Robert Charles Tyler (1833-16 April 1865) was a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Killed at West Point in Georgia in 1865, Tyler was the last general officer to be killed in the war.
Biography[]
Robert Charles Tyler was born near Memphis, Tennessee in 1833, and his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland while he was a child. He served under William Walker during his expedition to Nicaragua in 1856-57, and he also helped in organizing the Knights of the Golden Circle in the years leading up to the American Civil War. He joined the Confederate States Army when the war broke out in 1861, and he became a colonel before the year's end, fighting in Virginia. Tyler was thrice unhorsed and once wounded at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, and he led a consolidated Tennessee regiment under Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863. He was shot in the left leg during the Chattanooga campaign, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General in February 1864. Tyler was given command of Fort Tyler in West Point, Georgia, gathering stragglers, deserters, and dismounted cavalrymen and creating a small earthwork with three cannon. On 16 April 1865, Oscar Hugh La Grange's Union army attacked the earthworks, and Tyler was shot dead by a sniper, being the last general to be killed in the war.