[Henry Rootes]. American soldier, born at Athens, GA, on the 24th of June 1820; studied at Princeton and afterward at Yale, where be graduated; after being admitted to the bar he practiced law in his own state; served with distinction as colonel in the Mexican War. In 1854 he was appointed chargé d’affaires at Vienna, Austria, and afterward was raised to the rank of minister resident at the same court, a position which he held until 1858. During the Civil War he served as brigadier-general in the Confederate army until captured and taken to Johnson’s Island, where he remained till the close of the war. In 1885–86 he was United States minister to Mexico. He wrote Tallulah, and Other Poems (1850), which met with popular favor. He died at Savannah, GA, on the 23rd of May 1898.
