Ken R. Knopp
Historian and author Ken R. Knopp has published a collection of his research and findings in three comprehensive books and dozens of previously published articles. The articles & photos are copyrighted and NOT available without written permission.
![gen-whf-rooney-lee.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/gen-whf-rooney-lee.jpg "William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (May 31, 1837 – October 15, 1891), known as \\"Rooney\\" Lee or W.H.F. Lee, was the second son of Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Randolph Custis. He was a planter, a Confederate cavalry General in the American Civil War, and later a member of the U.S. Congress.
Lee was born at Arlington House in Arlington, Virginia. He attended Harvard University, and then followed in his father\'s footsteps, joining the United States Army in 1857 as a second lieutenant. He served with the 6th U.S. Infantry under Albert Sidney Johnston, and participated in the Utah War against the Mormons. In 1859, he resigned from the U.S. Army to operate his White House Plantation, on the south shore of the Pamunkey River, in New Kent County, Virginia.
With the outbreak of the Civil War Lee became a captain in the Confederate Army cavalry and was soon promoted to major. He initially served in western Virginia under the command of Brig. Gen. William Loring during 1861 and early 1862. He was then placed under the command of Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, becoming a lieutenant colonel, and later colonel in the 9th Virginia Cavalry.
After the Battle of South Mountain, Lee was promoted to brigadier general. He fought at Antietam under the command of Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, his cousin. He commanded the 3rd Brigade of Stuart\'s Cavalry Division at the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. He was wounded during combat at Brandy Station at the beginning of the Gettysburg Campaign and was captured by Union forces at Hickory Hill, Virginia, two weeks later, while recuperating. He was a prisoner of war in New York State until returned to the Confederate Army on February 25, 1864. To accomplish this he was exchanged for Confederate captive Union Brig. Gen. Neal S. Dow. In April, he was promoted to major general and commanded a division in the Cavalry Corps during the breakout from Petersburg and the retreat of his father\'s army in the Appomattox Campaign. By the end of the war, he had risen to second-in-command of the Confederate cavalry. He surrendered along with his father at Appomattox Court House.
Lee returned to the entirely ruined White House Plantation and began rebuilding and farming after the war. Nearby, his younger brother Rob lived at Romancock Plantation across the river in King William County.
After his mother died in 1873, Rooney inherited Ravensworth Plantation, the old Fitzhugh family property (near present-day Springfield) in Fairfax County with 563 acres (2.28 km2) of land. He moved there from White House. In 1875 Rooney was elected to the Virginia Senate, serving until 1878. He was then elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives in 1887. He served in the House until his death at Ravensworth in 1891. He is interred in the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, with his parents and siblings.
Lee married twice, first in 1859 to Charlotte Wickham, a descendant of attorney John Wickham. They had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom died in infancy. Charlotte died in 1863.
On November 28, 1867, he married Mary Tabb Bolling, a descendant of Colonel Robert Bolling and Bolling\'s second wife Anne Stith. They had two children who lived to adulthood: Robert Edward Lee, born 11 Feb 1869 at Petersburg, and George Bolling Lee, born 30 Aug 1872 at Lexington.
Lee is the step-great-great-grandson of George Washington. Lee\'s mother, Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, was the great-granddaughter of Martha (Dandridge) Custis, who was a widow living at her White House Plantation in New Kent County (which Rooney Lee later inherited) when she was courted by Colonel George Washington before their marriage in 1759.")
![morgan-wife_0.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/morgan-wife_0.jpg "John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a legnedary Confederate general and cavalry officer.
Morgan is best known for Morgan\'s Raid in 1863, when he led 2,460 troops racing past Union lines into Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio in July 1863. This would be the farthest north any uniformed Confederate troops penetrated during the war.[1]
John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta (Hunt) Morgan. He was an uncle of geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan and a grandson of John Wesley Hunt, an early founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires west of the Allegheny Mountains. He was also the brother-in-law of A.P. Hill and of Basil W. Duke.
