Background
EARLY, Jubal Anderson was born on November 3, 1816 in Franklin County, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of the farmer and lawyer Joab Early and his wife Ruth (Hairston).
EARLY, Jubal Anderson was born on November 3, 1816 in Franklin County, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of the farmer and lawyer Joab Early and his wife Ruth (Hairston).
Graduated from the United States Military Academy, 1837. Studied law, 1838.
He attended Danville Male Academy and graduated eighteenth in a class of fifty from the U.S. Military Academy in 1837. Early was a Whig and an Episcopalian and a lifelong bachelor. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the army in 1837.
In 1838, he served in the Seminole War as a first lieutenant of artillery. He resigned his commission in 1839 to study law under Norbonne Taliaferro in Rocky Mount, Virginia. Early was admitted to the Franklin County bar in 1840.
He represented Franklin County in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1841-1842 and was commonwealth’s attorney from 1842 to 1852. During the Mexican War, he was a major of volunteers in 1847-1848. He resumed his law practice and lost a race for the state legislature in 1853.
At the Virginia secession convention, he was a unionist delegate from Franklin County and opposed secession. However, when the war began he entered the Confederate Army as a colonel of the 24th Virginia Regiment and commanded a brigade at the battle of First Manassas, following which he was promoted to brigadier general on July 21, 1861. He was wounded at Williamsburg on May 5, 1862.
He was a brigade commander at the battle of Second Manassas and a division commander at the battles of Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg in late 1862. Promoted to major general on January 17,1863, he distinguished himself at the battle of Gettysburg in July of that year. At the Wilderness in May 1864, he protected Lee’s flank, and at Spotsylvania he defeated General Ambrose Burnside.
Following his promotion to lieutenant general on May 31, 1864, he defeated General David Hunter at Lynchburg and executed a daring raid on Washington, D.C., before being defeated in the Virginia battles of Winchester and Fisher’s Hill in September 1864. Early was relieved from command a few days before Appomattox because his troops lost confidence in him. When the Civil War ended.
Early refused to surrender and escaped to Mexico. He sought other wars to fight—in Texas, Mexico, and Canada—but found no use for his talents. In 1869, he returned to Virginia and resumed his law practice, wrote his memoirs, and was the first president of the Southern Historical Society.
He remained unreconstructed. Late in his life he moved to New Orleans, where he supervised the Louisiana lottery. He returned to Virginia and died on March 2, 1894, in Lynchburg.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Member Virginia House of Delegates (Whig.