Creek (19 October 1864), where he should have won a
brilliant victory but lost. He staged a final resistance at
Waynesboro (2 March 1865) and won the battle, but for
Early and the Southern cause it was too late.
With the end of the war, Early went to Texas, then to
Mexico, and finally to exile in Canada. In 1869, when the
threat of prosecution for treason had passed, he returned
to Virginia, where he resumed his law practice. He pub-
lished his memoirs, Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative,
in 1866 and A Memoir of the Last Year of the War in 1867.
Early served as president of the Southern Historical As-
sociation, helping to preserve and advance the reputations
of such Confederate leaders as Robert E. lee, Thomas
“Stonewall” Jackson, and others. In his later years, he
moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he retired and
also worked with former Confederate general P. G. T. Beau-
regard on the Louisiana lottery. He died in Lynchburg,
Virginia, on 2 March 1894 at the age of 77.
References: Early, Jubal, Jubal Early’s Memoirs: Auto-
biographical Sketch and Narrative of the War Between the
States (Baltimore, Md.: Nautical & Aviation Publishing
Company of America, 1989); Bushong, Millard Kessler,
Old Jube: A Biography of General Jubal A. Early (Boyce,
Va.: Carr Publishing Company, 1955); Gallagher, Gary
W., Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History:
A Persistent Legacy (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette Univer-
sity Press, 1995); Mahr, Theodore C., The Battle of Cedar
Creek: Showdown in the Shenandoah, October 1–30, 1864:
Early’s Valley Campaign (Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard,
1992).Edmund II Ironside (ca. 980–1016) English king
Born about 980 or 981, Edmund was the son of King
Ethelred the Unready (reigned 978–1016). Ethelred
died on 22 April 1016, and his son was crowned king of
England at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London the following
day. The year before, he had defied his father and mar-
ried Ealdgith, the widow of a Danish lord, one of many
who had invaded England.
After the Dane Cnut Sveinsson—better known
today as Canute—invaded England in 1015, Edmund
raised a small army to resist him. In 1016, Edmund
fought four major battles against Canute’s forces, in-
cluding at Penselwood and Sherston, and Edmund
turned back to defeat Canute’s siege of London. How-
ever, on 18 October 1016 at Assandun (now Ashingdon,
in Essex), Edmund and his forces suffered a devastating
defeat when the Mercians, one of the clans in his force,
refused to fight. Canute decided to meet Edmund at
a summit at Deerhurst, an island in the River Seven,
where the two men reached an agreement to divide the
English kingdom between them.
Edmund—who had earned the nickname “Iron-
side” from wearing armor in battle—died mysteriously
on 30 November 1016, having either been murdered
or succumbed to disease; he was buried in the Glaston-
bury Abbey. Canute then took control of all of England,
reigning until his own death in 1035.References: Hunt, William, “Edmund or Eadmund,
called Ironside,” in The Dictionary of National Biogra-
phy, 22 vols., edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney
Lee, et al. (London: Oxford University Press, 1921–22),
VI:403–405; Hilliam, David, “Edmund II (Ironside),” in
Kings, Queens, Bones and Bastards: Who’s Who in the English
Monarchy from Egbert to Elizabeth II (Thrupp, Stroud,
Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 20–21;Jubal Anderson Early
eDmunD ii iRonSiDe