The Civil War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman

The Civil War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman

Lt. Robert T. Hubard, Jr.

EDITED BY THOMAS P. NANZIG

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2007

Thomas P. Nanzig

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Minion

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library

Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hubard, Robert Thruston, 1839–1921.

The Civil War memoirs of a Virginia cavalryman : Lt. Robert T. Hubard, Jr. / edited by

Thomas P. Nanzig.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1530-6 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8173-1530-6

1. Hubard, Robert Thruston, 1839–1921. 2. Confederate States of America. Army. Virginia Cavalry Regiment, 3rd. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Cavalry operations. 4. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives. 5. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives, Confederate. 6. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 7. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 8. Soldiers—Virginia—Biography. I. Nanzig, Thomas P.

II. Title.

E581.63rd .H83 2006

973.7′455092—dc22

[B]

2006014147

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-8198-1 (ebook)

In memory of John E. Divine,

historian, author, teacher, friend

Spur on! spur on! We love the flashing

Of blades that struggle to be free,

‘Tis for our sunny South they’re clashing;

For Household, God and Liberty.

—William W. Blackford, CSA, The Cavalier's Glee

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Editor's Note

Introduction

Year 1: 1861

1. Three Cheers for the Southern Flag!

Correspondence, 1861

Year 2: 1862

2. The Rapid Decline of Martial Spirit

3. Our Little Peninsula World

4. The Enemy Were Worsted

5. A Little Stream of Limestone Water

6. Stuart Set Out on a Raid

Correspondence, 1862

Year 3: 1863

7. One of the Best Cavalry Fights of the War

8. Our Brigade Advanced to Aldie

9. To Gain Kilpatrick's Rear at Buckland

Correspondence, 1863

Year 4: 1864

10. Boys, You Have Made the Most Glorious Fight

11. A Furious Charge Was Made Upon Our Line

12. We're Off for the Valley

13. Tattered Flags Sporting in the Breeze

Correspondence, 1864

Year 5: 1865

14. A Spectacle of Monstrous Absurdity!

Finis

Correspondence, 1865

Postwar Correspondence

Afterword

Appendix A: Eyewitness Accounts of Bagley Shooting Incident

Appendix B: Carter Account of Chambersburg Raid

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Maps

Southeastern Virginia Peninsula—1862

Loudoun Valley, 31 October–5 November 1862

Dumfries Raid, 26–31 December 1862

Hartwood Church Raid, 24–25 February 1863

Aldie, 17 June 1863

Todd's Tavern, 7 May 1864

Wickham's Delaying Action, Near Spotsylvania Court House, 8 May 1864

Yellow Tavern, 11 May 1864

Haw's Shop, 28 May 1864

Trevilian Station, 11 June 1864

Trevilian Station, 12 June 1864

Nance's Shop, 14 June 1864

Reams' Station, 29 June 1864

The Shenandoah Valley, 1864

Front Royal, 16 August 1864

Winchester, 19 September 1864

Milford, 21 September 1864

Mt. Jackson, 22 November 1864

Dinwiddie Court House, 31 March 1865

Five Forks, 1 April 1865

Photographs

Preface

[Robert is] a very gallant fellow and a young man of superior parts. I wish very much that he could get into some favorable position—some place where he could make his mark. He says that placing implicit trust in a Merciful God he is determined to do boldly and manfully whatever falls his lot. This sounds like the true metal, and I know full well I am not deceived.

—William B. Hubard to James L. Hubard, 1 August 1861

Such was the description penned by one brother of another during the American Civil War. Like so many other young Virginians of the era, Robert Thruston Hubard, Jr., was bound to do his duty as he understood the priorities of ancestors: God, family, state, and nation. But adherence to his religious beliefs, his kin, and his Commonwealth of Virginia left no room in Hubard for duty to the Federal government of 1861. As a trooper in a Virginia cavalry regiment, Hubard supported the sovereignty of his state and the dream of a Southern confederacy. Penned in 1865–1866, Hubard's war memoir traces the adventures of this young, well-educated, idealistic Virginian through four years of service as a cavalryman in General J. E. B. Stuart's command.