Morgan\'s father lost his Huntsville home in 1831 when he was unable to pay the property taxes following the failure of his pharmacy. The family then moved to Lexington, where Calvin Morgan would manage one of Hunt\'s sprawling farms. Morgan also attended Transylvania College for two years, but was suspended in June 1844 for dueling with a fraternity brother. In 1846, Morgan joined the Freemasons, as had his father before him.
In 1846 Morgan enlisted in the U.S. Army as a cavalry private during the Mexican-American War, and saw combat at the Battle of Buena Vista. On his return to Kentucky, he became a hemp manufacturer and eventually took over his grandfather\'s prosperous mercantile business. In 1848, he married Rebecca Gratz Bruce, 18-year-old sister of Morgan\'s business partner. Morgan raised a militia artillery company in 1852, but it was disbanded two years later.
In 1853, Morgan\'s wife delivered a stillborn son. Rebecca Morgan contracted septic thrombophlebitis, an infection of a blood clot in a vein, which eventually led to an amputation. Relations with his wife\'s family suffered over different views on slavery and with her health problems. In 1857, Morgan raised an independent infantry company known as the \\"Lexington Rifles,\\" and spent much of his free time drilling them.
John Hunt Morgan Memorial in downtown Lexington, KentuckyLike most Kentuckians, Morgan did not initially support secession. Immediately after Lincoln\'s election in November 1860, he wrote to his brother, Thomas Hunt Morgan, then a student at Kenyon College in northern Ohio, \\"Our State will not I hope secede[. I] have no doubt but Lincoln will make a good President at least we ought to give him a fair trial & then if he commits some overt act all the South will be a unit.\\" By the following spring, Tom Morgan (who also had opposed Kentucky\'s secession) had transferred home to the Kentucky Military Institute and there began to support the Confederacy. Just before the Fourth of July, by way of a steamer from Louisville, he quietly left for Camp Boone, just across the Tennessee border, to enlist in the Kentucky State Guard. John stayed at home in Lexington to tend to his troubled business and his ailing wife. Becky Morgan finally died on July 21, 1861. In September, Captain Morgan and his militia company went to Tennessee and joined the Confederate States Army. Morgan soon raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment and became its colonel on April 4, 1862.[2]
Morgan and his cavalrymen fought at the Battle of Shiloh in May 1862, and he soon became a symbol to secessionists in their hopes for obtaining Kentucky for the Confederacy. A Louisiana writer, Robert D. Patrick, compared Morgan to Francis Marion and wrote that \\"a few thousands of such men as his would regain us Kentucky and Tennessee.\\" In his first Kentucky raid, Morgan left Knoxville on July 4, 1862, with almost 900 men and in three weeks he swept through Kentucky, deep in the rear of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell\'s army. He reported the capture of 1,200 Federal soldiers, whom he paroled, acquired several hundred horses, and destroyed massive quantities of supplies.[3] He unnerved Kentucky\'s Union military government and President Abraham Lincoln received so many frantic appeals for help that he complained that \\"they are having a stampede in Kentucky.\\" Historian Kenneth M. Noe wrote that Morgan\'s feat \\"in many ways surpassed J.E.B. Stuart\'s celebrated \'Ride around McClellan\' and the Army of the Potomac the previous spring.\\" The success of Morgan\'s raid was one of the key reasons that the Confederate Heartland Offensive of Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith was launched later that fall, assuming that tens of thousands of Kentuckians would enlist in the Confederate Army if they invaded the state.[4]
Morgan was promoted to brigadier general (his highest rank) on December 11, 1862.[2] He received the thanks of the Confederate Congress on May 1, 1863 for his raids on the supply lines of Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans in December and January, most notably his victory at the Battle of Hartsville on December 7.[5] Also in December, Morgan married Martha \\"Mattie\\" Ready, the daughter of Tennessee United States Representative Charles Ready and a cousin of William T. Haskell, another former U.S. representative from Tennessee.
