A Palmetto boy

"At nineteen James Tillman had completed secondary school and had intentions to pursue a teaching career when the outbreak of the Civil War changed his priorities. Tillman enlisted with the Twenty-fourth South Carolina Volunteer Infantry of Edgefield and attained the rank of captain during the war. He was initially stationed along the coastal defenses south of Charleston and fought in both battles of Secessionville in 1862. He was wounded at Chickamauga in 1863, and his mother and brother Ben brought him home to recover. Tillman returned to duty and spent much of 1864 under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston in Tennessee and North Carolina, retreating from General Sherman's advance. At the war's end, Tillman returned home crestfallen and witnessed the rough onset of Reconstruction, writing in his diaries about those he saw as descending on South Carolina to profit from the defeated South. In June 1866, a little more than a year after his discharge, he died of complications from his combat wounds."--Publisher.