Robert Hubard was not born to the rugged life of a warrior. His early years were marked by privilege and paternalism. He was born on 9 March 1839, at Rosny, a Hubard plantation in Buckingham County, Virginia, and the roots of his family tree were anchored deep in Virginia's past. His father's family traced their Virginia ancestry through George Washington's Continental army and to the early years of the colony. His mother, Susan Pocahontas Bolling, went the Hubard claim one better as a seventh-generation descendant of John Rolfe and the Algonquian princess, Pocahontas.¹

Moreover, Hubard was born into one of the commonwealth's most successful nineteenth-century planter families. After marrying in 1834, Robert T. Hubard, Sr., and Susan Bolling raised six sons (James, William, Robert, Jr., Edmund, Francis, and Bolling) and one daughter (Louisa) at the Rosny plantation. Susan delivered their eighth child, Philip, in October 1849, but she died within several weeks of his birth, on 17 November 1849. Robert, Sr., thrust into the role of widower-father to eight children under the age of fifteen years, remained at Rosny until 1853, when he moved his family to Chellowe, a property in his wife's family that he had purchased in 1842.

From Chellowe Robert, Sr., manipulated his agricultural pursuits and financial accounts so adeptly that his annual gross income in the 1850s was more than $20,000. According to the 1860 census records and plantation account books, the Hubard estates were valued at more than $300,000. Altogether, Robert Hubard owned two farms in Buckingham County, Rosny and Chellowe, as well as three parcels of farmland in Nelson County, 180 slaves at the several plantations, and numerous investments in railroad, city, and bank stocks and bonds. According to one historian, In 1860, Robert T. Hubard, Sr., had achieved a degree of success uncommon among Virginia planters of that period: he was financially solvent.²

As well as tending to his agricultural and financial interests, Hubard saw to it that each of his children received appropriate educational and vocational opportunities. James and William were sent to colleges as they came of age, and then they returned to Buckingham County to pursue lives as planters. Robert, Jr., was tutored through his early years and then sent with younger brother Edmund to attend Episcopal High School in Alexandria in 1855. Robert finished his college preparatory courses at the Brookland School near Waynesboro in 1857 and then earned a degree at Hampden-Sydney College in nearby Prince Edward County, where he delivered the class valedictory address in 1859. Returning home for the summer, he tutored his younger siblings until enrolling at the University of Virginia law school in the autumn of 1860. Hubard had all but completed his first year of law studies in April 1861, when the crisis at Fort Sumter erupted into war.

Robert Hubard's memoir begins with his final days of law school in Charlottesville. His departure from the university immediately after the outbreak of hostilities found him accompanying his father to Richmond to view the Virginia secession convention. Within days, father and son returned home to Buckingham County, from which place Robert, Jr., left in May 1861 for neighboring Cumberland County to enlist in that county's mounted militia unit, the Light Dragoons. The Cumberland detachment was destined to become Company G, 3rd Virginia Cavalry.

Although he was eventually called on to serve as the regimental adjutant, Robert Hubard's war service was as rugged as that of any trooper. He fought in his full share of battles, narrowly escaped capture on several occasions, and suffered several of the illnesses and infirmities so prevalent among cavalry troopers of the Civil War. Untouched until the last week of the war, Hubard was spared the pain of surrender at Appomattox Court House only because he was struck down by a bullet at the Battle of Five Forks on 1 April 1865.

* * *

Hubard's memoir is straightforward narrative with occasional re-created lines of dialogue. Although it is doubtful that Hubard was able to retain his regimental papers after being assisted from the Five Forks battlefield, he probably used the letters he sent home from the field as his primary source material. He was also able to call on his recollections as the regimental adjutant in order to weave a remarkable four-year tapestry of Fitz Lee's Virginia Cavalry Brigade and its campaign history.

Concentrating primarily on the actions of his own unit, Robert Hubard recorded observations regarding locations, numbers of troops engaged, and subsequent casualties that were, more often than not, very close to the mark. Moreover, Robert Hubard's memoir serves as a window into the world of a young man with dreams, romances, and military aspirations.