General John Hunt Morgan Hoping to divert Union troops and resources in conjunction with the twin Confederate operations of Vicksburg and the Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Morgan set off on the campaign that would become known as \\"Morgan\'s Raid\\". Morgan crossed the Ohio River, and raided across southern Indiana and Ohio. At Corydon, Indiana the raiders met 450 local Home Guard in a battle that resulted in eleven Confederates killed and five Home Guard killed. After several more skirmishes, during which he captured and paroled thousands of Union soldiers[citation needed], Morgan\'s raid almost ended on July 19, 1863, at Buffington Island, Ohio, when approximately 700 of his men were captured while trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. (Intercepted by Union gunboats, less than 200 of his men succeeded in crossing.) Most of Morgan\'s men captured that day spent the rest of the war in the infamous Camp Douglas Prisoner of War camp in Chicago, which had a very high death rate. On July 26, near Salineville, Ohio (actually closer to New Lisbon-now called just Lisbon), Morgan and his exhausted, hungry and saddlesore soldiers were finally forced to surrender.
On November 27, Morgan and six of his officers, most notably Thomas Hines, escaped from their cells in the Ohio Penitentiary by digging a tunnel from Hines\' cell into the inner yard and then ascending a wall with a rope made from bunk coverlets and a bent poker iron. Morgan and three of his officers, shortly after midnight, boarded a train from the nearby Columbus train station and arrived in Cincinnati that morning. Morgan and Hines jumped from the train before reaching the depot, and escaped into Kentucky by hiring a skiff to take them across the Ohio River. Through the assistance of sympathizers, they eventually made it to safety in the South. Coincidentally, the same day Morgan escaped, his wife gave birth to a daughter, who died shortly afterwards before Morgan returned home.
Though Morgan\'s Raid was breathlessly followed by the Northern and Southern press and caused the Union leadership considerable concern, it is now regarded as little more than a showy but ultimately futile sidelight to the war. Furthermore, it was done in direct violation of his orders from Gen. Braxton Bragg not to cross the river. Despite the Raiders\' best efforts, Union forces had amassed nearly 110,000 Union militia in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio; dozens of United States Navy gunboats along the Ohio; and strong Federal cavalry forces, which doomed the raid from the beginning. The cost of the raid to the Federals was extensive, with claims for compensation still being filed against the U.S. government well into the early 20th century. However, the Confederacy\'s irreplaceable loss of some of the finest light cavalry[citation needed]in American history far outweighed the Union\'s replaceable losses in equipment and supplies. When taken in together with the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the loss of Morgan\'s cavalry brigade dealt another serious blow to Confederate morale.
[edit] Late career and death
After his return from Ohio, Morgan was never again trusted by General Bragg. On August 22, 1864, Morgan was placed in command of the Trans-Allegheny Department, embracing at the time the Confederate forces in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.[6]
However the men he was assigned were in no way comparable to those he had lost. Morgan once again began raiding into Kentucky, but his men lacked discipline and he was either not willing or able to control them, leading to open pillaging as well as high casualties. By now Confederate authorities were quietly investigating Morgan for charges of criminal banditry[citation needed], likely leading to his removal from command. He began to organize a raid aimed at Knoxville, Tennessee.[1]
On September 4, 1864, he was surprised and killed while attempting to escape capture during a Union raid on Greeneville, Tennessee. His men always believed that he had been murdered to prevent a second escape from prison, but it seems he was simply shot because he refused to halt.
Morgan was buried in Lexington Cemetery. The burial was shortly before the birth of his second child, another daughter.
Morgan\'s Grave, in Lexington CemeteryHart County High School, in Munfordville, Kentucky, the site of the Battle for the Bridge, named their mascot the Raiders, in honor of Morgan\'s men. Also, a large mural in the town depicts Morgan.
Trimble County High School, in Bedford, Kentucky, named their mascot the Raiders, in honor of Morgan\'s men.
The John Hunt Morgan Memorial statue in Lexington is a tribute to him.
The Hunt-Morgan House, once his home, is a contributing property in a historic district in Lexington.
The General Morgan Inn, located at the spot he was killed in Greeneville, Tennessee is named after him.")
