Foreword
As a young archivist at the Virginia Historical Society, I first encountered records of some of the men who made up Fauquier’s Black Horse Troop, and I made my first discoveries about the exploits of Virginia’s 4th Cavalry Regiment during the terrible years of civil war in America.
I was at the time cataloging papers of some prominent nineteenth-century families in Fauquier County, among whom was Captain Robert Randolph. His experiences, and those of some of the men under his command that were preserved in those manuscripts, along with the reactions of family and friends on the home front to his exploits and death in action, opened important new vistas to someone who had, thus far in his brief professional career, been more focused on the broad themes of history than on the very real people who made history.
Not long after those intimate encounters with the records left by that generation of Virginians, I chanced to meet Lynn Hopewell in the Society’s library reading room. Over the ensuing years, as I have watched–and I hope helped–him investigate the lives of Robert Martin, his brothers, and other Confederate soldiers, I have come to know him as a perceptive scholar of America’s Civil War era, a diligent researcher, and a gifted writer.
This volume brings to life the men who served in a renowned Confederate unit, and the families and community they left behind them. It should remind us that as grand as the scale of war may be, it regularly comes down to individuals who do their duty as they see it, from motivations of which they themselves may often have an imperfect understanding. In the process, their stories may help us to grasp the true dimensions of valor.
E. Lee Shepard Director of Manuscripts and Archives Sallie and William B. Thalhimer III Senior Archivist Virginia Historical Society