His view of military life and its attendant glories was swiftly brought to heel by a long, hot ride to Richmond and subsequent hours on a dusty drill field. Hubard's unit was sent from Richmond to Yorktown for additional training under a young but rising Confederate officer, Major John Bell Hood. Service near Yorktown in the summer of 1861 found Hubard standing dreary hours at picket posts. Although trained by West Point graduates Hood and Colonel Robert Johnston at Yorktown, Hubard experienced a war that was more hit-and-run warfare than the noble combat he had envisioned. Occasional forays from Yorktown toward Fort Monroe and less-frequent ambush-style skirmishes marked Hubard's term of service on the Peninsula. Indeed, the men in the unit did not engage in any significant cavalry action until more than a year after their enlistment.

After the 3rd Virginia Cavalry was added to General J. E. B. (Jeb) Stuart's command in May 1862, Hubard saw plenty of combat and the losses attendant to hard campaigning. But unique to this memoir is that he also bore witness to a gradual decay from within the ranks of his Confederate comrades. According to Hubard, the election of officers in April 1862 was a disgraceful piece of demagogism that…did more than all other things combined to bring about our final defeat. Not only did the men as a general rule select in preference the most amiable men who would indulge them most…but ever after during the war officers feared another re-organization and never dared enforce discipline. As a result of this lack of discipline, Hubard later observed that "men would purposely neglect their horses to break them down and get these [remount] details so that the indifferent soldiers and worthless men, for they were synonymous, were nearly always home or on the road and the good men had all the fighting to do and all the hard drudgery of military life. Yet this would be the case anyway where the discipline could not be enforced as was the case with the Confederate soldiers." Clearly, what Robert Hubard saw in his four years made a signal impression on a young man who had gone to fight a patriot's war, only to find that not everyone served with the same patriotic zeal.

His view of the home front as documented in his surviving war letters shows an active antebellum social life, including the natural concerns of a young man bent on winning a young lady as his life mate. Robert's wartime efforts at long-distance romance, however, were destined for disappointment, but not without young Hubard resolving to learn from his bittersweet experiences. Corresponding with his sister-in-law after a dispiriting romantic rebuff, Hubard took the patriotic high ground as he dealt with his disappointment: This is no time for a man to indulge in personal griefs. I shall, therefore, strive to forget myself in the great struggle and devote my whole time and thoughts to the duties I owe the country. After the war I cannot believe I will be regarded so stupid or worthless as to be unable to find someone worthy of one who will be willing to love and accept my hand.

Romances not excepted, most strongly felt was Robert Hubard's desire to rise to a position of company-level leadership. Although he achieved a modicum of success in being appointed to a lieutenancy as the regimental adjutant, it is clear that Robert Hubard had aspired to greater rank and responsibility. Older brother James, a Virginia Military Institute graduate (1855) and an antebellum militia colonel, was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 44th Virginia Infantry at the outbreak of war. What better role model could there be for Robert? In point of fact, it was Robert, not James, who turned out to be the natural warrior. James was voted out of office in the May 1862 reorganization of the Confederate armies. After being appointed a major in the cavalry six months later, James resigned, allegedly for health reasons. He finished the war as a drafted private in the 4th Virginia Cavalry. According to a documentary study of the Hubard family, James' inability to adjust to military life might well have resulted from the knowledge that he could never live up to the high standards of personal and public conduct which his father set for him. His brother Robert came closer to fitting the particular idealized image of a gentleman soldier his father created.³

But Robert's desire to exercise his leadership talents was, for the most part, a bittersweet experience. His early letters and subsequent reflections reveal the disappointment he felt in being passed over in several regimental elections. Citing the electioneering of one successful candidate and asserting that another competitor used arguments and persuasions which I scorned to use against him, Hubard found the world of regimental politics less gentlemanly than the style to which he had undoubtedly become accustomed at his father's knee. In one 1863 missive to his father, young Robert observed, You seem, as usual, inclined rather to discourage any attempt on my part to obtain promotion. In all kindness and reverence, I would like to ask if it had not occurred to you that your sons are too little inclined naturally to rely on themselves and push themselves, and do we not need a spur to encourage our ambition rather than a bit to curb it. It appears that Robert was raised according to the old Virginia ways; a gentleman waited to be recognized as a leader and was then rewarded with appropriate responsibility and rank. A gentleman did not crassly promote himself or bargain for votes. General Robert E. Lee expressed this traditional sentiment in a letter regarding another cavalryman's disappointment: All personal feelings and aspirations should be subordinated to the great end of rendering all the service in every man's power to the common cause. The man who is actuated by this principle will, I think, find in the end, ample compensation for any disappointment of his personal wishes and aspirations, in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and it will generally happen that it is the most certain road to honorable advancement.⁴