![gen-earl-van-dorn.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/gen-earl-van-dorn.jpg "Earl Van Dorn (September 17, 1820 – May 7, 1863) was a career United States Army officer, fighting with distinction during the Mexican-American War and against several tribes of Native Americans. He also served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War, noted for his defeats at Pea Ridge and Corinth in 1862, and his murder by a civilian in the spring of 1863.
Known to be short, impulsive, and highly emotional, Van Dorn was also a noted painter, writer of poetry, was respected for his skill at riding a horse, and also known for his love of women. This last trait would lead to his death in 1863, when his alleged womanizing became public knowledge. A reporter at the time dubbed him \\"the terror of ugly husbands\\" shortly before Van Dorn\'s murder.")
![gen-jo-shelby.gif](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/gen-jo-shelby.gif "Joseph Orville Shelby (December 12, 1830 – February 13, 1897) was a noted Confederate cavalry general in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.
Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky, to one of the state\'s wealthiest and most influential families. He lost his father at age 5, and was raised by a stepfather. Shelby attended Transylvania University and was a rope manufacturer until 1852. He then moved to Waverly, Missouri, where he engaged in steamboating on the Missouri River and in running a hemp plantation. During the \\"Bleeding Kansas\\" struggle, he led a company on the States Rights side.
In 1861, Shelby formed a cavalry company and was elected its captain, leading them into battle at Wilson\'s Creek. Promoted to colonel, he commanded a brigade at Prairie Grove. Shelby led his \\"Iron Brigade\\" of Missouri volunteers on what was to be the longest cavalry raid of the war at that time, Shelby\'s Great Raid. Between September 22 and November 3, 1863, Shelby\'s brigade travelled 1,500 miles through Missouri, inflicting over 1,000 casualties on Union forces, and capturing or destroying an estimated $2 million worth of Federal supplies and property. He was promoted to brigadier general on December 15, 1863, at the successful conclusion of his raid.
In 1864, Union General Steele\'s failure in the Camden Expedition (March 23–May 2, 1864,) can in no small part be laid to Shelby\'s brilliant and determined harassment, though in concert with other Confederate forces. Ultimately that Federal force was forced back to Little Rock upon the final destruction or capture of their supply trains at Mark\'s Mill. Reassigned to the Clarendon, Arkansas area, Shelby accomplished the rare feat of capturing a Union tinclad USS Queen City, which was immediately destroyed to avoid recapture. As summer was ending Shelby then commanded a division during Sterling Price\'s Missouri raid. He distinguished himself at the battles of Little Blue River and Westport, and captured many Union held towns, including Potosi, Boonville, Waverly, Stockton, Lexington, and California, Missouri.
Shelby\'s adjutant was John Newman Edwards, who later as editor of the Kansas City Times was to almost single handedly create the anti-hero legend of Jesse James.
After Robert E. Lee\'s army surrendered in Virginia, General Edmund Kirby Smith appointed Shelby a major general on May 10, 1865. However, the promotion was never formally submitted, due to the collapse of the Confederate government.
In June 1865, rather than surrender, Shelby and approximately 1,000 of his remaining troops rode south into Mexico. For their determination not to surrender, they were immortalized as \\"the undefeated\\". A later verse appended to the angry post-war Confederate anthem, \\"The Unreconstructed Rebel\\" commemorates the defiance of Shelby and his men: \\"I won\'t be reconstructed, I\'m better now than then. And for a Carpetbagger I do not give a damn. So it\'s forward to the frontier, soon as I can go. I\'ll fix me up a weapon and start for Mexico.\\" Their plan was to offer their services to Emperor Maximilian as a \'foreign legion.\' Maximilian declined to accept the ex-Confederates into his armed forces, but he did grant them land for an American colony in Mexico near Vera Cruz. The grant would be revoked two years later following the collapse of the empire and Maximilan\'s execution. Reportedly, Shelby sank his battle flag in the Rio Grande near present-day Eagle Pass (TX) on the way to Mexico rather than risk the flag falling into the hands of the Federals. The event is depicted in a painting displayed at the Eagle Pass City Hall. His subsequent two years in Mexico is the stuff of legends and folklore but in the end the intrepid Shelby returned the the U.S. The memory of Shelby and his men as \\"The Undefeated\\" is used as a distant basis for the 1969 John Wayne-Rock Hudson film by the same name.
