University of Virginia Library

VI. Paladins and Martyrs

Dabney Carr Harrison was sprung from a family of
great distinction, which had been associated with the
soil of Virginia from the earliest colonial era. Even
in childhood, he was remarkable for his knowledge.
At nine years of age, he had read Hume's History of
England from its beginning to its conclusion; and was
so far advanced in his studies by fifteen, that he was
able to enter the sophomore class at Princeton University.
After a course in the School of Law at the University of
Virginia, spread over two years, he returned to Martinsburg,
in Jefferson county, where the members of his immediate
family were residing. At this time, when he
stood upon the threshold of his majority, he is said to
have possessed a countenance that was classical in feature,
and serene and contemplative in expression; a nature
that was at once frank, cordial, and fearless; and manners
singularly gentle and refined. His disposition had
always been softened by a profound but unobtrusive
piety; and he soon came to the decision that the ministry
of the gospel was to be his real vocation in life.

At twenty-seven years of age, Harrison was stationed
at the University of Virginia as the chaplain of the institution.

His incumbency was marked by the establishment
of the Young Men's Christian Association, and by
a revival of religious feeling, that was largely attributable
to his own saintly example, untiring zeal, and boundless
sympathy, in responding to every call for spiritual
assistance. He appeared like a youthful apostle returned
to life from the infancy of the Christian faith,
with a spirit touched with the primitive simplicity and
devotion that glorified that younger age. "I never knew
him," said an intimate friend of these years, "to neglect
a duty or even to postpone one. He was always faithful
to his country, and faithful to his God." "Who
that heard his last prayer amongst us," exclaims Dr.
McGuffey, "can ever forget the man or his manner as he
stood in the pastor's pew in front of the pulpit at the
close of the sermon (by another), and pleaded with God
for his country and the enemies of that country."

The war had now begun, and in a short time, the news
arrived that two of his cousins, men of brilliant promise
and graduates of the University, Holmes and Tucker
Conrad, of Winchester, had been killed. Then followed
the announcement that a third cousin, Carter H. Harrison,
had fallen, then that his own brother also had perished.
"I must take his place," was his quiet response
to this last fateful message. After he had participated
in the tumult of the actual battlefield, he said, with that
instinctive courage, and that impulsive charity, which
were combined in his nature in equal proportions, "I
can fight for my country, but I cannot hate my enemy."
Promoted to a captaincy as a reward for his fidelity and
intelligence in the discharge of the military duties assigned
him, he took quick advantage of every opening
to administer as pastor to the spiritual wants of his soldiers.
"While in camp in Richmond," we are told by

Dr. Hoge, "he moved about as one whose superiority
was tacitly acknowledged without exciting ill-will or envy;
and when he left us, he was regretted as one whose
place was not to be filled again." The men of his company
detected in his character the purity of womanhood
blended with the valor of manhood; and he is said to
have given them, in his example, an impression of the
power and sweetness of religious principles far deeper
than any they had previously experienced. "You ought
to be braver than the rest of us," remarked an officer to
him, who had observed his perfect self-possession on the
field of battle. "Why so?" was the response. "Because
you have everything settled for eternity. Because
you have nothing to fear after death."

It was asserted of him by the troops that served under
him, that he never gave them the order "go on." It
was invariably, when they were about to advance against
the enemy, "come on." His commands were always
delivered from in front of them; never from behind
them. He fell at last shot through the lung, after
three bullets had passed through his hat, and one across
his temple, leaving a bloody streak in its course. "I die
content and happy," he said not long before he expired,
"trusting in the merits of my Saviour, Jesus Christ. I
commit my wife and children to their Father and mine."
A short feverish sleep preceded his last breath. "Company
K," he cried out, starting up in his bed, "you have
no captain now, but never give up, never surrender."
"A gentleman, a scholar," was the comment of the Rev.
J. M. Atkinson, his associate in the ministry, when told
of his death, "a martyr to his conscientious conviction
of public duty and uncalculating devotion to his country.
Among the deified heroes of ancient song, in the golden
record of Grecian fame, in the stirring chronicle of the

mediaeval knighthood, in the ranks of war, in the halls of
learning, in the temple of religion, a nobler name is not
registered than his, nor a nobler spirit mourned."

