from the University of North Carolina, and served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, taking part in the Battle of the Wilderness, the Siege of Petersburg, and the defense of Richmond.
[1] At the close of the war he went to California and became teacher of Latin and Greek in the Pacific Methodist College in Vacaville.
He served for a time as deputy state superintendent of schools and was later elected president of the college, which had removed to Santa Cruz, California, remaining in that office for five years.
There he entered into the private practice of law until 1887, when he was elected as a Democrat to a Nevada state district court judgeship.
Fitzgerald "attained national prominency in 1896, when he espoused the silver cause and wrote a book on the money question".