NICE BUST CDV OF GENERAL ROBERT E. RODES BY A RICHMOND PHOTOGRAPHER

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Vignette view of Rodes in Confederate uniform.

Clarity and contrast are good. Paper and mount are also good.

Reverse has a photographer’s imprint for VANNERSON & JONES… RICHMOND, VA.

Photo is from the collection of the late William A. Turner.

Robert Emmet Rodes was born at Lynchburg, Va., on the 29th of March, 1829.

Rodes spent his boyhood in his native city.  On July 4, 1848, he was graduated at the Virginia Military Institute, at Lexington.  Until 1854 he acted as assistant engineer of the Southside railroad, then going to Marshall, Tenn., and engaging in railroad construction.

His next employment, as assistant, and later, chief engineer of the Alabama & Chattanooga railroad, brought him to Tuscaloosa, where he made his home, becoming a citizen of Alabama.

At the very opening of the Civil War, he led a company to Fort Morgan, which became a part of the Fifth Alabama infantry, which regiment was organized and he elected its colonel on May 5, 1861.  The regiment was ordered to Virginia and was present at the battle of First Manassas, in a brigade commanded by R. S. Ewell, afterward lieutenant-general, but was not actively engaged.

On the 21st of October, 1861, Rodes was promoted to brigadier-general, and assigned to command the First Alabama brigade in the Virginia army, composed of the Fifth, Sixth, Twelfth and Sixty-first Alabama and Twelfth Mississippi regiments.  In the following spring the Twelfth Mississippi was detached from the brigade, and the Third and Twenty-sixth Alabama were added to it.

The brigade was attached to D. H. Hill's division of the Army of Northern Virginia.  General Rodes participated in the battles of Williamsburg and Seven Pines, in the last of which he was disabled by a severe wound in the arm.  He was able to rejoin his command in time for the battles of Boonsboro and Sharpsburg.

At Chancellorsville he commanded the leading division of Jackson's corps which, urged on by his shout of "Forward, men, over friend or foe!" swept everything before it, piercing the lines of Howard's routed corps, breaking up every effort of the enemy to stem the tide, desisting only with the close of day.

That evening Jackson and A. P. Hill were both wounded, and the command of the corps devolved upon him.  He prepared to renew the movement at dawn, but General Stuart coming upon the field, Rodes yielded to him the command, and during the next day commanded his division.  For his conduct in this battle, Rodes was promoted to major-general, to date from May 2nd.

Henceforth he led D. H. Hill's old division, consisting of the brigades of Doles, Daniel and Ramseur.  At Gettysburg General Lee witnessed his great charge, on July 1st, and sent an officer to express his thanks.

In the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania and the second Cold Harbor, General Rodes so handled his troops as to increase his reputation for skill as a leader, and so conducted himself as to add fresh laurels to his fame as a soldier of undaunted courage.  Rodes was with Early on the march into Maryland and, bringing up the rear on the return to Virginia, inflicted on the Federals bloody repulses at Castleman's Ferry and Kernstown.

At the battle of Winchester, September 19, 1864, just after inflicting a severe repulse upon the foe, "in the very moment of triumph and while conducting the attack with great gallantry and skill," as General Early says, he was struck behind the ear by a fragment of shell and died within a few hours.

In Early's book, "Memoirs of the Last Year of the War, " that general says that General Rodes "was a most accomplished, skillful and gallant officer, upon whom I placed great reliance. "

Rodes is buried in the Presbyterian Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia.  [AD] [ph:L]

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