
Patrick Cleburne (16 March 1828 – 30 November 1864) was a Major-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Formerly a Corporal in the British Army, he was called the "Stonewall of the West" for his excellence at military tactics. He was killed in the Battle of Franklin.
Biography[]
Cleburne was born in the town of Ovens in Ireland's County Cork to an Anglo-Irish family and, in 1846, attempted to become a medician at the Trinity College of Medicine. He failed the entry test and joined the 41st Regiment of Foot in the British Army, rising to the rank of Corporal. In 1849, he bought a discharge and emigrated to the United States with two brothers and a sister, settling in Arkansas.

Cleburne in battle
By 1860, Cleburne was a naturalized citizen and a practicing lawyer who was very popular with local residents; he was wounded in a debate in 1856, and he killed one of his attackers. He did not care for slavery, but in 1861, during the American Civil War, he remained loyal to the southerners, who had taken him in as one of their people and had been brothers to him. In March 1862 he was made a Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army and suffered a face wound at the Battle of Perryville in Kentucky. In December he was made a Major-General, and fought in the major campaigns in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, earning the nickname "Stonewall of the West".
When the war turned against the Confederate States in 1864, he proposed the liberation of the slaves, comparing their emancipation's results to the Spartan liberation of slaves and the resulting victory in the Greco-Persian Wars and the liberation of Ottoman slaves after the Battle of Lepanto. In the Battle of Franklin in later 1864, he served as a general under John Bell Hood, and he led a charge. His horse was shot from under him and he fought on foot behind Union lines, only to be shot in the heart. When his men found his body, it had been looted of everything of value.