Ambrose R. Wright

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Ambrose R. Wright

Ambrose Ransom Wright (April 26, 1826 – December 21, 1872) was a lawyer, Georgia politician, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War.

Wright, known by the nickname "Rans", was born in Louisville, Georgia. He read law under the tutelage of Governor and Senator Herschel V. Johnson, who later became his brother-in-law, and was admitted to the bar. He became prominent politically, although he ran unsuccessfully for the Georgia legislature and for the United States Congress. He was a presidential elector for Millard Fillmore in 1856, a supporter of Bell and Everett in 1860, and a Georgia commissioner to Maryland in 1861.

At the start of the Civil War, Wright enlisted as a private in Georgia Militia, but he was commissioned colonel of the 3rd Georgia Infantry on May 18, 1861, and served in North Carolina and Georgia until the summer of 1862. He was promoted to brigadier general on June 3, 1862 and sent to Virginia. Wright's Georgians made a distinguished record in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Seven Days Battles to the Siege of Petersburg. He was badly wounded at the Battle of Antietam in 1862 and at Chancellorsville in 1863. At the Battle of Gettysburg, Wright's brigade, part of Richard H. Anderson's division of A.P. Hill's Corps, had the distinction of penetrating the farthest into the Union defenses on Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863. As of November 26, 1864, Wright was named major general on a temporary commission (which was not made permanent) and ordered to Georgia, where he exercised command until the end of the war.

In 1863, Wright had been elected to the Georgia state senate and president of that body in absentia. Resuming his law practice after the termination of hostilities, he purchased the Augusta Chronicle & Sentinel newspaper in 1866, and, in 1871, was defeated for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. The following year, General Wright was a delegate to both the state and national Democratic conventions and was elected to the United States House of Representatives, but died at Augusta, Georgia, before taking his seat. At a special election to fill the vacancy, Alexander Stephens was elected his successor. General Wright is buried in City Cemetery, Augusta.