e was educated at Harvard, where he ranked not only as a good scholar,
but on account of his splendid size and strength became quite famous in
athletics, being "stroke oar" of the University Rowing Club.

His great ambition was to follow the profession of his father and to go
to West Point; but having had an older brother there, that fact was
considered in those days an insuperable obstacle. While still at
Harvard, completing his education, he was, through the interest taken in
him by Gen. Winfield Scott, who made the request as a special and
personal favor to himself, appointed in 1857 a second lieutenant in the
Sixth Regiment, United States Infantry, and inaugurated his military
career by taking a detachment of troops to Texas by sea and then by land
up the country to San Antonio.

In 1858 he accompanied his regiment, under the command of Col. Albert
Sidney Johnston, in the expedition to Utah against the Mormons, taking
an active part in that campaign, marching from Fort Leavenworth to Salt
Lake City, and then, when the troubles were quelled there, traveling on
foot to Fort Benicia, Cal. While on the Pacific coast he received a
letter from his father, written January 1, 1859, in which he said:

I can not express the gratification I felt in meeting Col. May in
New York, and at the encomiums he passed upon your soldiership,
zeal, and devotion to your duty. But I was more pleased at the
report of your conduct. I always thought and said there was stuff
in you for a good soldier, and I trust you will prove it.

Resigning his commission in the Army, he came home to be married to his
cousin, a Miss Wickham, and settled down as a farmer at the "White
House" (where Washington met Martha Custis and was married), a large
estate on the Pamunkey River, left him by his maternal grandfather, G.W.
Park Custis, of Arlington.

When that irrepressible conflict of 1861 was upon us, and Virginia
called upon her sons to defend her soil, he, sharing the faith of his
fathers, in the belief that his allegiance was due to his State, quickly
raised a company of cavalry, and was attached to the Army of Northern
Virginia. Serving in every grade successively from captain to
major-general of cavalry, he led his regiment in the famous raid around
McClellan's army, and was an active participant in all those brilliant
achievements which made the cavalry service so proficient.

In that terrific fight which occurred at Bran