General Drayton graduated at the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1828, in the class of Jefferson Davis, and was in the service as second lieutenant of the Sixth Infantry until his resignation in 1836. Subsequently, he was occupied as a civil engineer at Charleston, Louisville, and Cincinnati for two years, then becoming a planter in St. Luke's Parrish. He served as captain of South Carolina militia five years and was a member of the board of ordnance of the State, a State Senator 1853-1861, and president of the Charleston and Savannah railroad 1853-1856. On September 25, 1861, he was commissioned brigadier-general. Provisional Army of the Confederate States, and was assigned to the command of the Third Military District of the State. He was in command of the Confederate forces during the bombardment and capture of Forts Walker and Beauregard at Port Royal entrance in November, 1861, on which occasion his brother, Captain Percival Drayton, commanded the steamer Pocahontas, one of the Federal vessels under Admiral Dupont. He was in charge of the Fifth Military District, under Pemberton, in the same region, with headquarters at Hardeeville. During the Second Manassas and Maryland campaigns he commanded a brigade composed of the Fifteenth South Carolina, and two Georgia regiments, which with Toombs' Georgia brigade, constituted the division of D. R. Jones, Longstreet's corps, and participated in the battles of Thoroughfare Gap and Second Manassas, South Mountain and Sharpsburg. In August, 1863, he was ordered to report to General T. H. Holmes at Little Rock, Arkansas, and was there assigned to command of a brigade of Sterling Price's division, consisting of Missouri and Arkansas troops. From the beginning of 1864, he was in command of this division in Arkansas, until General Kirby Smith relived Holmes, when he was transferred to the command of the West sub-district of Mexico. He was also in command of the Texas Calvary division composed of the brigades of Slaughter and H. E. McCullough. In the spring of 1865, he was a member of the board of inquiry demanded by General Price after his Missouri expedition. After the close of hostilities, General Drayton farmed in Dooly County, Georgia until 1871. Afterward, he was an insurance agent, and in 1878 removed to Charlotte, North Carolina as president of the South Carolina Immigration Society. He died at Florence, South Carolina on February 18, 1891, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, which is on 6th Street near I-85 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
RIN: MH:N767