John Herbert Kelly (1841–1864)

John Herbert Kelly, nicknamed “The Boy General of the Confederacy,” was a native of Alabama who commanded three different Arkansas Confederate units during the Civil War. He was promoted for gallantry to brigadier general and assigned to command a cavalry brigade; he was considered the youngest Confederate general at the time.  

John H. Kelly was born at Carrolton in Pickens County, Alabama, on March 31, 1841, to aspiring attorney Isham Harrison Kelly and Elizabeth Herbert Kelly. His father became ill and died in 1844, followed by his mother two years later. He and his brother, Rollin Herbert Kelly, were then raised by their grandmother, Mrs. J. R. Hawthorn. 

With the help of influential relatives, Kelly received admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, at the age of seventeen. He entered as a cadet on July 1, 1857. Some notable classmates—George Armstrong Custer, Emory Upton, and fellow Alabamian John Pelham—were all members of the Class of 1861. 

After the secession of South Carolina, Kelly resigned just prior to graduation from the academy and tendered his services to the Confederacy. He was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery before being promoted to captain and assigned to duty as assistant adjutant general on the staff of General William Hardee. He accompanied General Hardee when assigned to command Confederate forces in northeastern Arkansas, and at the organization of Colonel James H. McCarver’s Fourteenth Arkansas Infantry, Kelly was promoted to major and assigned to that regiment. 

When Hardee’s forces were transferred to Kentucky and became part of General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Central Kentucky, Hardee detached the four best armed companies of the Fourteenth Arkansas and placed them under the command of Major Kelly; they were designated as the Ninth Arkansas Infantry Battalion. After the retreat from Kentucky and concentration of the Army of the Mississippi near Corinth, Mississippi, later that spring, Kelly and his Ninth Arkansas Battalion were placed in Brigadier General S. A. M. Wood’s brigade of Hardee’s Corps and fought at the April 6–7, 1862, Battle of Shiloh. 

Confederate forces withdrew to Corinth after Shiloh and underwent an army-wide reorganization in May 1862. As a result of casualties in all units, Kelly’s Ninth Arkansas Battalion was consolidated into the Eighth Arkansas Infantry, along with the Seventh Arkansas Battalion. At regimental elections, Major Kelly was chosen to lead the Eighth Arkansas and promoted to colonel. After the siege of Corinth on April 29–May 30, Colonel Kelly led his regiment during the 1862 Kentucky Campaign, where they fought in the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, on October 4, 1862, reassigned to St. John R. Liddell’s Arkansas brigade of Hardee’s Corps. 

Kelly and the Eighth Arkansas next fought at the December 31, 1862, Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he received a slight wound in the arm. He led his troops through the Tullahoma Campaign and Battle of Liberty Gap, Tennessee, on June 25, 1863, followed by the bloody Battle of Chickamauga on September 19–20, 1863. Here, Kelly was placed in command of a brigade in Brigadier General William Preston’s Division. During the struggle for the high ground, Kelly had his horse shot from under him, and his display of gallantry was witnessed by his superiors. Generals Patrick Cleburne, Liddell, and Preston all recommended his promotion to brigadier general, which he received on November 16, 1863. He was assigned to command a brigade and later a division in General Joseph Wheeler’s Cavalry Corps during the battles of the Atlanta Campaign.  

Kelly was killed during a raid into Tennessee near Franklin on September 4, 1864, at the age of twenty-three. His remains were reburied in 1866 in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama. 

For additional information:
Masters, Daniel A. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862–January 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2025. 

Willis, James. Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater. Dayton, OH: Morningside Press, 1998.  

Anthony Rushing
Benton, Arkansas