The Virginia Colonels: Divided Loyalties at the Outbreak of the Civil War

ECW welcomes back guest author Collin Hayward.

Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause by Ty Seidule sent shockwaves across Civil War scholarship for its bold criticisms of Robert E. Lee and its thesis that Lee had committed treason by siding with the Confederacy. Among Seidule’s supporting arguments is a claim that of the eight colonels from Virginia actively serving in the Army at the outbreak of the Civil War, Lee was the only one to choose loyalty to his state over loyalty to his oath as a commissioned officer.[1] Since the book’s publication, this claim has been commonly circulated, but it raises interesting questions. Who were these other colonels who were presumably his peers in the pre-war army? And was Lee’s decision to side with Virginia really an anomaly compared to his peers?

At the time of Virginia’s secession, there were seven colonels actively serving in the U.S. Army from Virginia. These men were John Abert, Edmund Alexander, Philip Cooke, Thomas Fauntleroy, John Garland, Thomas Lawton, and Lee himself.[2] Seidule may count René De Russy, who was born in Haiti, but appointed to West Point by Virginia, but he was not promoted to colonel until 1863, or Matthew Payne who was brevetted to colonel at the time of Virginia’s secession.[3] Other candidates could be either Washington Seawell or George Thomas, both of whom were promoted to colonel when the resignation of other officers created vacancies.[4] Of these men, Seidule is correct that only Lee served in the Confederate Army, but that does not mean that the other colonels all served the Union cause.

Of the men holding the permanent rank of colonel, Lee was the second youngest at 54 years old (after Cooke who was 52). Due to slow career progression and the absence of any mandatory retirement, many of these officers were elderly and infirm. Before the end of 1861, Abert and Payne had retired, and Garland and Lawson had died of natural causes.[5]

Of the men who were young and healthy enough to lead troops in the war, Lee was not the only one who believed he owed a duty to his state. Fauntleroy also chose to resign his commission and accept an appointment in the Provisional Army of Virginia, though unlike Lee, he chose to resign when the Confederacy absorbed Virginia’s forces. He had accepted an offer to command the defenses of Richmond and began the organization of the city’s defenses while in the service of Virginia, but when it became clear to him that he would be commanding militia instead of regulars and that he would be subordinated to men he had outranked in the pre-war Army, he ultimately declined a Confederate commission.[6] Fauntleroy’s decision to resign his federal commission, accept a commission from a newly seceded Virginia, and ultimately pursue Confederate command (despite later refusing it) demonstrates Lee’s decision was not anomalous.

Colonels Alexander and Cooke did continue their service in the Union Army, as did newly promoted Colonels Seawell and Thomas. Edmund Alexander was serving on the frontier at the outbreak of the war and continued that service until 1862, when he was appointed to serve in non-combat roles in Missouri until the end of the war. Philip St. George Cooke was the only one of these pre-war colonels who actively led troops against Confederate forces. He commanded the Cavalry Reserve of the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign. He left active service after ordering a disastrous charge at Gaines Mill and being humiliated by his Confederate son-in-law, General J.E.B. Stuart, on the same campaign. He supported recruiting efforts throughout the war and continued his service after the war.[7]

For those men capable of active service, the option to resign and take no part in the war was no option at all. While officers too elderly or infirm to perform duties commanding troops or attending to the vast administrative demands of the growing wartime armies were not expected to take an active role in the war, younger officers faced enormous social pressure to continue their Army service or to join the forces of their home state.  Understanding why officers like Lee and Fauntleroy chose to resign their commissions to defend Virginia, while officers like Cooke and Alexander chose to continue their federal service requires analysis. Although Seawell and Thomas are interesting and compelling figures as Virginians who served the Union, they are excluded from this analysis because they were promoted to colonel because they had already made the choice to serve the Union. For the men already holding the rank, Virginia’s secession was a test of their loyalty to the Union, while the rank of colonel was a reward for the loyalty of these more junior officers.

