James L. Kemper - Early Life

Early Life

Kemper was born in Mountain Prospect, Madison County, Virginia, the son of William and Maria E. Allison Kemper and brother of Frederick T. Kemper (the founder of Kemper Military School). His father was of German ancestry, which had been in Virginia since the colonial era. His grandfather had served on the staff of George Washington during the American Revolutionary War, but he himself had virtually no military training. He graduated from Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in 1842, becoming a lawyer.

After the start of the Mexican-American War, he enlisted and became a captain and assistant quartermaster in the 1st Virginia Infantry, but he joined the service too late (1847) to see any combat action. By 1858 he was a brigadier general in the Virginia Militia.

Kemper was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1853. He became chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, where he was a strong advocate of state military preparedness. In early 1861 he became Speaker, a position he held until January 1863. Much of his term as Speaker coincided with his service in the Confederate States Army.

Read more about this topic:  James L. Kemper

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)