page_title: Henry Kyd Douglas
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Kyd Douglas / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry Kyd Douglas in civilian clothing
context_page_description: Henry Kyd Douglas was a Confederate staff officer during the American Civil War. He participated in most of the battles of the Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia; serving on the staffs of Stonewall Jackson and his successors. Severely wounded on the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, he became a prisoner of war for almost ten months. At the end of the war, he commanded a brigade at the last battle of the war. After the war he returned to his civilian occupation as a lawyer, got involved in state politics, later as a Gold Democrats, and became an officer in the Maryland National Guard, eventually holding the appointment as Adjutant General. Today Douglas is foremost known for his wartime memoir, I rode with Stonewall, first published in 1940.
context_section_description: Douglas was the son of the Scottish born minister, Robert Douglas and his wife Mary, born Robertson. The Reverend Douglas was a nephew of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania Samuel Douglas, and studied theology at the Theological Seminary at York, Pennsylvania, before being admitted to the ministry in the German Reformed Church. Henry Kyd Douglas grew up on Ferry Hill Place, on the opposite site of the Potomac River from Shepherdstown, then in Virginia, not far from Sharpsburg, Maryland. His home not being more than two miles from Harpers Ferry, he watched the storming of the engine house by the Marines that ended John Brown's raid, and later witnessed the treason trial that followed. Douglas graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania 1858, studied law in Lexington, Virginia, and was admitted to the bar at Charleston, then in Virginia, 1860. Having moved to St. Louis, he returned to Virginia at the outbreak of the civil war.
caption: Henry Kyd Douglas as a young man.
exif: {}