Alexander Hart

A “gents’ furnishing store” clerk in New Orleans before the War, he enlisted in Company E, 5th Louisiana Infantry on May 10, 1861 in New Orleans. He was promoted to Captain about 22 February 1862.

He was wounded in action on 17 September 1862 at Sharpsburg.

He was absent, wounded and on furlough in New Orleans, to February 1863. He was promoted to Major of the Regiment, date not given. We was wounded again, while in command of the Regiment at Gettysburg, PA in July 1863. He was absent on detail to about April 1864 in the Department of Henrico in Richmond, then back with his unit. He was captured (probably wounded) at Winchester, VA on September 19, 1864. He was sent first to the US Army General Hospital, West's Bldg., Baltimore, MD on October 13, 1864, then to Ft. McHenry on October 19th, Ft. Delaware on Oct. 26, and paroled on October 30, 1864. He was forwarded to Venus Point, Savannah River on November 16, 1864, and exchanged.

He went home to New Orleans, but soon returned to Richmond, VA where he married and went into business. He later lived in Staunton, VA, where he was president and minister of the synagogue, and then Norfolk.

Basic information from Booth1. Further details from an exhibit of his sword from the Shapell Manuscript Foundation and in Robert N. Rosen's The Jewish Confederates (2000), source also of his photograph; he credits Louis Ginsberg's Chapters on the Jews of Virginia, 1658-1900 (1969), and Shirley Ginsberg.

His diary entries from July 1864 to the end of the War are online from the Jewish-American History Foundation.

10/01/1839; New Orleans, LA

09/21/1911; burial in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Norfolk, VA