Loring, William Wing

Life Span
to
    Full name
    William Wing Loring
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Slave State
    Family
    Reuben Loring (father), Hannah Kenan Loring (mother)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Georgetown University
    Occupation
    Politician
    Military
    Attorney or Judge
    Farmer or Planter
    Businessman
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Episcopalian
    Government
    State legislature
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Confederate Army
    Foreign military

    William Wing Loring (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Loring returned to the United States in the winter of 1860-1861, and on 22 March 1861 he was named to command the Department of New Mexico. He did not sympathize with the secession, but, believing in states' rights, he resigned his commission on 13 May 1861, and traveled east to offer his service to the Confederacy. President Jefferson Davis, familiar with Loring's distinguished record, had him named brigadier general to rank from 20 May 1861.

    After the death of Brigadier General Robert Garnett in the engagement at Corrick's Ford, Loring was named on 20 July to command the northwestern army and charged with the defense of the western approaches to the Shenandoah Valley. Within a week of Loring's arrival on site, he was joined at Huntersville by General Robert E. Lee. Loring had higher rank than Lee in the "old army" and had led troops into battle in Mexico when Lee was a staffer. The two officers did not work well together, and the Confederates, plagued by heavy rains and rugged terrain, botched Lee's ambitious plans to rout the enemy from Cheat Mountain and recover the Tygart Valley (10-17 Sept.).
    E. C. Bearss, "Loring, William Wing," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00450.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Loring, William Wing," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/6120.