As he became more familiar with the democratic ways of his new military world, Hubard adapted to it. His sister-in-law Isaetta Randolph Hubard, with whom he carried on an active correspondence throughout the war, was a niece of George Wythe Randolph, Confederate secretary of war. He also corresponded regularly with his uncle, Edmund W. Hubard, who, at fifty-five years of age, was a respected veteran of the 1840s Virginia congressional delegation. Too old to serve and with sons too young to enlist, Edmund exhibited much interest in the martial welfare of his Hubard nephews.⁵ On several occasions the nephews called on him for advice and intercession with Confederate bureaucrats. As Robert learned more about the worlds of the military and politics, he went so far as to write a letter of petition to Confederate senator Robert M. T. Hunter in December 1864. Hubard asked for equal treatment of adjutants on the promotion ladder. Although his logic was sound on the issue, the end of the war four months later effectively ended debate over his dreams of martial advancement.

Hubard's recollections also serve to document the life of his regiment. Although there has been a great deal written about Stuart's cavalry, including published diaries, memoirs, biographies, war narratives, and unit histories, the spotlight has tended to shine more brightly on some regiments than on others. Among those units that served from first to last but with little documentation until recent years was the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. Raised on the Peninsula and in several Southside counties, the 3rd Virginia spent its first year patrolling the trails and thickets between Williamsburg and Fort Monroe in companies and squadrons. Rarely did the entire regiment ride together during their peninsular service. As well, the unit lacked the charismatic leadership of a Jeb Stuart, the name recognition of Robert E. Lee's nephew, Fitz Lee, or the prestige of the wealthy South Carolina planter Wade Hampton. Not until the regimental elections of April 1862 and the coincidental arrival at Yorktown of Stuart's cavalry brigade did the 3rd Virginia begin to show potential as a combat unit.

Under Stuart's command and placed in Fitz Lee's all-Virginia Brigade, the 3rd Virginia initially took only a limited part in the cavalry division's campaigns. Neither Stuart nor Lee knew much about the 3rd Virginia, so they acted cautiously in their use of the regiment. The only 3rd Virginia representatives on Stuart's first Ride around McClellan in June 1862 were two New Kent County troopers who served as guides. During the Seven Days' campaign (25 June–1 July 1862), the regiment saw little action, serving primarily as cavalry reserve.

Following the Seven Days' campaign, Stuart's entire cavalry division was sent to Hanover County for routine duty and additional training. Here the 3rd Virginia finally became an integral part of Fitz Lee's brigade, which already numbered the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 9th Virginia regiments in its ranks. A raid on a Federal wagon train near Fredericksburg on 4 August 1862 gave the 3rd Virginia its first real chance to shine. Splitting the Federal supply column in two, the 3rd Virginia pursued fleeing teamsters in two directions and claimed a dozen wagons and seventy prisoners. Service in the Sharpsburg (Antietam) campaign in September cost the regiment in officer casualties as well as in troopers but gave the men a sense of what campaigning under Stuart's and Lee's leadership meant.

The 3rd Virginia Cavalry participated in the actions that followed the return of the Confederate army to Virginia soil. They rode in the Chambersburg raid of October 1862 and then in a series of sharp clashes near Mountsville and Upperville and finally screened General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson's right flank at Fredericksburg in December 1862.

Winter found the infantry and artillery in permanent camps but not so Stuart's cavalry. Riding a raid under Fitz Lee's command, the 3rd Virginia saw service in the snowy Hartwood Church affair of February 1863 and suffered its heaviest losses of the war in turning back the Federal raid at Kelly's Ford on 17 March 1863.

