By William “Skip” Deegans
Following the Civil War, surviving Southern officers were often treated like celebrities who were featured at reunions of soldiers and in lecture halls.
One of the more colorful Confederate soldiers was Major Lamar Fontaine. In 1907, Fontaine visited his friend, Captain J. W. Mathews of Alvon. Fontaine and Mathews had been prisoners of war together at Ft. Delaware.
Fontaine was born in 1829 in a tent in what is now Texas. When he was eleven, he ran away from home and was captured on his way to Mexico by Comanche Indians. After his release, four years later, he made his way home and then joined the Navy and fought in the Mexican War. At some point, he developed some drafting skills and was engaged as a surveyor and map maker. He traveled to China, Europe, and Russia; drew maps in Palestine; explored the Amazon River; and accompanied Mathew Perry on his 1853 expedition to Japan.
In 1861, he joined the Confederate Army and served under Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign. He was an excellent marksman, and during the march to Manassas he was acknowledged for shooting down 60 Union soldiers without a miss from a distance of 300 to 800 yards in less than 60 minutes. He was wounded multiple times and when he came to Greenbrier County he had an artificial leg.
During his visit with Capt. Mathews, the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy had Fontaine speak at Lewisburg’s town hall. His subject was “The Experiences of Southern Soldiers in Northern Prisons.” At the beginning of the Civil War, little thought was given – by both the north and south – to the disposition of prisoners.
Consequently, prisoners found themselves held in wretched facilities and were treated inhumanely. The Union Army’s Ft. Delaware prison had high rates of mortality. Southern prisons were equally as bad.
After the Civil War, Fontaine settled in Mississippi where he wrote poetry, published his lectures, and was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. He died in 1921 at age 92.
The likeness of Fontaine from Wikimedia Commons.
Sources: Greenbrier Independent, Jackson Daily News, Tennessee Gazette, The Ku Klux Klan or The Invisible Empire by Mrs. S. E. F. Rose.