Analysis of the pre-war careers of those officers who remained loyal to the Union and those officers who resigned their commissions to serve Virginia reveals a noteworthy trend. From the time of their commissioning to the outbreak of the war, Alexander and Cooke saw continuous service far from Virginia, whereas both Fauntleroy and Lee saw breaks in their service during which they were actively integrated into Virginia society.

From the time of his commissioning in 1823, Alexander was only once briefly posted back in proximity to Virginia during a short period of detached duty in Washington D.C. from his assignment at Fort Smith, Arkansas.[8] Cooke spent his pre-war career moving between hotspots, serving in campaigns against the Blackhawk, Apache, and Sioux; the Mexican War; the Utah Expedition; Bleeding Kansas; and serving as an observer of the Crimean War. He summarized his loyalty by stating “I owe Virginia little, my country much.”[9]

The officers who felt that their first duty was to Virginia served there for long stretches of their careers. Fauntleroy was commissioned at age 17 to serve as a lieutenant in the War of 1812. He studied and practiced law after the war and held elected office in Virginia as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He then returned to active service in the Second Seminole War, after which he continued to serve on the frontier and in the Mexican War. In 1861, he resigned his commission and post in command of the Department of New Mexico. He accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of Virginia, which he would later resign rather than accept a Confederate commission.[10] Lee served in engineer assignments at Fort Monroe, Virginia and in Washington, D.C. He also saw a break in his service during which he returned to Virginia. When his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in 1857, Lee took a leave of absence to personally run Custis’ Arlington plantation.[11]

This trend suggests that Seidule may have overstated his point. Lee’s actions were not an extreme outlier of behavior when compared to his peers. Those officers who had effectively made the Army their home over three or more decades chose to remain loyal to the Union, while those officers who retained close ties to Virginia chose to serve Virginia following secession. This trend is paralleled among other ranks. Of the two generals from Virginia in the pre-war Army, Winfield Scott chose to remain loyal while Joseph Johnston resigned to serve the Confederacy.[12] This trend is not surprising. These men took oaths at a time when there was no conflict of interest between their loyalties to their state and their country. When faced with a crisis of loyalty, several of these men who had provided decades of service to their country still felt that they could not take up arms against their home state. Whether Lee was a traitor for doing so is outside of the scope of this analysis, but Lee’s behavior does not appear as anomalous as Seidule suggests.

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Collin Hayward is a qualified Army Historian. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech and Master’s degrees from American University and the Army Command and Staff College.

Endnotes:

[1] Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2022), 226.

[2] “If Virginia Stands by the Old Union’ – Robert E. Lee Resigns from the U.S. Army – Richmond National Battlefield Park (U.S. National Park Service),” (U.S. National Park Service), June 6, 2025, www-nps-gov.translate.goog/rich/learn/historyculture/-if-virginia-stands-by-the-old-union-robert-e-lee-resigns-from-the-u-s-army.htm;

[3] Seidule, 223; Official Army Register for 1861, (Washington D.C.: Adjutant General’s Office, 1861), https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433008010542&seq=7&q1=rene, 9.: “If Virginia Stands by the Old Union”.

[4] “If Virginia Stands by the Old Union”.

[5] “If Virginia Stands by the Old Union”.

[6] “Thomas Turner Fautleroy,” Arthur J. Morris Law Library, accessed October 29, 2025, https://digitalhistory.law.virginia.edu/person/thomas-turner-fauntleroy.

[7] Edwin C. Bearss, “Philip St. George Cooke (1809–1895),” Encyclopedia Virginia, December 22, 2021, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/cooke-philip-st-george-1809-1895.

[8] George W. Cullum, “Edmund B. Alexander,” essay, in Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., from Its Establishment in 1802 to 1890 with the Early History of the United States Military Academy, 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1891), https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Army/USMA/Cullums_Register/358*.html.

[9] Bearss.

[10] “Thomas Turner Fauntleroy”.

[11] Elizabeth Brown Pryor, “Robert E. Lee (1807–1870),” Encyclopedia Virginia, February 18, 2025, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lee-robert-e-1807-1870.

[12] “If Virginia Stands by the Old Union”.