Wilcox County soldiers among those captured at Battle of Spottsylvania

Jubal Early

Tomorrow – May 12 – marks 159 years since the Jeff Davis Artillery was captured at the Battle of Spottsylvania in Virginia. It was on May 12, 1864 that the unit’s officers and many of its enlisted men were imprisoned for the remainder of the war. With almost 32,000 casualties on both sides, this battle was one of the bloodiest of the War Between the States.

The Jeff Davis Artillery was organized in June 1861 in Selma and was composed of men from Wilcox, Dallas, Lowndes and other Central Alabama counties. About one month later, the battery was sent to Virginia and was attached to General Jubal Early’s brigade. In 1862, at the battles of Seven Pines, Mechanicsville and Cold Harbor, near half the command was killed or wounded.

The unit went on to make “an excellent record” at the battles of South Mountain, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Martinsburg. Later, at the famous Battle of Gettysburg, the unit fought for three days and kept Union forces in check while pontoon bridges were constructed across the Potomac River, allowing Southern forces to escape back across the river.

Sources say that the battery “participated in the celebrated campaign of Lee and Grant from the Wilderness to Petersburg until the 12^th of May, 1864 at Spottsylvania Court House when all of the commissioned officers and a large part of the men were captured and never exchanged.” The remnant of the battery served with two Virginia batteries until Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.

Soldiers from Wilcox County who served in the Jeff Davis Artillery included M.L. Alexander, Joe Blankinship, W.J. Breithaupht, James Bently, Euphronus Carter, John W. Carter, John Colley, Alex Hunter, W.D. Key, John A. Logan, Patton McCondichie, John Mathews, John W. Purifoy, W.J. Polk, Ben J. Skinner, A.W. Skinner, Ira Skinner, Joe D. Stuart, Wm. Stuart, John B. Stuart, R.I, Stuart, Wm. Small, F.M. Wootan, I.P. Wootan and James Watson.

One of the most remarkable soldiers in this list was Judge John Wesley Purifoy, who fought in every engagement that the battery participated in. He was wounded in three battles and was one of only 17 left of the command to lay down their arms with Lee at Appomattox. He died in 1897 and is buried in the Old Snow Hill Cemetery.

Martin L. Alexander was born in October 1823 and died in July 1896 at the age of 72. He is buried in the Palmer Cemetery at Furman. Confederate records at the Wilcox County Courthouse reflect that Alexander was a farmer after the war and was discharged from service at Fairfax Court House in Virginia.

I combed local cemetery and courthouse records, but despite my best efforts, I could not find any additional information on the other men mentioned above. If anyone in the reading audience knows what became of these other service members, please let me know. Some probably moved out of Wilcox County after the war, but others may have died in northern prisons before the end of the war.