INTRODUCTION

EVERY LINE OF THIS NARRATIVE by Lieut. Col. William Willis Blackford has the “feel” of the cavalry Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Authenticity is stamped on each paragraph. The historical evidence is that of an eye-witness. First as Adjutant of “Jeb” Stuart’s command and then as chief engineer and a member of the staff at cavalry headquarters, Blackford observed from his commander’s side nearly all the operations of the mounted troops from June, 1861, to the end of January, 1864. He had Stuart’s full confidence and he probably knew more of what prompted the moves of the “Beau Sabreur” than did any other staff officer who ever wrote of Stuart except H. B. McClellan and John Esten Cooke. In some respects, Blackford was a closer witness than either of these men. McClellan, an invaluable historical authority, did not join the staff until April, 1863. Cooke was a professional writer whose sketches of Stuart in Wearing of the Gray are the accepted, full-length literary portrait, but Cooke’s duties as inspector frequently kept him away from headquarters when events of interest were occurring. Besides, Colonel Blackford loved the life of a soldier. Cooke did not, and in his diary said so with complete and characteristic honesty. If, then, a reader wishes a sympathetic and intelligent close-up of Stuart and the interesting young men around him, here it is in Blackford’s memoirs. Regret will be felt, of course, that Blackford was not with Stuart at Yellow Tavern, when Lee’s most renowned cavalryman fought his last battle. Compensation for this is offered by the transfer of Blackford to most important service as second in command of the First Virginia Engineer troops. His immediate superior became Col. T. M. R. Talcott, a former member of the personal staff of Gen. R. E. Lee, and a son of Andrew and Harriet Hackley Talcott, the “beautiful Talcott” of Lee’s early days as an officer in the United States Army. Under the admirable leadership of Talcott and Blackford, the regiment deserved all that Colonel Blackford said of it. His narrative, in fact, is the only one that describes by examples and day-by-day report what the Engineer Troops accomplished. Colonel Talcott wrote in the Photographic History of the Civil War a brief account of the countermining at Petersburg; but the Colonel devoted most of his other articles to the defense of his “great captain” Lee and not to the glorification of his regiment or of his own service. Colonel Talcott long outlived his Lieutenant Colonel and did not come to the end of his days until 1920. In his old age he was a beautiful figure of gentility and modest scholarship.

Of his relations with Colonel Talcott, the author of these memoirs writes appreciatively. That was characteristic of him and of his able family. Colonel Blackford was one of five brothers in the Confederate service. They inherited capacity and had from youth the environment that shaped firmly their character. Their father was William M. Blackford, one-time editor of the Lynchburg Virginian and later cashier of the Exchange Bank of that city, a man of solid strength and dependable judgment. Mrs. Blackford was born Mary Berkeley Minor, daughter of Gen. John Minor of Fredericksburg, an officer of the Virginia Line in the War of 1812 and an eloquent, efficient lawyer. Nearly all the Minors of this line were exceptional in capacity and in diligence. The best known of them, a cousin of Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford, was John B. Minor, for a half a century professor of law at the University of Virginia and undoubtedly one of the foremost law teachers of his generation. Had he followed letters he would have won eminence because he possessed a style of vividness, vigor and subtle rhythm. Some passages from his published Institutes of Common and Statute Law have genuine majesty.

William Willis Blackford, inheritor of this same gift of words, was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, March 23, 1881 and was the eldest of the sons of William M. and Mary Berkeley Minor Blackford. The second son of this union was Captain Charles Minor Blackford, a member of the Second Virginia Cavalry until 1863 and then, because of partial disability, Judge Advocate of the Military Court of the Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Third among the sons was Benjamin Lewis Blackford, a private in the renowned Eleventh Virginia Infantry, Samuel Garland’s regiment. Subsequently he was a Lieutenant of Engineers and was stationed at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he had a love affair that fulfilled perfectly all the requirements of the romantic literature of the time, except that it did not lead to marriage. The fourth son was Launcelot M. Blackford, a private of the Rockbridge artillery, then clerk of his brother Charles’s military court and later Adjutant of the Twenty-fourth Virginia Infantry, William R. Terry’s Brigade, Pickett’s Division. Launcelot Blackford became, after the war, the head of the Episcopal High School, near Alexandria, Virginia, where his influence was particularly stimulating to those who studied under him Shakespeare and the English Bible.

