Early, Jubal Anderson (1816–1894) Confederate
general
Born in Franklin County, Virginia, on 3 November
1816, Early entered the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, graduating in 1837. He saw his first action in the
Second Seminole War (1835–42), fighting the Seminole
in Florida, but after in 1838 he resigned his commission
to return home and begin practicing law. He sat as a
member of the Virginia legislature in 1841 and 1842,
and served as commonwealth attorney from 1842 to
- During the Mexican-American War (1846–48),
he was a member of the Virginia Volunteers with the
rank of major (1847–48).
In 1861, following the election of Republican
Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States, sev-
eral southern slave states held conventions to vote on
seceding from the American union. Early was a delegate
to the Virginia Convention, and although he had been
opposed to secession, the bitter hatred of Lincoln ex-
pressed by others at the parley changed his mind, and
he ultimately backed Virginia’s leaving the Union. With
the formation of the Confederate States of America and
an army to defend the South, Early was commissioned
a colonel in the 24th regiment of the Virginia Infantry.
On 21 July 1861, he led the right flank of Confederate
forces in the defeat of Union troops at Manassas Junc-
tion, or First Bull Run. For his service in this action,
Early was promoted to brigadier general, and after seeing
additional action in 1861 and 1862, he was promoted
to major general in January 1863. He led sections of
Confederate forces at Antietam (17 September 1862),
Fredericksburg (11–15 December 1862), Chancellors-
ville (1–3 May 1863), Gettysburg (1–3 July 1863), and
the Wilderness (5–7 May 1864).
As the tide of the war turned against the Confed-
eracy, Early took command of the Valley District of the
Department of Northern Virginia, later commanding
the III Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. In May
1864, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general,
and the following month he defeated Union forces in the
Shenandoah Valley. At the Monocacy River on 9 July
1864, Early’s troops, numbering some 14,000, routed
approximately 6,000 Union forces under Major Gen-
eral Lewis Wallace, leaving nearly 1,900 Union and 700
Confederate casualties. However, his battle with Wallace
gave the Union commander, General Ulysses S. grant,
the time to send reinforcements to Washington, D.C.,
ending any chance of a Confederate attack on the Union
capital. (Nonetheless, Early’s men had advanced to within
a few hundred yards of the White House.) Seeing Early
as a threat, Grant, sent an enormous force order General
Philip sheridan against the southern officer, forcing
Early’s army to stand heroically at Fisher’s Hill (21–22
September 1864), where he was defeated, and at Cedar