author
A. E. (Adolphus Edwards) Richards
1844–1920
A Civil War veteran and later Kentucky judge, he wrote from direct experience about the daring world of Mosby's Rangers. His work offers a vivid first-hand view of irregular warfare and the personalities behind it.
1 Audiobook
Famous Adventures and Prison Escapes of the Civil War
by Basil Wilson Duke, Thomas Henry Hines, Frank E. Moran, William Pittenger, A. E. (Adolphus Edwards) Richards, W. H. (William Henry) Shelton, Orlando B. Willcox, John Taylor Wood
About the author
Born in Virginia in 1844, Adolphus Edwards Richards served in the Confederate army during the American Civil War and rose to become a major in the 43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion, better known as Mosby's Rangers. Contemporary and historical records consistently connect him with that unit, and his writing draws much of its force from having witnessed that world himself.
Richards is best known to readers today for his contribution to Famous Adventures and Prison Escapes of the Civil War, where he wrote the section on Mosby's "Partizan Rangers." That piece helped preserve a participant's account of one of the war's most famous cavalry commands and remains the main reason his name appears in digital libraries and public-domain collections.
After the war, he built a legal career in Louisville, Kentucky, and later served as a judge. He died in 1920, leaving behind a small but memorable place in Civil War literature as someone who wrote not as a distant historian, but as a man who had been there.