[The Reaper]

Ah yes, Old Jube. Lee's "Bad Old Man".

Jubal Anderson Early was born November 3, 1816, in Franklin County, Virginia, into a well-connected old Virginia family. His father operated an extensive tobacco plantation of more than 4,000 acres at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Early attended local schools as well as private academies in Lynchburg and Danville before entering West Point in 1833. After graduation in 1837 he served briefly in the Seminole War and then returned to Franklin County to study law. He began his practice in 1840 and served as prosecuting attorney for Franklin and Floyd Counties. His law career was temporarily interrupted by the Mexican War.

His character and personality provoked controversy. He was consistently described by his peers as eccentric, outspoken, caustic, opinionated, and a great swearer with imaginatively profane speech - so much so that General Lee referred to his as his "bad old man." As a delegate to the Secession Convention of 1861 he fought to keep Virginia in the Union, but when outvoted he threw his lot with his native state.

During the War, he served honorably in nearly every major engagement of the ANV, but bungled command of a division in Ewell's Corps on the first day at Gettysburg, reacting slowly and lethargically to Lee's orders to take Culp's Hill. Given his own command in the Shenandoah Valley, he advanced on Washington, D.C. in 1864, but suddered overwhelming defeats during his withdrawal back to the Valley. Early headed home, having been relieved of his command just ten days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

To his credit, Jubal Early never surrendered. Federal troops scoured Franklin County looking for him as he moved from place to place. Hiding at his old homplace, he was able to slip by a Union encampment nearby and escape south to voluntary exile in Mexico and Canada before being pardoned in 1868 by President Andrew Johnson. Early never took the oath and remained the unreconstructed Rebel. He returned to Lynchburg where he practiced law and became the major chronicler of the Southern Cause. Many others relied on Early for his uncanny memory of events during the war. As president of the influential Southern Historical Society, Early achieved with the pen what he could not with the sword. He became the primary spokesman for the Lost Cause and became the overwhelming authority on published Confederate history. In so doing he engineered the near deification of General Robert E. Lee. The old soldier Jubal Early died in Lynchburg in 1894 and was buried on his old battleground there; he had become a well-known Southern fold hero.

If he had not been so cantankerous in his disagreements with General Longstreet after the war, I could probably have forgiven his dabbling in the law.

Back to my premise, my initial research indicates approximately 1.5 Union generals who were lawyers to each Confederate general who was a lawyer. Yet they eventually won despite that. Shocking.

TR