Randolph Fairfax, the grandson of the ninth Baron
Fairfax, of Cameron, was sprung from a family which
had been conspicuous in England and America through
eight centuries,—representatives of its various branches
had won distinction at the council-table, in the camp, on
the bench, and in the church. Through his mother, a
descendant of Archibald Cary, he was a near kinsman
of the Randolphs, Lees, and Carters, and other eminent
families long associated with the social and political history
of the State. When the war began, he was a student
at the University of Virginia, and joining the
Rockbridge Artillery, was thrown, in its ranks, with
many of the bravest and noblest spirits that entered the
Confederate armies, young men of remarkable talents,
of finished education, and of the highest social station.
In the long interval between March and December, 1862,
—during which time there occurred a succession of desperate
campaigns,—he never asked for a furlough, and
was very rarely off duty. The searching trials, in the
form of the almost unprecedented perils and privations
which he was called upon to pass through, left his spirit
serene and unshaken. His comrades spoke of him as
the model soldier, "because he was scrupulously exact in
the discharge of every order, exemplary in his endurance
of hardship, brave, self-possessed, and efficient in
action."

"Morally, I have not known his superior, and intellectually
he was one of the first young men of his day,"
was the tribute of the Rev. J. P. McGuire, his former
teacher. "A faithful soldier of his country and of his
God," said Kinloch Nelson, a comrade, who was himself

the personification of the Christian warrior, "modest
in manners, unselfish in disposition, never swerving from
the path of duty. In many situations, I have seen him
tested, and in all he evinced the same heroism." "If
there was one trait in him more striking than others,"
we are told by Berkeley Minor, another comrade, "it
was his calm, earnest, trustful demeanor in time of battle,
resulting, as I believe, from his abiding trust in the
providence and love of God." "I have never known a
young man," said Colonel Poague, "whose life was so
free from the frailties of human nature, and whose character
in all its aspects formed so faultless a model for
the imitation of others." And General Lee himself,
who must have witnessed ten thousand acts of gallantry
and self-sacrifice performed by his soldiers on the battlefield,
wrote to the stricken father, when he heard of the
son's death, "I have watched his conduct from the commencement
of the war, and have pointed with pride to the
patriotism, self-denial, and manliness of character he has
exhibited."

In all that splendid roll of youthful martyrs, there
was not one who exemplified more fully than Lewis M.
Coleman did the brief and simple but noble legend upon
the tomb of Joseph Cox, which we have already quoted:
"Born a gentleman, bred a scholar, and died a Christian
soldier." He was sprung from the family which numbered
in its membership the most distinguished headmaster
in the history of Virginia, Frederick W. Coleman;
and he himself exhibited, almost from childhood, the
tastes of an acquisitive and discriminating scholar.
When he went up to the University of Virginia in 1844,
still a youth in years, he was so thoroughly prepared for
his new classes, his habits of application were so matured
and so fixed, his enthusiasm for every branch of academic

knowledge was so consuming, that he took at once a
position in the very first rank of his fellows. He closed
his career in those halls as a master of arts. We have
already described the extraordinary value of his educational
work as principal of Hanover Academy, the reward
of which was his appointment to the vacant chair of
Gessner Harrison. As our previous narrative has revealed,
Harrison was the most famous teacher of the
ancient languages of his day in the South, and no higher
professional compliment could have been paid his former
pupil than to single him out as the proper successor of
so great an instructor.

Coleman had been trained in the school of the straightest
states-rights, but it was not alarm for the safety of
these principles, but rather resentment at the invasion
of his native commonwealth, which prompted him to
resign his professorship and enter the army. He was
elected to the captaincy of a company raised by his own
energy; and soon showing himself to be an expert in
drill, and in the science of artillery also, to which arm of
the service he belonged, and exhibiting too an unusual
capacity to control and direct men, he was advanced to
a majority, after he had passed without a scratch through
two of the most sanguinary campaigns of the war.
When the Army of Northern Virginia was reorganized
in 1862, the opportunity to go back to his former duties
at the University was again open to him, but he refused
to leave his post, and, in the end, died of a wound received
in one of the assaults during the battle of Fredericksburg.
As he lay on his last bed, he said, in a moment
of transient hopefulness, that, should he recover,
he would at once take his station again at the front with
his surviving comrades.

In becoming a soldier, Coleman had brushed to one

side all the alluring things to which his heart was devoted,
—books, kindred, friends, family, home. "Without
compulsion or persuasion," it was said of him at the
time, "he embraced a life of hardship, toil, want, and
danger, alike uncongenial with his habits and unsuited
to his tastes. No ardor for military glory urged him to
this course; no desire to win the applause of men; but
simply the sense of duty, which actuated him throughout
life. Neither the solicitations of friends, nor the sorrow
of separation from his beloved home and family, nor
hardship, nor sickness, nor wounds, nor death, had power
to shake the settled purpose of his soul." Throughout
his military service, he never omitted, as each Sunday
came around, to call the members of his command together
for religious worship, and his last words were,
"Tell General Lee and General Jackson that they know
how Christian soldiers can fight. I wish they could see
now how a Christian soldier can die."

