CSA Bios: Lovell, Long, Lomax

[Gil R.]

Okay, I made some changes. We can skip the Spotsylvania thing, since it doesn't seem essential.

Brig. Gen. Armistead Lindsay Long (b. 1825, d. 1891). Long’s greatest contributions might have come long after the end of the Civil War: he was a biographer of Gen. Robert E. Lee – the work, “Memoirs of Robert E. Lee,” is called one of the ablest contemporary biographies of Lee by Ezra Warner in “Generals in Gray” – and wrote history articles from 1870 until his death, despite having completely lost his sight due to lingering trauma from combat. Long was born in Campbell County, Virginia, on September 3, 1825, and attended the U.S. Military Academy, graduating seventeenth out of forty-four in the Class of 1850. Long was assigned to artillery duty at posts in Florida, served on the western frontier, and did garrison duty at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina. On May 20, 1861, he was made aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, his father-in-law. Much to Sumner’s chagrin, Long resigned his U.S. Army commission on June 10 and was appointed a major of artillery in the Confederate Army. Long was initially attached to the staff of Gen. William Loring in western Virginia, but later in the year was ordered to report to Lee in Charleston, where he was commanding coastal defenses, and became the chief of ordnance and artillery for Lee’s Department of South Carolina and Georgia. Continuing in that capacity when Lee became chief military advisor to Pres. Jefferson Davis, Long became Lee’s military secretary (with the rank of colonel) when the general took over the Army of Northern Virginia the following June, handling most of his paperwork along with Maj. Charles Marshall. Normally found carrying out these duties, Long also served in combat, commanding artillery units at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Long’s performance at Gettysburg was commended by Lee, and resulted in his promotion to brigadier general on September 21, 1863 and reassignment as chief of artillery for Gen. Richard Ewell’s II Corps. Long served in this role at Bristoe Station and Mine Run, and also during the Overland Campaign of May-June 1864. That summer he commanded Gen. Jubal Early’s artillery during the Valley Campaign and raid on Washington, D.C., before rejoining Lee’s army at Petersburg and eventually surrendering at Appomattox Court House. After the war, Long was the chief engineer of a Virginia canal company until he became blind, when he took up writing. Long wrote on a slate that his family members would copy, sometimes dictating the text instead. In addition to the work on Lee, which was published in 1886, he wrote an unpublished recollection of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Long died in Charlottesville, Virginia, April 29, 1891, having moved there after his wife was appointed postmistress by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant. (Bio by Bill Battle)