Booker was born on December 5, 1821, in Patrick County, the son of Edward Booker and Elizabeth Anglin Booker. Educated locally, he farmed and taught school before reading law. Booker was admitted to the bar in Henry County on March 8, 1847, and practiced there the remainder of his life. Elected to the county court in 1856, he served as its presiding justice from 1858 until 1864. Booker was a strong Unionist at the time of the secession crisis, but according to his later testimony he voted for the Ordinance of Secession because he feared reprisals from his neighbors. He avoided being conscripted in 1864 because he was a justice of the peace, and the only part he took in the Civil War was the performance of his duties as a magistrate.
Lincoln and the Dirty Business of Politics
Appealing to rightness and reason is rarely enough to achieve big things. Politics requires dealing with human beings, and human beings are flawed.
January 10, 2013 • The greatest measure of the nineteenth century. Passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America. These lines, from the movie Lincoln, capture an elemental truth about politics. They are spoken by the leader of the Radical Republicans, Thaddeus Stephens, as he hands the official copy of the freshly adopted 13th Amendment abolishing slavery to his housekeeper, Lydia Smith, a black woman who is also his lover.
Early Years and Civil War
Bolling was born on February 28, 1835, in Lunenburg County, the son of John Stith Bolling and Mary Thomas Irby Bolling. He grew up on his father’s farm and was educated at Mount Lebanon Academy before moving to Richmond at age nineteen to become a clerk in a store. The following year he and two brothers founded a wholesale grocery and commission business, which they operated until the summer of 1861. On May 9, 1860, Bolling married Cornelia Scott Forrest, of Lunenburg County. They had three daughters and one son.
On June 7, 1861, Bolling enlisted as a sergeant in the Lunenburg Light Dragoons, which became Company G of the 9th Virginia Cavalry Regiment. He was commissioned a lieutenant on April 28, 1862, and promoted to captain on January 17, 1863. Later that year he was detailed to Brigadier General William Henry Fitzhugh Lee‘s staff as acting assistant adjutant general, and in 1864 he was detached to brigade headquarters. At one time Bolling led the l