Cotesworth Pinckney Seabrook, of South Carolina, a
student of 1860, was, in the memory of all who had
known him, as inspiring a figure as Coleman. "He
seemed raised up from among the mediaeval dead and
set in the midst of us," said W. Gordon McCabe, his
companion in college and comrade in arms, "to give proof
that the spirit of knightly courtesy, constancy, and valor
had not departed from our times." All these high
qualities had been inherited from an ancestry which embraced
a distinguished roll of names, among which were
those of Governor Seabrook and Charles Cotesworth
Pinckney, of the Revolution. During his sojourn as a
student at the Universty of Virginia, he showed a vivid
interest in the spiritual welfare of the rude mountaineers,
and, every Sunday, was in the habit of walking many
miles to conduct religious services for their benefit.

Even during this early period of life, he was remarkable
for his gentle humor and exquisite sensibility. Promptly,
when the telegraph announced that his native State had
voted to withdraw from the Union, he decided to return
to Charleston and volunteer as a soldier. The night before
his departure, his college mates hastened to his
room, and joining hands, sang Auld Lang Syne with all
the impulsive loyalty and fervor of their years. "Not
one of those who stood within that circle," says Colonel
McCabe, "failed to serve his country in arms. Not a
few of the brave young hearts then beating strong with
health and hope, and all the joyous valor of youth were
soon to be stilled on the field of battle."

But before that fate overtook Seabrook, he had many
opportunities of drinking deeply of all the perilous delights
of the warrior. "We had the satisfaction," he
wrote after first Cold Harbour, "of charging through
grape, canister, and bullets for half a mile." He spoke
of it, like the great Admiral Nelson, as if it were some
pleasant pastime that had suddenly and unexpectedly
fallen in his way. Frayser's Farm, Malvern Hill, Cedar
Mountain, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg,
—he fought upon all these fields; and wherever the
flying shots were thickest and the affray bloodiest, there
his youthful figure was to be descried, his spirit still as
full of "satisfaction" as it had been in the midst of the
rush and roar of Cold Harbour. "Have no fear for
me," he wrote his mother, "for I have no fear for myself.
My trust in God is always strong enough in such
circumstances as these to keep me cool and confident."

The following day,—the day of Chancellorsville,—
he was struck down; and at his burial, the entire regiment
assembled to honor his memory by their presence.
Wrapped around with his soldier's blanket, his body

was committed to the ground on the spot where he was
killed. His gay humor had never flagged under hardships
and privations; and his smile seemed only to grow
more radiant and more care-free, the more deadly the
perils of shot and shell which surrounded him. Thus
passed away a warrior, who, to his lamenting comrades,
represented the rarest union, as one of them said, "of
gentle and soldierly virtue, humble piety, splendid
courage, unstained purity, and complete self-abnegation."

John Morris was admitted to the University in 1858,
and would have won the degree of master of arts had
not the war interrupted his studies. He was soon enrolled
in the Goochland Artillery; and having been appointed
sergeant, took charge of a gun. Not a thought,
not an aspiration, of the man but was embarked in the
success of the cause; and it was said of him that he was
as anxiously interested as the captain in increasing the
efficiency of his company. His devotion to his gun was
as personal as if it had been a sentient and conscious
thing. The expertness which he exhibited in manipulating
it, and his perfect equanimity when under fire, aroused
the admiration and riveted the confidence of his officers
from the start. The only complaint made of his conduct
was that he was too indifferent to his own safety.
As a reward for his skill, tenacity, and bravery, he was
advanced to a captaincy; but he refused to accept this
higher station,—he was now lieutenant of ordnance,—on
the ground that it would compel him to remain too far
in the rear while his men were fighting hand to hand in
front. His insensibility to danger so often seemed so
rash and so unnecessary, that his comrades, in their solicitude
for his life, remonstrated with him; but he refused
to listen. When he heard the first roar of the
guns at Gettysburg, he hastened towards the advance line.

"Passing the hill upon which some officers were standing,
and which commanded a view of the whole field,"
says one of his fellow-soldiers, "he inquired of me for
Pegram's battalion of artillery (of which he was the
ordnance officer). Pointing out its position, I again
referred to his useless risking of his life. He made no
reply, but putting spurs to his horse, his erect and graceful
form soon disappeared, and was lost in the smoke and
tumult of battle. Half an hour later he was killed."

