By Dave Batalo and Hunter Lesser
Basking in the glow of victory after the Battle of Rich Mountain, Maj. Gen. George McClellan eyed hundreds of forlorn Confederate prisoners. One group stood out starkly—a well-dressed company of college boys from Hampden-Sydney, Va.
Hampden-Sydney College was organized a century earlier in Prince Edward County, with the purpose of forming good men and good citizens. The 10th oldest college in the United States had been in continuous operation since November 10, 1775.
As tensions rose across the South after President Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Hampden-Sydney responded. In early 1861 as Southern states seceded from the Union, a self-organized militia company appeared on campus and began afternoon drills, led by the college president, Rev. Dr. John Mayo Pleasants Atkinson. A beloved academic and spiritual leader, Dr. Atkinson was no military man. During one drill, he marched the boy company straight into a brick wall, their faces pressed into the bricks until he could figure what order to give next.
Nonetheless, by the spring of 1861 the company had become well organized under Atkinson’s tutelage. The young men chose “Hampden-Sydney Boys” as their company name and the community began the task of outfitting them.
Local women sewed their uniforms of gray jackets and trousers. A distinctive matching hat had a straight brim with the letters HSB on the band. Local blacksmiths forged large, fierce-looking knives for the company, which were intended to “carve the enemy.” Arming the boys with muskets proved a challenge, however, so some brought weapons from home.
A portrait of one of its number survives to confirm the historical accuracy of the uniform description. This sixth-plate tintype is the only known photograph of a fully-outfitted Hampden-Sydney Boy. He is William Henry Harrison Ewing, a 20-year-old college junior in the spring of 1861. He sits with legs crossed and a double barrel shotgun in hand. A holstered revolver hangs from his waist belt. The side knife tucked into the belt was likely one made by local blacksmiths. A watch chain hangs from a buttonhole in his shell jacket, leading to a pocket where the watch is placed. He wields a double barrel shotgun, which suggests he may have brought it from home until the issue of muskets to the company. The uniform matches contemporary descriptions, with jacket, trousers, and a hat of gray material. The hat itself has the straight brim as described with the letters HSB on the band.
Ewing and the rest of the Hampden-Sydney Boys, like other green recruits of 1861, were anxious to go to war. On May 28, they received orders to proceed to a camp of instruction in Richmond. With Dr. Atkinson as their captain, they left a crowd of adoring ladies and took the train from Farmville with bands playing “Dixie” and “The Marseillaise.” At Camp Lee, they received drill instruction from Virginia Military Institute cadets, who were reportedly not popular with the Hampden-Sydney Boys. They mustered in as Company G of the 20th Virginia Infantry, led by a dapper Lt. Col. John Pegram, West Point 1854.
Meanwhile, a 19,000-strong Union army led by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, West Point 1846, had crossed the Ohio River and invaded Virginia’s northwestern counties. On June 3, a rag-tag group of volunteers had been routed at Philippi, considered by historians as the first land battle of the Civil War.
Six days later, the Hampden-Sydney Boys and the rest of the 20th boarded a train on the Virginia Central Railroad, bound for Western Virginia to reinforce the volunteers driven from Philippi. Other Confederate forces hastened to their support. Altogether, they formed a little Confederate “Army of the Northwest,” less than 5,000 strong. Newly minted Brig. Gen. Robert S. Garnett took command.
The talented Garnett, Robert E. Lee’s former adjutant, fortified two key turnpike passes—at Rich Mountain and Laurel Hill—blocking McClellan’s advance. Garnett established headquarters at Laurel Hill, about 16 miles north of Rich Mountain.
The 20th reached Rich Mountain on July 2, where Lt. Col. Pegram took command of 1,300 Confederates on the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, in a strong natural position at the western base of the mountain. The regiment made camp and helped fortify “Camp Garnett.”
The Hampden-Sydney Boys got their first taste of combat on a scout to Middle Fork Bridge on July 7, clashing with McClellan’s advance. By the afternoon of July 9, McClellan’s three brigades reached Roaring Creek, barely a mile from the Confederates at Rich Mountain. That evening, Union regimental bands struck up familiar hymns that drifted toward Camp Garnett.
The Hampden-Sydney Boys answered in song.
A Union reconnaissance convinced McClellan that a frontal attack would be “at least doubtful.” One of McClellan’s brigadiers, William S. Rosecrans, proposed a flank march using David Hart, 22, as his guide. Hart, a strong Unionist descended from Revolutionary patriots, lived on a farm at the crest of Rich Mountain.
In the predawn hours of July 11, Rosecrans led a brigade of Union troops on a march around the Confederate left flank. Following its young guide, the brigade took a rugged route up the wooded slopes of Rich Mountain. No artillery could follow. Late that afternoon in a driving rainstorm, they struck a reinforced rebel picket post on the mountaintop behind Camp Garnett. Sheltered behind logs and boulders, 310 Confederate defenders held back more than six times their number for more than two hours before yielding.
Lieutenant Col. Pegram gambled that McClellan would launch a frontal attack; now his force was trapped between two Union columns. Abandoning Camp Garnett near midnight, Pegram’s command fled through the dark woods. Ultimately Pegram and nearly 600 Confederates surrendered to McClellan. Among that number were Ewing and the Hampden-Sydney Boys.
Unprepared for the large number of prisoners, General-in-Chief Winfield Scott directed McClellan to release most of them on parole. At this time, the Hampden Sydney Boys caught McClellan’s watchful eye. He was aghast at their tender ages and fresh-faces. All were sent home on a parole of honor until released by exchange. “Boys,” he lectured them in a fatherly tone, “Go back to your college; Take your books and become wise men.”
Ewing honored his parole until exchanged. In August 1862, he joined the ranks of Company K of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. He served a brief stint as a bugler at headquarters and suffered a gunshot wound in the arm in August 1864. Though the circumstances of his wounding are not recorded, the 3rd was fighting in the Shenandoah Valley at this time.
Ewing survived the war and became a county surveyor and member of the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors. He also served as the county treasurer and two terms in the Virginia General Assembly. He died on Sept. 2, 1924, and is buried in the Meherrin Presbyterian Church Cemetery.
Ewing’s service is a reminder of the schoolboys who went to war in support of the Southern cause, who were not from the well-known military institutions such as the Virginia Military Institute or the Citadel.
References: Thompson, First in War: The Hampden-Sydney Boys (20th Virginia Infantry Rgt., Co. G); Gage, Southside Virginia in the Civil War; Lesser, Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided; Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume II, pp. 193-288.
Dave Batalo is a collector of identified Virginia soldier cased images and the proprietor of Richmond Civil War Antiques. He is president of the Central Virginia Civil War Collectors Association. Dave is retired from Dominion Energy, where he spent his career in nuclear power. He is an MI Senior Editor.
Hunter Lesser is a retired archaeologist, educator and preservationist. A founding member of the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation, he is a lifelong collector of the 1861 West Virginia campaign—the first of the Civil War.
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