Austin grew up working on the family farm in the Cripple Creek area of Wythe County and later Speedwell, Virginia. In early 1864, at the age of nineteen, he traveled to Dublin, Virginia to enlist in the Confederate States Army. At Dublin, Austin was assigned to the 1st Virginia Battalion of Infantry, Company E, and was sent to Petersburg to begin his career as a soldier. The 1st Virginia Battalion of Infantry served as the Provost Guard for General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia for the duration of the war. The Provost Guard was not the most popular unit with fellow soldiers since they were charged with enforcing all those military regulations that most of the southern boys viewed with much contempt. The Provost Guard also endfoced Marshall law upon the civilians, which resulted in much distain among that population. By the end of the first week in April 1865, General Lee's Army had retreated from Petersburg to Farmville by way of Amelia Court Hourse and Sailor's Creek with the Union Army on its heels. Little did Austin realize his brief military career was about to come to an abrupt end. On April 9, 1865 General Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant at Appomattox. The rest is history. The Union Army issued paroles to Austin Lanter and thousands of other Confederate Soldiers.Of the 187 soldiers, which served in the 1st Virginia Battalion, Company E, only seven make it to Appomattox for the surrender. A grandson of Austin Lanter tells the story that Austin journeyed over six months getting back home from Appomattox because the Union Army had taken all the Confederate Soldier's guns and horses. He walked all the way home stopping to work along the way for food or to earn money to buy food. On April 14, 1865, only five days into his journey home, word would come that John Wilkes Booth, a southern sympathizer, had assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, Commander and Chief of the Union Army. What must he have thought? Would General Grant now rethink his generosity and revoke Confederate paroles? Had General Lee been too hasty in surrending? Would War start again? There is no way to know, but surely these thoughts must have crossed every Confederate Soldier's mind. On October 15, 1906 Austin Lanter applied for and received a Disability Civil War Pension based rheumatism and other ailments resulting from exposure during the winter of 1864/65. The Author finds it profound that one individual lived through so much history and witnessed such change during one lifetime. This mountain boy was with General Lee at Appomattox to experience the surrender of the Confederate Army, ending the greatest conflict in American History. He was walking home from Appomattox when President Lincoln was assassinated. He was already married with four children when General Custer and his troops met their demise at the hands of the Sioux Indians at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June of 1877. Yet, this eyewitness to history lived into the next century to ride in automobiles, watch airplanes, see the advent of movie theaters, live in a house with electricity, talk on the telephone, and listen to his son James play the fiddle and sing on the radio.
Submitted by: James W. Early
MyCinnamonToast Surname Search
bravenet.com