William Fauntleroy Cocke, of Oakland, Cumberland
county, Virginia,—an estate which had descended in his
family unbrokenly from the original grant from the
King,—was a grandson of Edmund Randolph, Secretary
of State in Washington's cabinet, and a near kinsman of
General John Hartwell Cocke. The spirit of his childhood
and youth was colored and moulded by the traditions,
habits, and convictions that prevailed in the typical
plantation home of his native State in the era of slavery.
Oakland offered a completely rounded picture of all the
finer feudal aspects of the old regime of the South,—a
large and devoted domestic circle, several hundred slaves,
a broad expanse of acres, abundance, ease, culture and
hospitality unbounded. Cocke, while still a boy, became
an expert in the numerous sports and accomplishments
of the country gentleman of that day,—was a fearless
rider, a tireless angler, and an unerring shot. But these
amusements did not divert his mind altogether from his
serious studies,—it was asserted of him that Virgil,
Xenophon, and Euclid even then divided his hours with
horses, dogs, guns, and fishing rods.

So vigorous was his frame, and so firm were his muscles,
in consequence of these previous exercises in the
open air, that, during his studentship at the University
of Virginia, he possessed the reputation of being the

strongest man within the precincts, although his competitors
were at least five hundred in number. No harsh
or rude expression to either child or servant, it was stated
of him at this time, could be recalled by anyone who
knew him. No college mate could justly accuse him of
an act of injustice, or impropriety, or even of ordinary
thoughtlessness. No professor had ever to reprove him
for any failure in study,—for he never failed,—and
yet he moved about among his comrades as lighthearted,
as genial, as free from any conscious pretension
to goodness, as the most popular leader in the neverending
frolics of college life. He was among the foremost
in every branch of sport which was then open to the
students' enjoyment; and at the same time, he shirked
none of the obligations of the lecture-room. Indeed,
so successful was he with his text-books that he graduated
in the four separate courses, upon the acquisition of
which he had concentrated his powers during his single
collegiate year.

Returning to Oakland, Cocke entered at once upon
the duties of a planter's life. The owner of an ancestral
home, the master of many slaves, the proprietor of farspreading
fields and woods, he responded, with all his
remarkable energy and intelligence, to the practical requirements
of his station. But yet he never suffered his
taste for classical literature to grow rusty by neglect.
It was said of him that he never mounted his horse in
the morning to ride over his farm in order to superintend
the operations of his servants without first slipping
a volume of Virgil or Horace or Ovid in his coat-pocket
to read by the way. It is even intimated that he
would sometimes become so absorbed in the Odyssey as
to be oblivious of the fact for the moment that his overseer
was impatiently awaiting his coming for the day's

instructions; and it was even asserted that the wit of
Aristophanes had been known to make him indifferent,
for the time being, to his black foreman's sage prognostications
upon the crops or the weather.

When war was declared, this young man was in the
possession of every gift which a benignant fairy could
bestow; an honorable family name, a beautiful inherited
home, a broad domain, troops of loyal and contented
bondsmen, youth, health, culture, independence, popular
esteem,—all were his in abundance. Without hesitation,
without reluctance, without apparently a natural
sigh in looking back upon all that he was to leave behind,
he entered the army as an unassuming soldier in the regular
line. Although he might have aspired to rank, he, in
his modesty and self-forgetfulness, asked no favor of his
fellow-soldiers, but took his place quietly among them,
equally the comrade of those who filled the most conspicuous
social position in the community and of those
who occupied the humblest. The landed proprietor, the
overseer, the blacksmith, the carpenter, every difference
in social station was swallowed up as they shouldered
their muskets and marched side to side to resist the invading
enemy, gallant brothers all in their sublime devotion
to the Southern cause.

There was no form of hardship, no variety of privation,
which the gently-nurtured, highly-educated Cocke
was not ready to undergo with a smile that never lost its
bright spontaneity. It was said of him that no man,
however brawny of arm and hardened to gross manual
labor, could, in digging trenches, make the dirt fly with
more energy than he. He led the stalwart line here
as he had led it in the athletic field at college. In the
midst of the rough incidents of camp life, and the impending
perils of skirmish and battle, he never lost that bearing

of exquisite courtesy, that spirit of unaffected benevolence,
which had distinguished his conduct in times
of peace. In the fight at Williamsburg, a portion of a
shell struck his hat from his head. So tattered became
his shoes from the roughest tramping, that, by the time
he joined his regiment in Richmond, his feet could be
seen through the holes. Injured severely in the knee at
Second Manassas, he was only able to hobble about during
several months, which interval he spent at home.
While passing his last days there, he became a member of
the church, and from this time until his death, a copy
of the Greek Testament, which he constantly read, was
carried upon his person. His comrades at the front
used the occasion of his absence to elect him a lieutenant
of their company,—a promotion which they knew
he would have refused had he been present at the meeting.
Before the lameness that resulted from his wound
had been cured, he reported again for duty. He took
part in all the battles and marches that followed the
month of January, 1863, and in the end, perished in the
holocaust of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.