Wesley Parker Winans
Wesley Parker Winans was born on October 19, 1825, in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, to William Winans and Martha DuBose. His father was a Methodist minister and plantation owner who owned at least 35 enslaved laborers by 1850. He enrolled at Centenary College in Brandon Springs, Mississippi, around 1841, and he graduated five years later at the top of his class. His parents hoped he would become “as bright, as profound, as ripe a scholar as ever was sent forth by the Wesleyan, Transylvania or any other Institution in our Country.” They reminded him, however, to “secure an abiding religious influence and to establish principles of correct moral action.”
After Winans graduated, he served as overseer on his father’s plantation. Then, in the late 1840s, he travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and began reading law. He eventually earned admission to the Louisiana bar and established a legal practice in De Soto Parish. He married Jane Harper on March 3, 1851, and they had at least four children: Kate, born in June 1852; Lelia, born around 1858; Missouri, born around 1858; and Alice, born around 1860.
During the secession crisis, he supported immediate secession. As he explained in January 1861, he was “unwilling for the old unjust & unequal Union to continue.” He hoped the “8 cotton, homogenius plantation states [would] form a union among themselves, obliterate state soverignty from among them & form a consolidated” government. He added that the “border states are all more or less abolitionized…They are not with us heart & soul. their very existence is not wraped up in the institution [of slavery] & if republicanism did gradualy effect negroe emancipation, they would not be injured.”
In February 1861, he received a commission as a 1st lieutenant in the Shreveport Sentinels, and he became captain of the Caddo Sportsmen soon afterward. Then, on November 1, 1861, he received a commission as a captain in Company G of the 19th Louisiana Infantry. He received a steady series of promotions: to major, then lieutenant colonel, and finally to colonel. He took part in the Battle of Shiloh, the siege of Jackson, and the Battle of Chickamauga. He died in the Battle of Missionary Ridge on November 25, 1863.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (1508) | Winans, Wesley Parker | 1825-10-19 | 1863-11-25 |
- Conflict Side: Confederacy
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: Captain
- Rank out: Colonel
- Rank highest: Colonel
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 5
- (5364) [writer] ~ Wesley P. Winans to Nolan S. Dickson and Ann E. Dickson, 11 October 1863
- (5365) [writer] ~ Wesley P. Winans to Ann E. Dickson et al., 29 September 1862
- (5366) [writer] ~ Wesley P. Winans to Ann E. Dickson, 26 March 1862
- (5367) [writer] ~ Wesley P. Winans to Nolan S. Dickson, 22 December 1861
- (5368) [writer] ~ Wesley P. Winans to Nolan S. Dickson, 5 January 1861
People - Records: 4
- (1509) Dickson, Nolan S. is the [sibling-in-law of] (1508) Winans, Wesley Parker
- (1510) Dickson, Ann Eliza is the [sibling of] (1508) Winans, Wesley Parker
- (1511) Winans, Jane B. is the [wife of] (1508) Winans, Wesley Parker
- (1512) Wall, Mary Susannah is the [sibling of] (1508) Winans, Wesley Parker
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 1
- (488) [officer] [G] ~ 19th Louisiana Infantry
SOURCES
Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, available from Ancestry.com; Ray Holder, “Col. Wesley Parker Winans, C.S.A.: A Character Profile,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 30, no. 3 (Summer 1989), 279-302; Wesley P. Winans to Nolan S. Dickson, 5 January 1861, DL0880.001, Nau Collection
