
The Burial of Latané, c. 1864
Oil on canvas
Height: 38 in (96.5 cm); Width: 48 in (121.9 cm)
The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
In June 1862, twenty-nine-year-old Captain William Latané of the 9th Virginia Cavalry was the only Confederate killed during J. E. B. Stuart’s famous ride around Union general McClellan’s army during the Peninsula Campaign. After Latané’s death at Old Church in Hanover County, his brother John Latané removed the body to the Westwood plantation two miles away. The plantation’s white men were all away serving the Confederate army, but Mrs. William Spencer Roane Brockenbrough, the mistress of the house, assured John Latané that his brother’s remains would be rendered proper care and a Christian burial…