Alexander Sackett Greenlee

2013. Alexander Sacket Greenlee, 1834–, of Mason, Tenn., son of Samuel Greenlee and (782) Minerva K. Sackett, was married, May 5, 1857, to Elizabeth Glass, the daughter of Hon. Frank P. Glass and Margaret Dyzart. His father being a wealthy planter and the owner of many slaves, he grew toward manhood with the inbred idea that with such an education as would make of him a fit associate for cultured Southern gentlemen of leisure, he would be amply fitted for the life of pleasure and social prominence it would surely be his to enjoy. When he was about 16 years of age, his father died, and about a year later his mother too deceased. His guardian, it would appear, assumed no responsibility beyond caring for his ward's interest in the estate of his parents, until he should reach his majority. When that time arrived, Alexander Sacket Greenlee, as previously stated, married, and when the long threatened Civil war was at last inaugurated by the bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, he was the father of two bright boys, and, as he now (1907) puts it, "eating with a gold spoon." But ere long he was in the Confederate army, serving in the ranks of the 6th North Carolina Regiment of Gen. Hoke's Brigade. He participated in many of the battles about Petersburgh and Richmond, at Lynchburgh, and at Plymouth, N. C. He was with Earley in the Valley and spent many a weary night in the trenches about the Confederate capital. At one of the battles in which he participated, he was captured by Northern troops and sent a prisoner of war to Camp Douglas, near Chicago, Ill. While there he found means of communicating with his mother's brothers, who interested themselves in his behalf, securing for him many privileges and comforts until he was exchanged and returned to duty with his regiment. In a letter dated Jan. 1, 1907, he writes: "When I was a prisoner Uncles Alexander and George Sackett were very kind and good to me." After the war was over he returned to his home, resolved to rebuild his shattered fortune, but does not appear to have succeeded to any great extent in that undertaking. In another letter, of recent date, he writes of his losses and checkered experience in a rather pathetic strain, but grows indignant when he mentions the "Reign of the Carpetbaggers," who ate up what was left of his substance, and to live he was, with many others, compelled to move to the State of Texas, where he remained until his children had grown up and established homes of their own. Then he came to Western Tennessee, where, broken in health, he expects to make the best of conditions, the reverse of those he enjoyed in his boyhood days, until the end comes and the sorrows and disappointments of this life are ended.