Shelby returned to Missouri in 1867 and resumed farming. He was appointed the U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Missouri in 1893, was a critical witness for the defense of Frank James at his trial, and retained the Marshal\'s position until his death in 1897. He died in Adrian, Missouri, and is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City.")
![bird-carridine-co-c-8th-miss-cav_0.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/bird-carridine-co-c-8th-miss-cav_0.jpg "Bird Carrindine, Co. C 8th Miss. Cavalry. Wounded while fighting under Forrest at Brices Crossroads. Note his \\"infantry\\" arms and equipment.")
![general-wirt-adams.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/general-wirt-adams.jpg "William Wirt Adams (March 22, 1819 – May 1, 1888) was a United States district court judge for the state of Mississippi, a soldier for the Republic of Texas, and a Confederate officer and general in the American Civil War.
Adams was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, to Anna Weisiger Adams and Judge George Adams (a personal friend to American statesman and orator Henry Clay). He was a brother of Daniel Weissiger Adams, another future Civil War general. In 1825 he moved to and settled in Natchez, Mississippi. He was a district court judge for the state of Mississippi from 1836 to 1839. He attended college at Bardstown College in Bardstown, Kentucky. Upon graduation in 1839, he enlisted as a private for the Republic of Texas under Edward Burleson, received a commission to adjutant of the regiment, and was involved in the Military campaign of northeast Texas against Native Americans settled there.
He returned to Mississippi where he married Sallie Huger Mayarant in 1850. There he pursued banking and planting in Jackson, Mississippi, and Vicksburg, Mississippi. From 1850 to 1861 he owned and operated a successful business and, from 1858 to 1860, he served two sessions in the Mississippi House of Representatives.
In 1861 after Mississippi seceded from the Union, Adams was appointed commissioner from Mississippi to Louisiana. As such, he helped the latter to secede from the Union. In February of that year, the Confederate States of America formed in Montgomery, Alabama. President Jefferson Davis offered Adams a cabinet position there as Confederate Postmaster General, but he declined.
After settling his banking interests, he formed and enlisted the \\"Wirt Adams\\" Cavalry Regiment into the Confederate States Army at Memphis, Tennessee, in August 1861. Later, in September, his command was ordered to Columbus, Kentucky, and then, in October, to Headquarters, General Albert Sidney Johnston, Bowling Green, Kentucky. From there they fought a rear-guard action in the Confederate retreat from Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee, and subsequently to Corinth, Mississippi. Later, at the Battle of Shiloh, they were positioned on the extreme right flank of the infantry and fought with it near the Tennessee River at Greer\'s Ford. Then they were on outpost duty during the Siege of Corinth. Later, under command of then Maj. Philip Sheridan, four of the regiment\'s companies aggressively attacked and pursued Union Army elements for two miles, near Booneville, Mississippi.
As a Colonel, Adams, alongside General Sterling Price, later combined his regiment with an Arkansas regiment under Colonel William F. Slemons at Iuka, Mississippi. Upon leaving General Price, Adams captured a trainload of Union Army troops from Corinth. His orders next took him Washington County, Mississippi. There he guarded local plantations and observed troop movements in and around Vicksburg, Mississippi. After the fall of Vicksburg, both his regiment and the 28th Mississippi Cavalry harassed and skirmished units under General William Tecumseh Sherman who were advancing on Confederate-held positions.
Commissioned as brigadier general in September 1863, Adams was assigned command of a brigade composed of both his regiment and the command of Colonel Logan. In February 1864, he was ordered to attack General Sherman\'s advance on Meridian, Mississippi. Near the end of the war, he operated alongside General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Alabama. He and his brigade surrendered near Ramsey Station, Sumter County, Alabama, on May 4, 1865. His farewell address was delivered to his command two days later. His parole is dated Gainesville, Alabama, May 12, 1865.
