Promoted to brigadier on the battlefield at Seven Pines by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in person, he fought in the Seven Days Battles and at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, being wounded in each of these engagements.

He spent his youth on the farm, hunting, fishing, and riding, before becoming a teenaged clerk in the Tarboro store owned by his older brother, Robert.

[3] He served later in the 1st Dragoons (heavy cavalry), where he demonstrated personal bravery in Washington Territory, fighting in the Indian Wars.

Tried in combat successfully in the Battle of Seven Pines in June 1862, he was promoted to brigadier general and command of a brigade of North Carolinians in Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill's Light Division.

Hill was wounded in Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's famous march and attack on the flank of the Union XI Corps; Pender assumed command of the division.

On the following day, Pender was wounded in the arm yet again, this time a minor injury from a spent bullet that had killed an officer who stood in front of him.

Lee wrote to Jefferson Davis, "Pender is an excellent officer, attentive, industrious and brave; has been conspicuous in every battle, and, I believe, wounded in almost all of them.

Uncharacteristically for the normally aggressive Pender, he did not immediately charge in to assist Heth, but took up positions on Herr Ridge and awaited developments.

[6]On this day (July 2, 1863), also, the Confederacy lost the invaluable services of Major General W. D. Pender, wounded by a shell, and since dead.

No man fell during this bloody battle of Gettysburg more regretted than he, nor around whose youthful brow were clustered brighter rays of glory.

During World War II, the United States Navy commissioned a Liberty Ship, the SS William D. Pender, in honor of the fallen general.