Youngest of the soldierly Blackfords was Eugene, Major of the Fifth Alabama Infantry and, in all but formal commission, its Lieutenant Colonel. His service, which was full of interest, carried him farther from Lynchburg than most of his brothers had to go.

Major Blackford’s letters, Benjamin Lewis Blackford’s fervid account of his courtship, and hundreds of papers equally exciting appear in the Blackford correspondence, which is almost unique. Mrs. William M. Blackford, mother of the five Confederate soldiers, must have spent much of her time in writing them. Her husband was not backward, either, in sending his boys the news of home. They responded with frequency and zest and gave their parents a verbal picture, rich in detail of camp and court and war on many fields. Scarcely any of the letters from “the boys” were lost during or after the war. The whole body of Colonel Blackford’s letters to his parents from youth to middle life has been preserved. Some of the letters of Charles M. Blackford and the diary of his father were edited by Mrs. Charles M. (Susan Leigh Colston) Blackford and were published in 1894-96. Unfortunately these Memoirs of Life in and out of the Army in Virginia during the War Between the States were issued in so small an edition that they have been accessible to few readers, though several of the letters are thrilling. Captain Blackford’s account of Appomattox, in particular, is one of the most moving of all narratives of April 9, 1865. It is quoted briefly in 4 R. E. Lee, 146 ff. Letters from the other sons have been copied and bound but never have been published. The most informative of them, with a reprint of some of Charles M. Blackford’s, would make an interesting supplement to these memoirs of Colonel W. W. Blackford.

The Colonel himself might have continued to hold the interest of readers had he carried his narrative through the long post-bellum period, of which there are few portrayals in the autobiography of informed Southern men and women. For two years after the war, Colonel Blackford was Chief Engineer of the Lynchburg and Danville Railroad, now a part of the main line of the Southern Railway. Then he went to Louisiana to develop a sugar plantation given him and his children by his father-in-law, Ex-Governor Wyndham Robertson. In a flood of 1874, Colonel Blackford lost overnight the labor of years and all the improvements he had made to the property. Dauntless, he returned to his native State and accepted in 1880 a professorship of Mechanics and Drawing at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. In two years, larger professional opportunities led him to resign, but not until, as superintendent of grounds and buildings, he had completed a design for the beautification of the site. This plan, faithfully executed, gave to the large campus of V. P. I. many of its trees and much of its present dignity. From Blacksburg, the Colonel went into the service of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as one of its construction engineers on the line to Philadelphia. When that was completed, he assumed charge of the location and building of the railroad from Lynchburg, Virginia, to Durham, North Carolina. In June, 1890, when he was in his sixtieth year, he retired from his profession, purchased a farm on Lynnhaven Bay, Princess Anne County, Virginia, and engaged in oyster planting. His end came from apoplexy, May 1, 1905, when he was 74 years of age.

The date of the writing of his military memoirs is not given, but internal evidence shows that the work was taken in hand prior to the death of his mother, which occurred in 1896. In general, the precision of statement and unpremeditated clarity of detail suggest a date of composition considerably prior to 1896. If the matter becomes one of importance to any historical investigator, it may be possible to approximate the date more closely by comparing the several manuscript copies in family hands.

Subsequent to the completion of his memoirs, Colonel Blackford undertook the correction of some of the mistakes he, like every other observant writer, had found in his text. The publishers state that this has presented some editorial puzzles which they have not felt they should undertake to solve. Such contradictions as exist in the text are not of major importance. Nor are Colonel Blackford’s errors serious. When he passed in his honest narrative from fact to opinion, he usually took pains to point out the transition. In a few instances he spun theories...