Alexander Hunter was born around 1843 in Norfolk, Virginia, to Bushrod Hunter and Mary Blow. His father was an officer in the United States Navy who owned $30,000 of real estate and $40,000 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Alexandria County, Virginia.

 

He enlisted in the Confederate army on April 17, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company A of the 17^th Virginia Infantry later that day. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with dark hair and black eyes. The regiment took part in the First Battle of Bull Run, the Seven Days’ Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle of Fredericksburg.

 

Union forces captured him in the Battle of Glendale on June 30, 1862, and he spent the following month imprisoned in New York and Massachusetts. He was exchanged and released on July 31, 1862. He was captured again in the Battle of Antietam, but he apparently received a parole soon afterward.

 

He was transferred to Company H of the 4^th Virginia Cavalry on May 27, 1863. The regiment took part in the Battle of Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, the Shenandoah Valley campaign, and the Appomattox campaign. Union forces captured him again on January 8, 1864, and imprisoned him in Washington, D.C. They transferred him to Camp Chase, Ohio, in February 1864.

 

He apparently escaped from prison that spring and rejoined his regiment. He was wounded in the right leg on April 15, 1864, and again on May 7, 1864. He mustered out sometime afterwards.

 

After the war, Hunter discovered that Union officials had confiscated his family’s plantation. The Supreme Court returned the land to him in Bennett v. Hunter in March 1870. He worked as a clerk in the General Land Office, and he served in the Virginia General Assembly in the late 1870s.

 

He married Alice A. Swain on June 22, 1882. She allegedly left him in September 1892, and he sued for divorce in December 1894. He later married Filah Saunders. He published Johhny Reb and Billy Yank in 1905 and The Women of the Debatable Land in 1912. He died of tuberculosis on June 30, 1914, in Washington, D.C.

 

Image: Alexander Hunter (available from Wikicommons)

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