BURIAL OF LATANE
[“The next squadron moved to the front under the lamented Captain Latane, making a most brilliant and successful charge with drawn sabres upon the enemy’s picked ground, and after a hotly-contested, hand-to-hand conflict put him to flight, but not until the gallant captain had sealed his devotion to his native soil with his blood.”—Official Report of the Pamunkey Expedition, Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, C. S. A., 1862.]
[From a private letter.]
Lieutenant Latane carried his brother’s dead body to Mrs. Brockenbrough’s plantation an hour or two after his death. On this sad and lonely errand he met a party of Yankees, who followed him to Mrs. B.’s gate, and stopping there, told him that as soon as he had placed his brother’s body in friendly hands he must surrender himself prisoner. * * * Mrs. B. sent for an Episcopal clergyman to perform the funeral ceremonies, but the 74 enemy would not permit him to pass. Then, with a few other ladies, a fair-haired little girl, her apron filled with white flowers, and a few faithful slaves, who stood reverently near, a pious Virginia matron read the solemn and beautiful burial service over the cold, still form of one of the noblest gentlemen and most intrepid officers in the Confederate army. She watched the sods heaped upon the coffin-lid, then sinking on her knees, in sight and hearing of the foe, she committed his soul’s welfare and the stricken hearts he had left behind him to the mercy of the “All-Father.”
“And when Virginia, leaning on her spear,
Victrix et vidua, the conflict done,
Shall raise her mailed hand to wipe the tear
That starts as she recalls each martyred son,
No prouder memory her breast shall sway,
Than thine, our early lost, lamented Latane!”