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  • Civil War Times

    A QUIET MAN

    Nov 27, 2018 4 minutes
    BY WILLIAM H. AUSTIN

    Tom Laws, a black man living near Winchester, is both a familiar and unknown part of the Third Battle of Winchester story. It’s common knowledge that Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan used Laws, who had a pass from the Confederates to enter Winchester and sell vegetables, to carry messages in and out of town to Rebecca Wright, a Quaker school-teacher who provided Sheridan with important information about Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s army. Much is known about Wright, but until recently, little was known about Laws.

    Thanks to painstaking research in primary records done at Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Park, a patchwork of information has emerged to help us better understand the Tom fame, who drew the sketch at right. In that letter, Laws identified his prewar owner as Richard E. Byrd, and Phillip Burwell as the owner of his wife, Mary:

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