Editing Howell Cobb (section)

===American Civil War===
{{Main|American Civil War|Georgia in the American Civil War}}

[[File:General Howell Cobb, C.S.A. (9241073518).jpg|thumb|left|General Howell Cobb]]

Cobb joined the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate army]] and was commissioned as [[Colonel (United States)|colonel]] of the 16th Georgia Infantry. He was appointed a [[Brigadier general (United States)|brigadier general]] on February 13, 1862, and assigned command of a [[brigade]] in what became the [[Army of Northern Virginia]]. Between February and June 1862, he represented the Confederate authorities in negotiations with Union officers for an agreement on the exchange of [[prisoner of war|prisoners of war]]. His efforts in these discussions contributed to the [[Dix-Hill Cartel]] accord reached in July 1862.<ref>''Official Records,'' Series II, Vol. 3, pp. 338–340, 812–813, Vol. 4, pp. 31–32, 48.</ref>

Cobb saw combat during the [[Peninsula Campaign]] and the [[Seven Days Battles]]. Cobb's brigade played a key role in the fighting during the [[Battle of South Mountain]], especially at [[Crampton's Gap]], where it arrived at a critical time to delay a Union advance through the gap, but at a bloody cost. His men also fought at the subsequent [[Battle of Antietam]].

In October 1862, Cobb was detached from the [[Army of Northern Virginia]] and sent to the District of Middle Florida. He was promoted to [[Major general (United States)|major general]] on September 9, 1863, and placed in command of the District of Georgia and Florida. He suggested the construction of a [[prisoner-of-war camp]] in southern Georgia, a location thought to be safe from Union incursions. This idea led to the creation of the infamous [[Andersonville prison]].

When [[William T. Sherman]]'s armies entered Georgia during the 1864 [[Atlanta Campaign]] and subsequent [[Sherman's March to the Sea|March to the Sea]], Cobb commanded the Georgia Reserve Corps as a general. In the spring of 1865, with the Confederacy clearly waning, he and his troops were sent to [[Columbus, Georgia]] to help oppose [[Wilson's Raid]]. He led the hopeless [[Confederate States Army|Confederate]] resistance in the [[Battle of Columbus, Georgia]] on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865.

During Sherman's March to the Sea, the army camped one night near Cobb's plantation.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Seibert|first1=David|title=Howell Cobb Plantation|url=http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/historical_markers/county/baldwin/howell-cobb-plantation|website=GeorgiaInfo: an Online Georgia Almanac|publisher=Digital Library of Georgia|access-date=November 4, 2016}}</ref> When Sherman discovered that the house he planned to stay in for the night belonged to Cobb, whom Sherman described in his ''Memoirs'' as "one of the leading rebels of the South, then a general in the Southern army," he dined in Cobb's slave quarters,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GGbkHUePtVwC&q=%22Let+Christians+use+all+their+influence+to+have+justice+done+to+the%22&pg=PA211|title=The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny|date=1999|publisher=The Free Press|location=New York City|first=Victor Davis|last=Hanson|page=211|isbn=9780684845029|author-link=Victor Davis Hanson|access-date=March 8, 2016}}</ref> confiscated Cobb's property and burned the plantation,<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mitchell|first1=Robert B.|date=November 2014|title=Terrible beyond endurance|url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fth&AN=97505154&site=eds-live&scope=site|journal=America's Civil War|volume=27|issue=5|page=37|access-date=June 14, 2016}}</ref> instructing his subordinates to "spare nothing."<ref>{{cite web | title = Memoirs, ch.21 | publisher = William Tecumseh Sherman | url = http://www.sonofthesouth.net/union-generals/sherman/memoirs/general-sherman-march-sea.htm | access-date = May 20, 2010 }}</ref>

In the closing days of the war, Cobb fruitlessly opposed General [[Robert E. Lee]]'s eleventh hour proposal to enlist slaves into the Confederate Army. Fearing that such a move would completely discredit the Confederacy's fundamental justification of slavery, that black people were inferior, he said, "You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."<ref>''Encyclopædia Britannica''</ref>

Cobb surrendered to the U.S. at [[Macon, Georgia]] on April 20, 1865.