Colonel, October 15, 1861
Brigadier General, September 25, 1863
Upon conclusion of the war, Adams resided in Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1880 he was appointed as a Mississippi state revenue agent. He resigned in 1885 and took the position of postmaster in Jackson by appointment of President Grover Cleveland. He died in Jackson on May 1, 1888, in a street encounter with a local newspaper editor, John Martin, who had bitterly criticized Adams in his paper, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.
Federal Gen. W.T. Sherman once said that after Forrest, the only Confederate cavalryman he feared was Wirt Adams. High testimony indeed.")
![pelham-john-th_0.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/pelham-john-th_0.jpg "Although \\"The Gallant Pelham\\" served the entire war with the artillery, he was destined to fall while moonlighting in a cavalry charge.
A native Alabamian, he withdrew from West Point upon the outbreak of hostilities and joined the Confederate army. His assignments included: lieutenant, Wise (Va.) Artillery (early 1861); captain, Stuart Horse Artillery (March 23, 1862); major, Artillery (August 9, 1862); lieutenant colonel, Artillery (April 4, 1863, to rank from March 2); and commanding Horse Artillery Battalion, Cavalry Division, Army of Northern Virginia (August 1862-March 17, 1863).
After fighting at lst Bull Run, he became the captain of the first horse artillery battery that served with JEB Stuart, becoming close friends with the general. Commanding his unit, he saw action at Yorktown and during the Seven Days. Promoted, he commanded all of Stuart\'s horse batteries at 2nd Bull Run and Antietam. At Fredericksburg he held up the advance of a Union division against the Confederate right with only two guns. With only one gun left, he continued to shift positions despite the fact that 24 enemy guns were now concentrating their fire on him. Disobeying repeated orders to withdraw, he only did so upon running out of ammunition. General Lee observed and said, \\"It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!\\"
Known as the \\"Boy Major,\\" he heard of an impending action at Kelly\'s Ford on March 17, 1863. Away from his battalion at the time, he joined the fray with the cavalry. He fell victim to a shell fragment while directing a column past a fence. Thought to be dead, he was thrown over a horse and led from the field. Quite a while later he was lowered to the ground and found to be still alive. He died shortly thereafter. Some believed that prompt attention might have saved his life. (Hassler, William Woods, Coloneljohn Pelbam, Lee\'s Boy Artillerist)
Source: \\"Who Was Who In The Civil War\\" by Stewart Sifakis")
![heros-von-brocke.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/heros-von-brocke.jpg "Borcke was born in Festung Ehrenbreitstein, where his father Otto Theodor Heros von Borcke (1805–1878) served as a Second lieutenant in the Prussian Infantry Regiment 19. His father left service in 1836 to administer his family\'s estates of Wangerin in Pomerania and later Giesenbrügge (New March) (now Giżyn, Myślibórz County, Poland). Borcke was educated at the local school of Giesenbrügge, the gymnasium in Cölln (today a district of Berlin) and the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle and joined the Prussian Army at the Garde du Corps Cuirassier Regiment in Berlin.
A tall man at 6\' 4\\" and weighting in at more than 240 pounds, he was a lieutenant in the 2nd Brandenburg Regiment of Dragoons when news arrived of the beginning of the American Civil War. He eventually secured his release from his duties in the Prussian Army and sailed for the Bermuda, finally slipping into Charleston (South Carolina) Harbor on a blockade runner in May 1862. He brought with him a massive Solingen straight sword, which would become famous during his ensuing career. By the end of the month, he had made his way to Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. He was given the rank of captain in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States on June 1 of that year and assigned to Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart by the order of Secretary of War George W. Randolph. Von Borcke became a close confidant and aide to Stuart and, conspicuous on the battlefield for his large height and girth and the extremely large sword he wielded, became known as the \\"giant in gray.\\"
Stuart soon was impressed by the new arrival, and the two became fast friends. Following the cavalry\'s famed \\"ride around McClellan\'s army\\", Stuart wrote, \\"Capt. Heros von Borcke, a Prussian cavalry officer, who lately ran the blockade, assigned me by the honorable Secretary of War, joined in the charge of the First Squadron in gallant style, and subsequently, by his energy, skill, and activity, won the praise and admiration of all\\".
