Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/850

792 Williams, by whom he has two children: Katherine E. and Edith.

Major James McDowell Carrington, a prominent attorney at the National capital, was among the earliest to enlist in the military forces of Virginia, and had a brilliant career in the army of General Lee as an artillery officer. He was born at Berry Hill, in Halifax county, September 11, 1838, which was the residence of his father, Gen. Edward C. Carrington, also a native of that county. Subsequently the family removed to Botetourt county, where General Carrington died in 1856, after which the widowed mother and her son removed to Charlottesville, Va., where the latter attended the university of Virginia. He was occupied as a student when there occurred the first premonition of the approaching conflict, the raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. On this occasion a military company, called the Sons of Liberty, was organized at the college, which he joined and accompanied as a private to the scene of action, and was then promoted to corporal. When quiet was restored, the company was disbanded and Carrington returned to his studies, until Virginia troops were again called out to meet the threatened invasion of the State. His first service was on the staff of Gen. John B. Floyd, to whom he was related by marriage of the general to the sister of Mrs. Carrington. General Floyd was in command in the Kanawha valley, and young Carrington participated in his campaigns as aide-de-camp until after the successful affair at CarnifixCarnifex [sic] Ferry, in August, 1861, when he returned to his home at Charlottesville and organized a battery of six guns. Of this organization he was elected captain and with it took the field in the command of Gen. Stonewall Jackson, serving under that great leader until he fell at Chancellorsville. He joined Jackson at Port Republic and participated in all his subsequent battles except that of Sharpsburg. At Gettysburg he was attached to General Early's division of Ewell's corps. Captain Carrington continued to serve with the Charlottesville battery until after the battle of Spottsylvania Court House. There, at bloody angle, on May 12, 1864, in the hottest of the desperate fighting, he commanded his battery and Tanner's, of Richmond, and by his gallantry earned promotion to major. The appointment was made but the commission never reached him, as he was captured in a Federal charge and was fated never to rejoin the army of Northern Virginia. From the field of battle he was transferred to Fort Delaware and there held as, a prisoner of war until September, 1864, when, in company with six hundred other Confederate officers, he was taken to Morris island, S. C, where for eight weeks they lay under fire of the batteries on Morris and Sullivan islands. Subsequently he was held at Fort Pulaski about one month and at Hilton Head, S. C, for forty-three days, after which he was sent North again, where the weary imprisonment was continued until June 12, 1865. Then long after the war had ceased, he was liberated by command of General Grant. He returned at once to Virginia and in 1870 made his home at Richmond, where he engaged in the study and practice of law. For one term he served as commonwealth attorney for Henrico county. After this he spent one winter in New York city, where he was admitted to the bar, and removed from there to Washington, D. C., which has since been