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| by Andrew Martel, Winchester Star
Strictly defined, the term applies to Early's views on the end of the Civil War — namely that he refused to recognize the Union's legitimacy after Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox. But Early, born Nov. 3, 1816 in Franklin County, was always unchanging and unflinching. Unconventional In a sense, he was always unreconstructed — a gruff Southerner who never conformed to the genteel society in which he was raised. He never married, although he had at least four children with a mistress. He never owned a slave, yet he argued that slavery was essential to the Confederate States of America. He voted against secession in 1861, yet immediately joined the Confederate army when Virginia voted to withdraw from the Union. And while he was an important figure during the Civil War, some historians value Early's post-war activity more than his actions during it. “He was extremely conservative . . . out of step with most of his peers,” University of Virginia history professor Gary W. Gallagher said. “I know he was sarcastic and a misogynist.” But when the odds looked impossible, “you want a fighter — Jubal Early,” said Dr. J. Francis Amos, a member of the Board of Directors of the Jubal Early Preservation Trust Inc. in Rocky Mount. Old Jubal Amos is a lifelong resident of Rocky Mount, and has worked with other area historians, both professional and avocational, to purchase and preserve Early's birthplace. The 61-year-old physician became interested in the Civil War after hearing stories about the war from his grandfather, who in turn heard them from Confederate veterans. One of Amos' great uncles was killed during Pickett's Charge in the Battle of Gettysburg, he said. That brought Amos to the study of Early, a home-town hero, who practiced law in Rocky Mount in southwest Virginia. Entering the war as a colonel, Early fought in most of the major campaigns of the war in Virginia. He commanded brigades at the First Battle of Bull Run, and was wounded at Williamsburg. He became more and more irreplaceable as his star rose. He became a brigadier general by January of 1863 and crossed into Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign. Needing an aggressive commander to thwart Union designs in the Shenandoah Valley and put pressure on the Yankees in 1864, Lee turned to Early, who now commanded the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Facing Union pressure on Richmond, the Confederate capital, Lee put Early in the Shenandoah Valley, in part, as a pawn on a chessboard. On the March Early stymied Union forces at Lynchburg and then took the war north of the Potomac River. His cavalry advanced as far north as Chambersburg, Pa., in late July, burning much of it. Early's corps, meanwhile, marched on Washington, D.C., waging the only battle within the limits of the capital at Fort Stevens, and the only clash witnessed by President Abraham Lincoln. The heavily fortified capital was too much for Early's exhausted corps, which had marched with relentless speed, covering more ground in less time than Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson's famous “foot cavalry” two years before, Amos said of Early. “He kept an army of 40,000 to 50,000 people tied up,” Amos said. Early withdrew to the Shenandoah Valley, but Lincoln knew that something had to be done about Early. Union Gen. Philip Sheridan came to the Valley “to try to destroy him,” Amos said Final Round Sheridan hammered Early's undermanned army, beating it at Winchester on Sept. 19 and then again at Fisher's Hill on Sept. 22. Despite the defeats, Early had more fight left than Sheridan credited the crusty veteran. At the battle of Cedar Creek on Oct. 19, Early took advantage of an early-morning fog to launch a surprise attack on Union troops camped around the manor house at Belle Grove near Middletown. Sheridan arrived on the field to launch a late day counterattack that drove the Confederates from the field. The battle ended significant Southern resistance in the Valley. “Bad Old Man” Early rejected the Southern gentility of most other Confederate military leaders and exemplified by Lee. He was the only one of Lee's officers who openly swore in front of him, Amos said. “The troops looked upon [Early] as a leader who was a true fighter,” Amos said. He could be remembered as one of the greatest generals of the Civil War, if only he had more troops, if Sheridan were not so quick to arrive at Cedar Creek, or even if Early had been killed after his campaign on Washington, Amos said. But because he kept losing in 1864, the public could not understand or appreciate him, Amos said. At Waynesboro, the fragment of his army that was left was no match for horsemen led by Union Gen. George Custer, who scattered Early's forces once and for all in March 1865. Early lost leadership of the Second Corps when Lee removed him from command in the waning days of the war. Less than a month later, on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered. With no responsibility to the Confederate Army, Early left the country quickly after Appomattox. Unreconstructed He fled to Texas, then to Mexico, and finally to Cuba. Early did not return until he was sure he would not be prosecuted for the burning of Chambersburg, Gallagher said. While Lee and other Confederate generals submitted to Union authority, Early never renounced his ties. And almost immediately after the war, Early wrote his memoirs, titled “A Memoir of the Last Year of the War.” In that autobiography, Early “corrected the record” about the war, Amos said. “The North figured to the victor go the spoils,” Amos said. “He determined ‘No. That's not going to be.'” Early quieted Sheridan's boast of inflicting 40,000 casualties in the Valley by pointing out that he never had 40,000 troops under his command. He went on to become a principal writer and speaker on the “Lost Cause” of the South. This body of work remains “tenaciously influential,” Gallagher said, and is one of the reasons Early's post-war contributions are so valuable. Always irascible, Early remained bitter about the Confederacy's defeat for the rest of his life. But he always acknowledged it was a defeat, and never advocated the South rising up again, Gallagher said. “He wasn't confused about why the Confederacy lost or whether the Confederacy lost,” he said. “He wasn't a lunatic, just a very embittered, defeated person.” This did not stop him from living a life of leisure, writing and talking. The citizens of Lynchburg, whose city he liberated from Union siege earlier in 1864, adored him. “He doesn't fit that faux-chivalric image that was very popular in post-war years,” Gallagher said. Independent Spirit Although Gallagher is working on a biography of Early, he is reluctant to psychoanalyze the general 140 years later. But the facts of Jubal Early's life show a privileged Virginia youth who rejected civilian life to join the military. After his graduation from West Point in 1837, he fought the Seminole in Florida. He resigned his commission and practiced law, and was defeated in two runs for public office. His philosophy may never have altered much, but his application of it in life did. “But I had done some good, and had not committed any very serious wrong, considering it in a mere worldly point of view.” Early died in Lynchburg in 1894, age 78. Amos is reluctant to over-analyze Early as well, but he does think that a letter the future general wrote while still a student at West Point offers some insight into his philosophy. During the War for Texas Independence, Early wrote to his father, begging for permission to go and take up arms for that cause. “He needed to go because of the cause of freedom,” Amos said. “He was imbued with this.” For Early, independence was a fight worth waging at any cost. Like all his opinions, that never changed. Sources: “Generals in Gray” by Ezra Warner, “Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War edited by Patricia L. Faust, and “Ante-Bellum Early,” excerpts from Early's 1867 autobiography, accessed at www.civilwarhome.com .
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Maybe it was the painful rheumatism that crumpled his spine for most of his life, or the sting of repeated defeats on Shenandoah Valley battlefields, but Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early remained, in a word, “unreconstructed.”