Confederate Brig. Gen. Robert Seldon Garnett (1819–1861) was a Mexican War veteran and regular Army officer from Virginia. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1841 and later served as an assistant instructor of infantry tactics. It’s rumored that one of his students was a young George B. McClellan, who attended West Point from 1842 to 1846. The two would one day become generals on opposite sides of the Civil War, squaring off against one another in the 1861 Tygart Valley Campaign.
As a U.S. Army officer, he rose to the rank of major in the 9th United States Infantry and was stationed in Washington Territory. Tragically, both his wife and child died of illness in 1858, sinking him into a deep melancholy and depression. He took a leave of absence in Europe that lasted for over two years. After the Virginia Convention adopted the Ordinance of Secession on April 17, 1861, Garnett resigned from the United States Army.
Shortly after his resignation was accepted, Virginia Governor John Letcher made him a colonel in Virginia’s Provisional Army and appointed him adjutant general to Robert E. Lee. On June 6, 1861, in an attempt to reverse Confederate fortunes in northwestern Virginia, Garnett was made a brigadier general in the Confederate Army and sent to command the Army of the Northwest.
Garnett spent a month organizing and consolidating his forces in the Allegheny Mountains, but he was out-maneuvered by his former pupil, George B. McClellan. When he was mortally wounded directing his men across Corrick’s Ford on July 13, 1861, he became the first general officer to die in combat in the Civil War.
Reports and Letters
Updated: 10 March 2025
Created: 2 May 2023
Spirit of '61 