Lucius Featherston (1834–1863)

Confederate colonel Lucius Featherston, an attorney at Clarendon (Monroe County), served during the Civil War as a company and regimental commander of the Fifth Arkansas Infantry. Featherston led his regiment through four battles before being killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, on September 19, 1863. He was the nephew of Brigadier General W. H. Featherston. 

Lucius Featherston was born in 1834 in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, the second of four sons of Edward Featherston and Rebecca Wilcox Alston Featherston. Little information exists on his early years except that he graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1854 with a degree in law. By 1860, he had moved to Clarendon on the White River and established a law practice. He never married. 

At the outbreak of war and the secession of Arkansas, Featherston enlisted in June 1861 and was elected captain of Company K, Fifth Arkansas Infantry, State Troops. Sent to northeastern Arkansas, the regiment was transferred to Confederate service in July and later ordered to Bowling Green, Kentucky, as part of General William Hardee’s command of General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Central Kentucky. During the April 6–7 Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, the Fifth Arkansas did not take an active combat role, being ordered to picket the approaches into Corinth, Mississippi. 

At the army-wide reorganization in May 1862, Featherston was elected colonel to lead the Fifth Arkansas. By the end of the summer, Featherston’s regiment and the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry were consolidated and, as part of Brigadier General St. John Liddell’s Arkansas brigade, participated in the Kentucky Campaign, seeing heavy action at the October 4, 1862, Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. During this engagement, at least three flags were captured by Liddell’s Brigade, and Colonel Featherston was afterward sent to Arkansas on recruiting duty and to hand-deliver one of these flags to Governor Harris Flanagin as a gift from Major General Hardee. On December 17, 1862, in a public ceremony, Featherston gave the standard and flag, most likely that of the Twenty-Second Indiana, to Flanagin with an eloquent speech accompanying the presentation. A soldier witnessing the episode spoke of the bravery and outstanding service of Featherston when he stated, “No officer from this State has made more character or done more to uphold the honor and glory of Arkansas upon the battlefield than Col. Featherston. I predict for Col. F. a brilliant future.” 

Due to heavy losses, the Fifth and Thirteenth Arkansas were permanently consolidated, and Featherston returned in time to lead his combined regiment in the December 31, 1862, Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Taking part in some of the heaviest fighting on the Confederate left flank, Featherston and the Fifth/Thirteenth Arkansas played a major role along with other Arkansas regiments in turning the Union right flank on that portion of the battlefield. However, this was not without cost, as Featherston lost roughly forty-two percent of the 336 men present. 

During the Tullahoma Campaign in Tennessee in the summer of 1863, Featherston and the Fifth/Thirteenth Arkansas, as part of Liddell’s Brigade of Major General Patrick Cleburne’s Division, fought at the Battle of Liberty Gap on June 25, 1863, attempting to slow Union advances in Middle Tennessee. In September, Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg attacked General William Rosecrans’s Union forces along Chickamauga Creek during the September 19–20 Battle of Chickamauga. Leading his men in frontal assaults, Colonel Featherston received a wound from a minie ball to his right hip that proved fatal; he died in a field hospital that evening. His was buried on the battlefield with all other Confederate dead, but he is thought to have been reinterred later at the Confederate Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia. 

For additional information:
Barnhill, Floyd R., and Calvin L. Collier. The Fighting Fifth: Pat Cleburne’s Cutting Edge: The Fifth Arkansas Infantry Regiment, C.S.A. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. 

King, Major Michael R., USMC. “Brigadier General St. Joh R. Liddell’s Division at Chickamauga: The Study of a Division’s Performance in Battle.” MMAS thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1997. Online at https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA331812.pdf (accessed March 27, 2025).  

Masters, Daniel A. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862–January 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2025. 

Sanders, Stuart W. “‘Literally Covered with Dead and Dying’: Leonidas Polk and the Battle of Perryville.” American Battlefield Trust, November 7, 2023. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/literally-covered-dead-and-dying (accessed March 27, 2025). 

Willis, James. Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater. Dayton: Morningside Press, 1998. 

Anthony Rushing
Benton, Arkansas