* * *

The Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Bristoe Station campaigns of 1863 tested the endurance of the men as much as it tested their martial skills. But for brief interludes of hard fighting at Todd's Tavern (Chancellorsville) in May and Aldie in June and several running fights with Federal cavalry in October, long days and longer nights spent in the saddle were as hard on the troopers as was the combat. At the end of the year and following a brief expedition into West Virginia, Stuart allowed many of his regiments, the 3rd Virginia among them, to disband temporarily in order to find forage for their horses.

Springtime saw General Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Overland campaign begin with savage, dismounted cavalry fighting in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania Court House. Battles and skirmishes followed one after the other: Chilesburg, Beaver Dam Station, Mitchell's Shop, and Yellow Tavern. The loss of Jeb Stuart to a mortal wound at Yellow Tavern notwithstanding, the cavalry war continued unabated at Meadow Bridge, Fort Kennon, Haw's Shop, Cold Harbor, Trevilian Station, Samaria Church, and Reams' Station.

The Federal siege of Petersburg limited the role of the cavalry corps to such an extent that General Robert E. Lee sent much of his mounted force, including the 3rd Virginia, to the Shenandoah Valley in September 1864 to supplement General Jubal A. Early's Army of the Valley. Riding under the cavalry guidons of Generals Fitz Lee and Thomas L. Rosser, the 3rd Virginia endured a checkered campaign of minor victories at Weyer's Cave, Waynesboro, Edinburg, and Mt. Jackson, only to be offset by bitter defeats at Front Royal, Tom's Brook, and Cedar Creek. The end of the campaign in the Shenandoah Valley found the 3rd Virginians exhausted. An ill-advised December raid into West Virginia all but finished the effectiveness of the regiment. Many of the regiment's horses were shoeless, and all the men were starving. One veteran believed the unit was capable of rebellion because rations and supplies were in such short supply.⁶

Midway through February 1865, the regiment was moved to Richmond, where conditions for men and beasts improved markedly. The 3rd Virginia watched the James River west of Richmond during March as Federal general Philip H. Sheridan hovered with his cavalry divisions near Charlottesville. As Sheridan descended the James to join the Army of the Potomac near Petersburg, the 3rd Virginia scouted the Federal columns and sent reports to the Confederate high command. With the opening of the spring campaign in late March, the 3rd Virginia was sent with Fitz Lee's cavalry corps to Dinwiddie County to assist General George E. Pickett's infantry force. At Dinwiddie Court House on 31 March and Five Forks on 1 April, the Confederates severely tested the Federal forces but were eventually defeated by Sheridan's troops. The fall of the Confederate position at Five Forks led to the evacuation of both Petersburg and Richmond on 2 April 1865.

Accompanying General Robert E. Lee's retreating forces were the diminishing ranks of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. Although part of the regiment was from the James River Peninsula, more than half of the men hailed from counties on or near the route of the retreat. Records do not indicate how many 3rd Virginians fell out of ranks and returned to their homes in those last hours, but the temptation to do so must have been great. As Federal horsemen soon realized, however, the Southern cavalry was still a potent force. They fought several holding actions along the route to Appomattox Court House, and they defeated and captured several Federal infantry and cavalry units, including some at Painesville on 5 April, High Bridge on 6 April, and Farmville on 7 April.

At Appomattox Court House on the morning of 9 April, the Confederate cavalry corps broke through the encircling Federal troops and rode westward to Lynchburg. Thus the few remaining troopers of the 3rd Virginia escaped the surrender of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. A few of the horsemen rode south to join Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate army in North Carolina, only to surrender to William T. Sherman on 26 April. As for the rest, they turned their mounts toward their homes, tired of war but confident they had done their duty for Virginia and the Confederacy.

Douglas S. Freeman, in his prefatory assessment of another Virginia cavalryman, wrote, He will be read and respected as a citizen-soldier of honest mind, exceptional intelligence and just judgment, a ‘gentleman unafraid.'⁷ The same may be said of Robert Hubard, to whom all credit is due for this remembrance of war, as fine a documentary record of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry as the troopers of the old regiment could have envisioned.

Acknowledgments

The first time I threaded a filmed copy of Robert Hubard's handwritten manuscript onto a library microfilm reader, I realized that this young Virginian's memoirs were very special. Hubard's colorful and engaging descriptions of his war years in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry, a unit very familiar to me from earlier regimental research, were both enlightening and entertaining.

