J. B. S. Alexander

James Butler Sigourney Alexander (January 6, 1836 – August 13, 1861) was a Confederate officer, West Point graduate, and the elder son of James Alexander, a longtime editor and historian in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Alexander was born in Charlottesville and raised in a prominent literary and civic household. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in June 1856 in the same class as Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Robert E. Lee. His commission as a second lieutenant bore the signature of then–Secretary of War Jefferson Davis.

Following his graduation, Alexander served in the U.S. Army in the Washington Territory (present-day Washington State), where he was posted on frontier duty during a period of westward expansion and armed conflicts with Indigenous tribes. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Alexander resigned his commission and returned to Virginia.

On May 8, 1861, he was appointed a captain in the Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America. He served as Assistant Commissary and Quartermaster General, attached to the staffs of General Robert S. Garnett and later General Stonewall Jackson.

Shortly after beginning his service, Alexander fell ill with typhoid fever. He died at Allegheny Springs, Virginia, on August 13, 1861, just three months into his Confederate service and five years after graduating from West Point. He was 25 years old. Alexander was buried with military honors in Maplewood Cemetery in his hometown of Charlottesville.

His younger brother, W. W. Alexander, also died in Confederate service during the final days of the war, and with their deaths, the male line of the Alexander family became extinct. Through the marriages of his sisters, however, descendants of the family remain.

References

• Recollections of Charlottesville by James Alexander. University of Virginia Library Digital Collection.