Peter Burwell Starke, Brig. General (CSA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Burwell_Starke

Peter Burwell Starke (1815 – July 13, 1888) was a Mississippi politician and sheriff, and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was active in several important campaigns and battles in the Western Theater, including the Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Franklin-Nashville campaigns. He commanded a brigade of veteran cavalry in many of these operations.

Early life and career

Starke was born in Brunswick County, Virginia. His older brother William Edwin Starke also became a general in the Confederate army. Prior to the Civil War, the brothers worked in the family's stagecoach business that operated between Lawrenceville and Petersburg, Virginia. In early 1840, Peter Starke moved to the South, settling in Bolivar County, Mississippi, where he became active in local politics.

In 1846, while his brother was in the United States Army during the Mexican War, Starke run for a seat in the United States Congress as a member of the Whig Party to replace Jefferson Davis (who had resigned to lead a Mississippi regiment). However, Starke was defeated in the general election by Democrat Henry T. Ellett. Four years later, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. In 1856, he was elected to the Mississippi State Senate.

Civil War

Starke remained active in state politics after Mississippi passed its ordinance of secession, and was a commissioner to Virginia to help encourage the leaders of that state to join Mississippi in seceding from the Union. He helped recruit and equip a company of cavalry in mid-1861 while still a state senator. In late February 1862, he received a commission as the colonel of the 28th Mississippi Cavalry, a new regiment raised in Bolivar County that mustered into service in May.

He took an active role in military operations in central and northern Mississippi, leading his men on a series of scouting missions and raids. He was assigned to the cavalry division of Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson as the commander of the 1st Brigade (still with the rank of colonel) and served in the Vicksburg Campaign. Five companies of Starke's regiment reinforced Brig. Gen. Martin L. Smith at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and were posted to watch the flanks along the Yazoo River. During the campaign, Union troops burned Starke's mansion along Lake Bolivar.[4] From December until February, he was in temporary command of the brigade.[3]

In February 1864, Colonel Starke served under Stephen D. Lee in the forces that opposed Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's advance on Meridian, Mississippi, and he fought in the ensuing Battle of Meridian. Later that year, Starke returned to his role as the commander of the 28th Mississippi Cavalry during the Atlanta Campaign, serving under Frank C. Armstrong, and saw action in several small cavalry engagements throughout the summer. He was promoted to brigadier general on November 4, 1864, and assigned command of a cavalry brigade in the forces of Maj. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest. He was involved in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.

When Forrest reorganized his command structure, Starke was initially without a field command, although he maintained his rank as a brigadier general. He spent the last few months of the war serving in Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers' division in Alabama.

Postbellum career

When the war ended later in 1865, Starke returned to Bolivar County, Mississippi. He subsequently held several public appointments. He served on the board of Mississippi levee commissioners and was the sheriff of Bolivar County for a term. In 1872, he retired to his farm near Lawrenceville, Virginia.

P. B. Starke died on his farm on July 13, 1888, from what was described as "debility." He was buried in a previously unmarked grave near Lawrenceville in the Percival Family Cemetery on what formerly had been the farm of his second wife's family.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Confederate general Peter Burwell Starke was born in 1815 in Brunswick County, Virginia. He moved to Bolivar County in the early 1840s and became a planter, running unsuccessfully for Congress as a Whig in 1846 but serving several terms in the state legislature in the 1850s. When war erupted, he was a state senator representing Bolivar, Issaquena, and Washington Counties, a post he retained until early 1862. His secessionist sentiments were clearly displayed in February 1860, when he sent resolutions to Virginia requesting that his native state join South Carolina and Mississippi in convention with an eye to adopting measures necessary for the “protection and perpetuation” of “African Slavery.”

Starke was commissioned colonel of the 28th Mississippi Cavalry Regiment on 24 February 1862. His command operated near Vicksburg until it shifted to the upper portion of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, where it skirmished with a Federal expedition under Alvin P. Hovey that advanced toward Grenada in late 1862. The following January his regiment combined with two other Mississippi units to form a brigade under Brig. Gen. George Cosby. The troopers participated in a movement into Tennessee led by Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn. Cosby’s command returned to Mississippi and guarded an approach to Vicksburg via Mechanicsburg. After Vicksburg fell, Starke’s cavalry helped screen Joseph E. Johnston’s army as it retreated from Jackson. As part of a division under Brig. Gen. William H. Jackson, Starke operated in the vicinity of Clinton in late July, then helped turn back and harassed a Federal column moving toward Canton in mid-October. Starke won praise from his superiors when he sparred regularly with a force under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman that cut through the interior of the state to Meridian in February 1864.

Starke served as a brigade commander from December 1863 until he was superseded by the arrival of Brig. Gen. Frank C. Armstrong on 6 April 1864. Returning to his regimental command, he and his men participated in the Atlanta Campaign. They particularly distinguished themselves at New Hope Church on 28 May, when they briefly captured several guns of an Iowa battery. Starke won promotion to brigadier general on 4 November 1864, and his cavalry clashed repeatedly with Federal horsemen during John Bell Hood’s ill-fated Tennessee Campaign. Starke’s command and others under Nathan Bedford Forrest protected the rear guard of the shattered Army of Tennessee as it retreated following the Battle of Nashville. On 18 February 1865 Forrest selected Starke to lead one of three Mississippi cavalry brigades under Brig. Gen. James R. Chalmers. After organizing his brigade at Columbus, Starke attempted to intercept the Union forces led by Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson that routed Forrest at Selma in early April. Starke signed a parole at Gainesville, Alabama, on 12 May. His older brother, William Edward Starke, was a Confederate division commander killed at Antietam.

After the war Starke served as a member of the board of Mississippi levee commissioners from 1866 to 1872 and was sheriff of Bolivar County for one term. Starke returned to Virginia in 1873, where he lived near his boyhood home in Lawrenceville until his death on 13 July 1888.