Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/873

Rh Sailor's Creek and surrendered with the remnant of Kershaw's and Custis Lee's divisions. As a prisoner of war he was sent to Johnson's island and held with other officers until paroled in June, 1865. He then returned to his home and resumed the practice of law, which he continued until compelled to abandon it by failing health. In 1876 he was elected treasurer of Northampton county and continued in office until 1889, when he removed to Washington to spend in quiet retirement the remainder of his days.

Major Alfred R. Courtney, distinguished in the artillery service of the Confederate States army and since the war prominent in the legal profession at Richmond, Va., entered the Confederate service in the spring of 1861 with the rank of lieutenant in the Hampton artillery. While in camp he was elected captain of another artillery company, which was mustered in July 8, 1861, and was subsequently known as Courtney's battery. Attached to the division of Maj.-Gen. Richard S. Ewell, he commanded his battery in the engagements at Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys and Port Republic, in the Valley campaign of Jackson in 1862, and moving thence to the defense of Richmond, served with distinction in the Seven Days' fighting around Richmond. His gallantry at this time won him promotion to the rank of major of artillery, and the command of the artillery of Ewell's division. With this command he participated in the following: Manassas campaign, fighting at Slaughter Mountain and the second battle of Manassas, and subsequently at Harper's Ferry, Bristoe Station and Fredericksburg. Then being transferred to the department of East Tennessee he fought at the battles of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, and subsequently took part in the Atlanta campaign, commanding a battalion of the artillery of Hood's division of the army of Tennessee. At the battle of Resaca he was seriously wounded, but was able to resume his command and participate in the three days' battles about Atlanta and the encounter at Jonesboro, Ga. In the spring of 1865, at Columbus, Miss., he was put in command of a battalion of artillery, organized from the remnants of various batteries left from the Tennessee campaign, and with this force reported to General Beauregard at Augusta, Ga., where he was on duty when the armies surrendered in the east. He was paroled at Augusta by General Fry, a Confederate officer who was given that authority by General Sherman. Major Courtney returned to his home at Richmond, on the close of hostilities, and embarked in the career of a lawyer, in which he has since then become distinguished. Soon after his return he was elected commonwealth attorney for Henrico county, but was debarred from holding this office by the military authority which was then supreme. In 1870 he was elected to the State senate from Henrico county and sat in that body one term. His prominent service in the armies of Northern Virginia and Tennessee renders him a conspicuous figure among the survivors of the Confederate armies, and his career in civil life has been no less honorable and manly.

John Cowles, a gallant Confederate soldier, was a native of James City county, Va., and left his occupation as a farmer in April, 1861, in answer to the call of his State, and enlisted as a private in a company of troopers which was assigned to the Fifth Virginia regiment of cavalry, Company H, then under the command of Colonel