Roger Atkinson Pryor - Civil War Service

Civil War Service

In early 1861, Pryor agitated for immediate secession in Virginia, but the state convention did not act. He went to Charleston in April, to urge an immediate attack on Fort Sumter. (Pryor asserted this would cause Virginia to secede.) On April 12, he and Sara accompanied the last Confederate party to the fort before the bombardment (but stayed in the boat). Afterward, while waiting at Fort Johnson, he was offered the opportunity to fire the first shot. But he declined, saying, "I could not fire the first gun of the war."

In 1861, Pryor was re-elected to his Congressional seat, but, the secession of Virginia meant he never took his seat. (In this period, several states including Virginia elected U.S. Representatives in the early part of odd years. In that period, Congress generally met late in the year.) He served in the provisional Confederate Congress in 1861, and also in the first regular Congress (1862) under the Confederate Constitution.

He entered the Confederate States Army as Colonel of the 3rd Virginia Infantry. He was promoted to brigadier general on April 16, 1862. His brigade fought in the Peninsula Campaign and at Second Manassas, where it became detached in the swirling fighting and temporarily operated under Stonewall Jackson. Pryor's command initially consisted of the 2nd Florida, 14th Alabama, 3rd Virginia, and 14th Louisiana. During the Seven Days Battles, the 1st Louisiana Battalion (Coppens' Zouaves) were temporarily attached to it. Afterwards, the Louisianans departed and Pryor received two brand-new regiments; the 5th and 8th Florida Infantry. As a consequence, it became known as "The Florida Brigade". At Antietam on September 17, 1862, he assumed command of Anderson's Division in Longstreet's Corps when Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson was wounded. Pryor proved inept as a division commander, and Union troops flanked his position, causing them to fall back in disorder.

As a result, he did not gain a permanent higher field command from the Confederate president. In 1863, Pryor resigned his commission and his brigade was broken up, its regiments being reassigned to other commands. In August of that year, he enlisted as a private and scout in a Virginia cavalry regiment under General Fitzhugh Lee. Pryor was captured on November 28, 1864, and confined in Fort Lafayette in New York as a suspected spy. After several months, he was released on parole by order of President Lincoln and returned to Virginia.

In the early days of the war, Sara Rice Pryor accompanied her husband and worked as a nurse for the troops. In 1863 after he resigned his commission, she stayed in Petersburg and struggled to hold their family together, likely with the help of relatives. She later wrote about the war years in her two memoirs published in the early 1900s.