In August of the year, von Borcke was promoted to the rank of major, an appointment confirmed by the First Confederate Congress on September 19. He rode with Stuart as his Chief of Staff and adjutant general during the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Maryland Campaign, further adding to his reputation for bravery in the face of the enemy. Stuart detailed him to accompany the body of fallen horse artillerist John Pelham to Richmond for burial following Pelham\'s death at the Battle of Kelly\'s Ford.
During the early phases of the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, von Borcke suffered a significant wound from a bullet in his neck during the Battle of Middleburg and was incapacitated for the remainder of the year. He recovered enough to resume staff duties in the spring of 1864, and was present at the Battle of Yellow Tavern in which his chieftain Stuart was killed. In December of that year, he was promoted again, this time to lieutenant colonel and voted the official thanks of the Confederate Congress.[7] He was also sent by President Jefferson Davis on a diplomatic mission to England.
With the collapse of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865 and the ensuing surrender of its main armies, von Borcke returned to his native Prussia. He resumed his military career and fought in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War in the personal staff of Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia, receiving the coveted Order of the Red Eagle for his gallantry. He married Magdalene Honig and raised three sons. Still suffering lingering effects from his Middleburg wound, he retired from the Prussian Army in 1867 and bought an estate at Sichts, West Prussia (today Żychce, Poland). After his father\'s death he returned to Giesenbrügge, where he proudly flew the Confederate flag from its battlements.
In 1877, von Borcke published his memoirs of his adventures in the Confederate army. In 1883, his wife died, and two years later, he married her sister Tony, they named their daughter Karoline Virginia in honor of Borcke\'s adopted state. In between, in 1884, he sailed back to again visit the United States and was reunited with many former comrades and friends, including Wade Hampton, William H. F. Lee, and Matthew C. Butler.
He died in Berlin in 1895 due to a sepsis caused by the remaining projectile which had wounded him in the Battle of Middleburg on 19 June 1863. His headstone over his grave in Giesenbrügge was destroyed by the Soviet army during World War II. The U.S. Government purchased a new headstone for the Confederate veteran, which was reinstalled in 2008.")
![col-john-s-rip-ford.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/col-john-s-rip-ford.jpg "John S. \\"Rip\\" Ford was a mover and shaker in Texas for nearly fifty years. He not only participated in most of it\'s military struggles, but served in the Congress of the Republic and Legislature of the State, and later, in the state Secession Convention. Unlike many of his less fortunate comrades, he lived to tell (or more accurately, write) about his experiences in the Lone Star State.
Born May 26, 1815 in South Carolina, Ford spent most of his youth in Tennessee. He came to Texas a few months after the Battle of San Jacinto. After serving in the Army of the Republic, he practiced medicine in San Augustine for eight years. During that time, he also studied law and passed the bar exams.
In 1844, Ford was elected to the Texas Congress, where he was an active proponent of annexation. With annexation accomplished, he was elected to the state Senate in 1852.
During his checkered career in Texas, Ford was involved in the publication of several newspapers. These included The National Register (later the Texas Democrat), a pro-Houston paper he co-published in Austin in the mid-1840\'s, and the State Times, which he established with a partner in Austin in the 1850\'s. After the Civil War, he also became editor of the Brownsville Sentinel in 1868.
Ford was a member of the Secession Convention in early 1861. After Texas seceded, he served the Confederacy mostly in south Texas along the border with Mexico. He was a participant in the Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought more than a month after Robert E. Lee\'s surrender at Appomattox.
Ford continued his active pace after the war, but \\"retired\\" in 1883 to write his memoirs and promote his interest in Texas history. He became a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association, and contributed one of the first articles to the TSHA\'s Quarterly.
\\"Rip\\" Ford died on November 3, 1897 in San Antonio, where he is buried.")
![col-dudley-jones-9th-texas.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/col-dudley-jones-9th-texas.jpg "JONES, DUDLEY WILLIAM (1840–1869). Dudley W. Jones, Confederate Army officer. A born leader, Jones was also one of the toughest, most dedicated and brave of the 9th Texas cavalryman in the war.
