Seymour went on to join the CSA and live until 1886.