My wife, Barbara, who had already endured two similar projects, was as excited as I was to ride once again with the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. She shared in all of the travel and in much of the research necessary to bring this delightful project to a successful conclusion. In addition, she was my comfort and strength whenever I stumbled or grew faint in pursuit of Hubard's story. I could not have finished this book without her love and support.

If I could not have finished this book without Barbara's support, I know I could not have begun without the able assistance of my nephew and proud University of Virginia alumnus, Ryan Rosebush. With little more to go on than a brief telephone description of the Hubard papers, Ryan wasted little time in visiting the Alderman Library Special Collections Department and representing my interests in the Hubard papers to the staff. He did more than simply gather information, however. Ryan, with his ready smile and quick wit, created a positive foundation on which I was able to build a productive long-distance relationship with the Special Collections staff.

William Stebbins Hubard of Roanoke, Virginia, made available to me a virtual treasure chest of Hubard genealogical information that I could not have found as quickly or as accurately. Curiously, we found in our first telephone conversation that we are fellow alums of the College of William and Mary and that he was born and raised in the Thornton house, a historic Farmville, Virginia, home directly across the street from the Longwood College administrative offices that I occupied in the 1980s.

Margery (Gerry) Crowther of Palmyra, Virginia, was both gracious and generous in her willingness to share her love of Hubard history with us. Gerry's late husband, John Bell Henneman, Jr., was a descendant of Marion Hubard, eldest daughter of Robert and Sallie Hubard. Gerry welcomed Barbara and me into her home during a research visit to Virginia and then guided us on a tour of Chellowe, the Hubard family cemetery, and Indian Gap, a Hubard-Henneman property adjacent to Chellowe.

This work was made more complete by the outstanding maps of the battles and raids in which Robert Hubard and the 3rd Virginia Cavalry participated. All credit for these maps goes to Fred Olsen, an exceptional graphic artist, friend, and neighbor in Ann Arbor.

To my mother-in-law, Kay Sturm, my continuing thanks for supporting my Civil War habit through her generous contributions to my library. The notes to this memoir are much the clearer as a result of receiving many valuable reference volumes since beginning this project.

In addition, my sincere thanks to the following individuals and institutions who made gathering material for this project such a pleasure: the librarians and staff of the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, especially Regina Rush of the Special Collections Department; Millie Atkins at UMI-ProQuest (Ann Arbor, Michigan); David Feinberg at the Library of Virginia; the late Richard Couture at Longwood College (Farmville, Virginia); Jilla Biza, librarian, and Lance Burghardt, photographer, at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital (Ann Arbor, Michigan); Pat Golden at the Williamsburg (Virginia) Regional Library; Chris Calkins (Petersburg National Battlefield Park, Virginia); Don Pfanz (Fredericksburg National Military Park, Virginia); Ed Longacre (Newport News, Virginia); Bob Trout (Myersville, Pennsylvania); Eric Wittenberg (Columbus, Ohio); Ned Armstrong, Betty Austin, and John and Marion Davis (Colonial Heights, Virginia); Lucy and Nabil Dubraque (Manassas, Virginia); Kenneth Fisher (Del Rio, Texas); Tina Holt (Midlothian, Virginia); Amelia Hough (Sumter, South Carolina); Bert Murch and Pam Newhouse (Ann Arbor, Michigan); and Douglas Powell (Halifax, Virginia).

The staff of the University of Alabama Press made the design, production, and publication of this book a real pleasure. On a more personal note, copyeditor Kathy Swain was a delight as she reviewed my manuscript. Her intense scrutiny, her gentle corrections, and her good humor throughout the review process were very, very much appreciated.

Finally, my thanks to Harold Howard, who encouraged my interest in the 3rd Virginia Cavalry when he invited me to write the unit's history for his splendid Virginia Regimental History Series. His trust, patience, and support have not been forgotten.

