William
C. Wickham, in Hanover County, where he was made a prisoner by a raiding
party, and was carried off, at the expense of great personal suffering,
to Fort Monroe. From the latter place he was conveyed to Fort Lafayette,
where he was confined until March, 1864, and treated with great
severity, being held, with Capt. R.H. Tyler, of the Eighth Virginia
Regiment, under sentence of death, as hostages for two Federal officers
who were prisoners in Richmond, and whom it was thought would be
executed for some retaliatory measure.
Exchanged in the spring of 1864, he returned, to find his young wife and
children dead, his beautiful home burned to the ground, his whole estate
devastated and laid waste by the ruthless hand of war; and yet almost
his first act on reaching Richmond was to go to Libby Prison, visit the
two Federal officers for whom he had been held as hostage, and who, like
himself, had been under apprehension of being hung, and shake hands with
and congratulate them.
Immediately joining his command, he led his division in every engagement
from the Rapidan to Appomattox, where, with his father, the greatest
soldier of modern times, he surrendered to the inevitable.
In a letter written by one of the most brilliant cavalry generals of the
late war, in speaking of Gen.
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