General Phillip Dale Roddey
A Veteran of the Civil War
The Raider of Northern Alabama
Roddey was born in Molton, Lawrence County, Alabama, to Philip and Sarah Roddey. His father, a saddler, had moved his family to Alabama from eastern Tennessee. Philip D. Roddey's birth year is given as 1826 on his tombstone. However, he must have been a few years older, as his father was shot and killed in an altercation in Moulton in 1824. Roddey's widowed mother raised her 3 children as best she could, but Roddey received little formal education. He was a tailor in Moulton before he was appointed sheriff of Lawrence County in 1846, serving at least until 1852. He then purchased a steamboat, which he ran on the Tennessee River. He married Margaret A. McGaughey and had a son and a daughter.
When the Civil War began, Roddey, who had not supported secession, sought to remain out of it. After the fall of Fort Henry in Tennessee Union gunboats were able to sail as far as Florence, Alabama where the shallows at Muscle Shoals stopped them. Rather than allow his steamboat to be seized and used by the Union, Roddey burned her.
In 1861 he raised a cavalry company known as the Tishomingo Rangers, a unit made up of Mississippians and Alabamans. These men served as excellent scouts in the Western theater, providing intelligence prior to the Shiloh campaign and, acting as General Braxton Bragg's personal escort during the Battle of Shiloh.
He served under Brigadier General James R. Chalmers during the retreat to Corinth, Mississippi, was active in the Iuka and Corinth campaigns in autumn 1862, and in December won commission as Colonel of the 4th Alabama Infantry. Commanding the post at Tuscumbia, Alabama, with a force of 1,400 men in winter 1862 to 1863, he confronted the Union cavalry of Colonel Abel D. Streight in April, and under Brigadier General Nathan B. Forrest pursued the Federal raider. On August 3, 1863, he won promotion to Brigadier General and, in Brigadier General William T. Martin's division, fought through the Battle of Chickamauga and the Chattanooga Campaign as a part of Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler's cavalry. Next attached to Forrest's command, he distinguished himself in the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads and the Franklin and Nashville Campaign, and in the February 1865 reorganization of Forrest's cavalry, during which several officers were dismissed for want of appropriate commands, he was retained as a brigade leader. He fought through Forrest's last campaign in Alabama, joined in the retreat from Selma, and surrendered with his men May 1865. Throughout the war he won recognition as a raider in northern Alabama and along the line of the Tennessee River. After the war he moved to New York City and, entered the business world. Later an investor in a new pump design, he traveled to Britain to negotiate the sale of its patent and died of uremia in London. His body was returned to Tuscaloosa for burial.
To locate the final, solve
33 12.0AB
87 34.6CD
A = Subtract two from the third digit in the year of his death.
B = Subtract 2 from the fourth (and likely incorrect) digit in the year of his birth.
C = The first digit in the date of his death.
D = Add 2 to the fourth digit in the year he raised the Tishomingo Rangers.