Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox

Wilcox graduated 54th in a class of 59 at West Point in 1846, a class that included George McClellan and Thomas Jackson. In 1848 he was a groomsman at Ulysses S. Grant's wedding. He returned to West Point as assistant instructor of tactics from 1852, and his manual on rifles and rifle firing became the standard text; he also translated a work on Austrian infantry drill. In New Mexico Territory in 1861 he learned that Tennessee had seceded, resigned from the U.S. Army, and took a commission in the Confederate Army.

What the plaque says

Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox West Point graduate, Seminole and Mexican Indian Wars soldier, instructor of infantry tactics at West Point, Major General in the Confederate Army, and chief of the Railroad Division of the General Land Office under President Grover Cleveland. Wilcox was born in Waynesboro, North Carolina in 1824. He settled in Tipton County in 1826 and lived in Covington until 1842. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1890, and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery there.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Alex Haley House Museum — 8.7 mi
  The 1919 bungalow in Henning where Alex Haley heard the family stories behind Roots, now a state historic site and museum with his grave in the front yard.
• Fort Pillow State Historic Park — 12 mi
  A National Historic Landmark on the Chickasaw Bluffs where, on April 12, 1864, Confederate troops massacred Black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender.
• Hampson Archeological Museum State Park — 22 mi
  A free state museum on the town square in Wilson that holds the Nodena collection, one of the best Late Mississippian pottery collections known, from a palisaded village on the Mississippi occupied from A.D. 1400 to 1650.
• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 23 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• Frances Boyd Calhoun — 0.3 mi
• Charles B. Simonton — 0.4 mi
• Randolph — 11 mi
• Bobby Blue Bland (1930-2013) — 15 mi