Thomas Hill Watts Sr. (January 3, 1819September 16, 1892) was the 18th Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama from 1863 to 1865, during the Civil War. Early life Watts was born at Pine Flat in the Alabama Territory on January 3, 1819, the oldest of twelve children born to John Hughes Watts and Prudence Hill, who had moved from Georgia to find the better lands of the frontier. He was of English and Welsh ancestry. Prepared for college at the Airy Mount Academy in Dallas County, Watts graduated with honors from the University of Virginia in 1840. The next year, he passed the bar examination and began practicing law in Greenville. In 1848 he moved his lucrative law practice to Montgomery. He also became a successful planter, enslaving 179 people in 1860. Political career Politically, Watts adopted a pro-Union stance during the 1850s. Still, on the eve of the Civil War, he played an important role in the declared secession of Alabama and was one of the signers of the secession ordinance. Defeated by John Gill Shorter in an 1861 bid for governor, Watts organized the 17th Regiment Alabama Infantry and led it at Pensacola and Corinth, but resigned as its colonel to become the Confederacy's attorney general in President Jefferson Davis' cabinet. Governor of Alabama In 1863 Watts was elected Governor of Alabama. Assuming office on December 1, he began an eighteen-month governorship when impressment, tax-in-kind, and other severe wartime economic measures had become most odious. Worthless Confederate money, lack of credit possibilities, irregular supplies of goods, impressment efforts that often amounted to pillage and plunder, and harsh (and unevenly applied) taxes-in-kind levied on agriculture convinced many people that they preferred the "Old Union" to the "new despotism". The desire to raise troops for the Confederate States Army became more urgent. There was insurmountable resistance to appeals to the male population to form volunteer companies and appeals to the state legislature to reorganize the awkward two-class militia. Some critics of Watts thought he should concentrate on forcing deserters back into military service. The legislature's failure to act meant that the state, and the Confederacy, would not have an effective militia in the final critical months of the war. Furthermore, the Confederate Conscription Act of February 17, 1864, inaugurated a policy of conscription that inevitably led to conflict between the state and the Confederacy. By September 1864, another turbulent