Richard Heron Anderson

Anderson, Richard Heron (1821-79) Confederate general, born near Statesburg, South Carolina. Anderson served in the U.S. Army on the frontier, and in the Mexican War (1846-48). At the start of the Civil War, family pressure led Anderson to resign his Federal commission and accept a commission as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Regular Regiment, although he was personally opposed to slavery. During the Confederate retreat from Yorktown, Anderson checked the Union pursuit at the battle of Williamsburg (1862); his younger brother Mackenzie died in that battle. After Gen. James Longstreet was severely wounded in the battle of the Wilderness (1864), Maj. Gen. Anderson was placed in temporary command of the 1st Corps until Longstreet's return in that fall. His rapid march of the corps from the Wilderness battlefield to Spotsylvania Court House on the night of May 7 prevented the Union army from cutting Gen. Robert E. Lee's army off from Richmond.

After the war, Anderson tried to work his family's plantation but failed. He went to work as a laborer for the South Carolina railroad and lived in a boardinghouse.

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