Editor's Note

The ledger book into which Robert T. Hubard, Jr., entered his Civil War experiences contained somewhat more text than appears in this edited account. Hubard was interested not only in relating his own service actions and those of his regiment but also in documenting other military campaigns that affected the course of the war. Although Hubard's accounts of such campaigns as Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga are accurate, for example, they were, at best, secondhand reiterations of immediate postwar histories and, at worst, simple recitations of newspaper accounts. Moreover, they do not lend any information of interest to his own first-person account of the war in Virginia or shed any new light on the campaigns he mentions. Consequently, I have chosen to delete those passages in this edition.

Although most of Bob Hubard's campaign and battlefield reminiscences are eyewitness accounts of his own experiences, he is careful to note those campaigns in which he did not participate due to illness. Understandably, he has attempted to fill these voids with facts that were probably provided by his comrades as well as by accounts written in his commanders' battle reports on his return to duty.

A few paragraphs containing background information on Hubard's regimental officers and cavalry commanders have been relocated within the text for the sake of clarity.

Capitalizations, sentences, and paragraphs were somewhat irregularly determined in Civil War–era compositions, even among college graduates such as Hubard. Corrections have been made for the sake of clarity in the case of improper capitalizations. Lengthy sentences and paragraphs have been modified by creating multiple sentences and paragraphs wherever a distinct division of thought occurs.

Hubard's spelling was, for the most part, correct, with occasional interesting British usages such as ardour, sabre, and defence. In order to retain a bit of the flavor for the document as Hubard wrote it, misspellings of easily recognized words (for example, gayly for gaily) and some proper names (for example, Custar for Custer) have been left uncorrected. Note, too, that throughout his memoir, Hubard refers to his home as Chellow even though descendants, locals, the current owners, and most publications spell it Chellowe.

Brackets have been used throughout the document to clarify names and phrases and to insert omitted or corrected dates.

Several of the officers' portraits (Hood, Phillips, and McClellan) are of men who rose to higher rank with other units later in the war. All three have been listed at the highest ranks that were reached by each man during his term of service with the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. In addition, General Roger A. Pryor, who rose to the rank of general early in the war, lost his brigade due to political-military issues. He subsequently joined the 3rd Virginia Cavalry, Company E, as a private but carried his general officer's title out of military tradition and courtesy.

Introduction

The following record of events, so far as they were connected with the personal experiences of the writer, does not claim completeness (even as to that experience) for, begun (as it is) on the 21st of July 1865, much that is now forgotten is necessarily omitted, and there are doubtless some inaccuracies as to dates, etc. But in reference to direct operations and positive historical statements there will be, it is confidently believed, few grounds for doubt in the mind of any one who may hereafter read this record. Certain it is that the aim and conscientious desire of the writer is to present a simple and truthful narrative of facts, which shall display malice toward none, charity toward all (Lincoln's last message).

No one single cause can satisfactorily account for the most determined, costly, exhaustive, and desolating war of modern times. It is conceded on all sides that of the three million of men called into the field by the Federal government at least five hundred thousand perished whilst the South, which had altogether perhaps one million of troops must have lost 250,000 at least by death. The war cost the Federal government about three billion dollars and the South about two billion dollars,¹ one million of horses and mules in the Federal service and probably three hundred thousand by the South whilst the devastation of the Southern States by the invading armies is almost without parallel. General Sheridan, U.S.A., destroyed in a single campaign (September 1864) in the Valley of Virginia four hundred mills and two thousand large barns containing an immense supply of flour and wheat.²

Every speaker and every writer both north and south of Mason's and Dixon's Line has his own theory of the war! Excuse me, then, generous reader, if I have mine also, and ask you to give it your consideration. It is this—there were a number of secondary or incidental causes of the War, all depending upon and springing out of one great fundamental, first cause—a cause inherent in the Constitution of the United States—which grew with the growth and strengthened with the strength of the government to which the government gave birth.

A zealous republicanism combined with speculative visions of universal liberty and equality produced that strange anomily in the science of government—a complex sovereignty (if I may so speak). The United States government certainly enjoys most of those supreme rights which are usually regarded as the attributes of sovereignty. Yet it is equally certain that the original thirteen States retained each of them to itself many of the necessary attributes of Sovereignty—among them the control of the question of citizenship and power over the lives of their citizens, under the laws of treason.

This unfortunate cause of a diversity of opinions soon began to produce its effects.