Background
Philip St. George Cocke was born on April 17, 1809, in Fluvanna County, Virginia, United States. He was the third child of John Hartwell Cocke and his wife Ann Blaus Barraud.
military planter Soldier writer
Philip St. George Cocke was born on April 17, 1809, in Fluvanna County, Virginia, United States. He was the third child of John Hartwell Cocke and his wife Ann Blaus Barraud.
Cocke attended the University of Virginia and later he entered the United States Military Academy, where he graduated with distinction in 1832.
Cocke served as second lieutenant and as adjutant in the 2nd Artillery at Charleston, South Carolina, 1832-1833; and resigned, April 1, 1834, to manage his extensive plantation interests in Virginia and Mississippi. To this occupation he devoted his energies until the outbreak of the Civil War, but conducted his seven plantations so systematically that he found opportunity to advance Southern agriculture by precept as well as practise. He had an elevated conception of agriculture as a profession, and while indorsing sound technical training insisted that general culture was scarcely less desirable for the planter.
As president of the Virginia Agricultural Society (1853 - 1856) he stimulated interest in progressive farming, and pointed out the opportunity of such a body not only for collecting and disseminating useful farming knowledge but also for serving as a farmers’ protective association. Besides publishing one volume, Plantation and Farm Instruction (1852), and his Address to the Virginia Farmers’ Assembly (pamphlet, 1856), he contributed numerous short articles to the press. From its beginnings he gave freely of time and money to the welfare of the Virginia Military Institute, served for nine years on its board, and founded there the first school of scientific agriculture in the state.
When Virginia seceded he was appointed brigadier-general in the state service and was assigned, April 21, 1861, the command of the important military district along the Potomac. Commissioned a colonel in the Confederate provisional army, after having charge of the mustering of volunteer forces throughout Piedmont Virginia, on May 9 he began the concentration of troops at Manassas Junction. He commanded the 5th Brigade of Beauregard’s army in the Manassas Campaign, and was thanked by Beauregard for strategic skill at Blackburn’s Ford. At First Manassas, with Evans’s demi-brigade and unattached companies also under his command, he was assigned to the Confederate left, along Bull Run. Although his projected advance upon Centreville was abandoned because of the Federal flanking movement, he sustained Schenck's attack on the Stone Bridge and Lewis’s Ford, sent regiment after regiment to the support of Johnston, and in the afternoon ‘‘led his brigade into action on the left with ‘alacrity and effect’”.
After eight months’ active service, during which he was appointed brigadier-general in the Confederate provisional army, he returned in shattered health to his home, “Belmead, ” in Powhatan County, where, overwrought and naturally impetuous, he took his own life.
Philip St. George Cocke was known as a skillful and chivalrous soldier in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He distinguished himself in organizing the defense of Virginia along the Potomac River and in participating in the Battle of Blackburn's Ford and in the Battle of Bull Run.
Cocke was a member of the Virginia Agricultural Society.
Cocke married, June 4, 1834, Sally Elizabeth Courtney Bowdoin, by whom he had four sons and seven daughters.
