author
William Meade Dame
1844–1923
A Virginia-born Episcopal clergyman and Civil War veteran, he is remembered today for a firsthand memoir of the 1864 campaign from the Rapidan to Richmond. His writing brings battlefield experience and postwar reflection together in a direct, personal voice.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Danville, Virginia, in December 1844, William Meade Dame served in the Confederate army as a teenager with the Richmond Howitzers during the Civil War. After the war, he studied at the Virginia Theological Seminary and went on to build a long career in the Episcopal Church.
He became especially associated with Memorial Protestant Episcopal Church in Baltimore, where he served as rector for decades, from 1878 until his death in 1923. Alongside his ministry, he wrote From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign, a personal account of the fighting he witnessed in 1864.
That book remains the main reason readers encounter his name today: not as a distant historian, but as someone describing the war from memory and experience. Some modern accounts of his legacy also note that his views reflected the racial attitudes of his era, which are now understood critically.