On the second day of July 1863, Colonel William C. Oates led the 15th Alabama Infantry up the rocky, wooded slopes of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. The Confederate attack failed. His younger brother, Lieutenant John Oates, was killed on that hillside.
William Oates survived, but the memory of that afternoon never left him. For the rest of his life, he believed that one more Confederate regiment on that ground would have seized the position and changed the outcome of the battle, and perhaps the war itself. Oates was born in Alabama on November 13, 1835, into a world far removed from the battlefields he would later know. Before the war, he worked as a teacher, a painter, and a carpenter.
He had a reputation for an aggressive temper. That temper drove him into trouble when he fractured a man’s skull in a brawl. Rather than face the consequences, Oates fled to Florida and drifted through Florida, Louisiana, and Texas before eventually returning to Alabama. In 1858, he began studying law, and he eventually established a legal practice with his younger brother, John.
When the Civil War broke out, Oates joined the ranks of the 15th Alabama Infantry as captain of Company G. His first significant action came during the Valley Campaign under Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. At the Battle of Fort Royal on May 23, 1862, the regiment clashed with Union forces and suffered only minimal casualties. By early 1863, Oates had risen to the rank of colonel and commanded the regiment.
The 15th Alabama gained its lasting notoriety at Gettysburg. On July 2, 1863, the regiment was part of a Confederate assault aimed at the Union left flank. The attack fell against Little Round Top, a rocky hill held by Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Infantry. The fighting was desperate and close.
Confederate forces repeatedly charged the Union line, and the 20th Maine held its ground, eventually launching a counterattack that drove the Confederates back down the slope. The attack failed, and among the dead was Lieutenant John Oates. The loss of his brother marked William Oates for the rest of his life. After the defeat at Gettysburg, Oates and the 15th Alabama were transferred to the Western Theater under General James Longstreet.
They participated in the Battle of Chattanooga. During the siege of Chattanooga, Oates commanded troops that opposed a Union crossing of the Tennessee River at Brown’s Ferry. His force was unsupported, and he was forced to withdraw under pressure. Following his brief time in the West, Oates returned to Virginia, where he faced Union General Ulysses S.
Grant’s Overland Campaign. The regiment saw heavy fighting in a series of brutal battles, including the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. The war had already taken a heavy toll on the men who served under him, but Oates continued to lead. In July 1864, Oates was transferred to the 48th Alabama Infantry, still holding the rank of colonel.
On October 16, 1864, during his twenty-seventh battle of the war, he was severely wounded. The wound cost him his right arm. It was the sixth time he had been wounded during the conflict. Despite the loss of his arm, Oates returned to the army and resumed command of the 48th Alabama Infantry, leading the regiment until General Robert E.
Lee surrendered at Appomattox. After the war, Oates returned home to Alabama and turned to politics. In 1880, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served for years. The peak of his political career came in 1894, when he was elected the 29th governor of Alabama.
He held the office for two years, until 1896. His military career reached its final height in 1898, when President William McKinley appointed him brigadier general during the Spanish-American War. By then, Oates was a veteran of dozens of battles, a man who had lost an arm and a brother to the war that defined his generation. William C.
Oates lived to see the turn of the century. He died on September 9, 1910, at the age of seventy-four, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama. His legacy was bound to the hillside at Gettysburg, where the 15th Alabama made its name, and where his brother fell.