As one of five children of Henry and Martha (Heron) Jones, was born in Lamar County, Texas, in 1840. He was the grandson of Jesse Jones, one of the first settlers of what is now Lamar County, where the family settled in 1836. In 1840, the year of Jones\'s birth, the family moved to the Titus County community of Mount Pleasant. Jones was primarily educated by his mother and in the common schools of the area and then attended Maury Institute at Coffeeville. He was said to be \\"a great ladies\' man.\\" At the outbreak of the Civil War he returned to Mount Pleasant and enlisted as a private in the Titus Greys, Company I of Col. William B. Simms\'s Ninth Texas Cavalry. When the regimental adjutant, named Bell, was \\"accused of Abolitionism and Bigamy-the latter being pretty strongly proven upon him,\\" the men of the regiment hanged him and elected Jones first lieutenant and adjutant in his place, on October 14, 1861. During the first year of the war his regiment served with Gen. Benjamin McCulloch\'s Army of the West in Arkansas, Missouri, and Indian Territory. After the battle of Elkhorn Tavern in March 1862 the regiment was dismounted and transferred to Mississippi, where it was reorganized near Corinth on May 26. In this reorganization Jones, although only twenty-two, was elected colonel, replacing Nathan W. Townes, who had resigned soon after superseding Simms. Soon after the battle of Corinth (Oct 1862) the regiment was remounted and became part of Lawrence Sullivan Ross\'s famed brigade.
Commanding the Ninth Texas Cavalry on March 5, 1863, Jones distinguished himself in the defeat and capture of a strong federal reconnoitering expedition at Thompson\'s Station, Tennessee, and later in the defeat of the federal cavalry raid against railroad communications at Lovejoy\'s Station, Georgia, in the latter part of July 1864. For the final few weeks of the war Jones commanded Ross\'s brigade.
After the war he was apparently bewildered and traveled about the United States for about a year before returning to his father\'s farm in 1866; he was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1866. He was also president of the Texas Club, an organization of former Confederates, and a member of the committee that oversaw the removal of the remains of Albert Sidney Johnston from New Orleans to Austin in 1867. In 1867 he moved to Houston, began the practice of law in the firm of Jones and Barzizer, and edited one of the city\'s first daily newspapers, the Ku Klux Vidette. He died of a \\"hemorrhage of the bowels\\" on August 14, 1869, and is buried in Houston. A reading of any of the 9th Texas narratives will leave one with great respect and admiration of Dudley Jones.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clement Anselm Evans, ed., Confederate Military History (Atlanta: Confederate Publishing, 1899; extended ed., Wilmington, North Carolina: Broadfoot, 1987–89). George L. Griscom, Fighting with Ross\' Texas Cavalry Brigade, C.S.A.: The Diary of George L. Griscom, ed. Homer L. Kerr (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1976). Victor Marion Rose, Ross\' Texas Brigade (Louisville, Kentucky: Courier-Journal, 1881; rpt., Kennesaw, Georgia: Continental, 1960). A. W. Sparks, The War between the States (Tyler, Texas: Lee and Burnett, 1901; rpt., Longview, Texas: D&D, 1987).
By Thomas W. Cutrer")
![cs-cavman.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/cs-cavman.jpg "Confederate Cavalryman From \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")
![cs-cavalryman2.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/cs-cavalryman2.jpg "Confederate Cavalryman From \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")
![confederate-horse.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/confederate-horse.jpg "Rare photo of Confederate with a horse....too bad he is not mounted and showing some equipment!!
Confederate Cavalryman From \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")
![1st-va-cav-man.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/1st-va-cav-man.jpg "1st Va. Confederate Cavalryman From \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")
![more-confederate-faces.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/more-confederate-faces.jpg "Confederate Cavalryman or officer from \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")
![cs-prisoners-from-camp-douglas.jpg](http://confederatesaddles.com/wp-content/gallery/cavalry/cs-prisoners-from-camp-douglas.jpg "From \\"More Confederate Faces\\" By William A Alsbaugh III")