Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/706

654 Virginia. Subsequently he engaged in business at Richmond, but did not survive the first decade following the war, dying at Norfolk, July 30, 1875.

Brigadier-General Roger Atkinson Pryor was born near Petersburg, Va., July 19, 1828, and was graduated at Hampden-Sidney college in 1845, the university of Virginia in 1848. Subsequently he prepared for the legal profession, and was admitted to the bar, but relinquished the practice on account of delicate health, and entered journalism. After an association with the Washington Union he became editor of the Richmond Enquirer in 1853, and rapidly attained prominence. In 1855, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was sent to Greece by President Pierce, as special commissioner for the adjustment of certain difficulties with that government. On his return he established a political journal at Richmond, called The South, in which he presented with great vigor the most radical opposition to encroachments upon the local rights and industrial methods of the South. He was elected to Congress in 1859, to fill a vacancy, and was re-elected in 1860. While in Congress his aggressiveness and passionate oratory gave him national prominence, and led to several duels. He took a prominent part in the proceedings of the Charleston Democratic convention in 1860, and after the presidential election ardently advocated the formation of the Southern Confederacy and the union with it of Virginia. Repairing to Charleston, S. C., he became a member of the volunteer staff of General Beauregard, and with his comrade, A. R. Chisholm, accompanied Aide-de-camps James Chestnut and Stephen D. Lee in the visit to Fort Sumter April 12th, notifying Major Anderson that fire would be opened on the fort. Thence they went by boat to Fort Johnson, where Capt. George S. James was ordered to open the fire. James, who was a great admirer of Pryor, offered the honor to him, as General Lee relates, but he replied, with much the same emotion as had characterized Anderson's receipt of the notice of bombardment, "I could not fire the first gun of the war." From their boat midway between Johnson and Sumter, he witnessed the opening of the bombardment. After the flag on Sumter was shot down he was sent with Lee to offer assistance in subduing the fire in the fort, and discovered