Imboden

ticipated in the battles of Cross Keys and Port
Republic. Promoted brigadier-general (1863),
he conducted the "Imboden Raid/' April-May

1863, in northwest Virginia and West Virginia,
cutting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and sup-
plying Lee's army with thousands of cattle and
horses in preparation for the contemplated Get-
tysburg campaign. During Lee's advance north-
ward, Imboden protected the Confederate left
flank, destroying enemy communications. When
he reached the field of Gettysburg at noon, July
3, 1863, Lee assigned him the highly important
duty of covering the Confederate retreat In this
undertaking, Imboden engaged in a spirited
fight at Williamsport, holding out against great-
ly superior numbers, and saving the trains and
wounded of the Confederate army (E. P. Alex-
ander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 1907,
pp. 436-39). During the Bristoe campaign, he
captured the Federal garrison at Charleston,
West Va., for which exploit he received written
commendation from General Lee. Later, he took
part in the battles of Piedmont and New Mar-
ket, and in the series of engagements which
marked Early's campaign against Sheridan.
Falling ill of typhoid fever in the autumn of

1864, he was detailed on prison duty at Aiken,
S. C. (Southern Historical Society Papers, I,
187). After the war, he engaged in law prac-
tice in Richmond for a time, but for the last
twenty years of his life made his home in Wash-
ington County, Va. He was a pioneer in encour-
aging foreign and domestic capital to develop
Virginia's natural resources. In 1872, he pub-
lished The Coal and Iron Resources of Virginia,
and he was a commissioner to the Centennial
Exhibition of 1876, and the Columbian Exposi-
tion of 1893. His death came suddenly of intes-
tinal complications at Damascus, Va., a little city
which he had founded and developed, and where
his body was temporarily interred. Later, it was
removed to Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
Imboden was married first, to Eliza McCue;
second, to Mary Wilson McPhail; third, to Edna
Porter; and fourth, to Anna Lockett. His fifth
wife, Mrs. Florence Crockett of Chattanooga,
Tenn., and five children survived him. He was
an eloquent and forceful speaker and a versatile
writer, contributing many articles on the Civil
War to current periodicals. For Battles and
Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., 1887-88), he
wrote "Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah
Valley/' "Jackson at Harper's Ferry," "Inci-
dents of the First Bull Run," "The Confederate
Retreat from Gettysburg," and "The Battle of
New Market"

[For biographical sketches, see Richmond Times,

Imlay

Sept. 29, 1895; Richmond Dispatch, Aug. 17, 1895;
Confederate Veteran (Nashville), Sept. 1895, and Nov.-
Dec. 1921; Confed. Mil. Hist. (1899), vol. III. The
Southern Historical Society Papers, vols. I (1876),
XXXI (1903), XXXIV (1906) contain references. See
also War of the Rebellion, Official Records (Army).]

C.D.R.

IMLAY, GILBERT (c. i754~Nov. 20,1828?),
author and political adventurer, was born prob-
ably in Monmouth County, N. J,, where the
family was established as early as the first dec-
ade of the eighteenth century. During the Revo-
lution he served in the American army as first
lieutenant (1777-78), and, though there is ap-
parently no further record, it is possible that he
later attained the rank of captain, by which he
came to be known. The war over, he turned to-
ward the West. As early as March 1783 he had
purchased a tract of land in Kentucky; and by
April of the following year he had arrived in
that district, where he presently became a deputy
surveyor and engaged in further and extensive
speculations in land. Soon, however, he was in
financial and legal difficulties. In November or
December 1785 he left Kentucky; and before the
end of the following year, if we may believe ap-
parently competent testimony given in a Ken-
tucky court (see Rusk, post, p. n), Imlay had
left the continent of North America. At any
rate the Kentucky courts, in spite of repeated
endeavors during a number of years, were unable
to locate him; and nothing more is definitely
known of his activities until 1792, when he pub-
lished in London A Topographical Description
of the Western Territory of North America.
This well-known work, certainly not completed
before November 1791, purports to have been
written from Kentucky; but both the biograph-
ical facts already cited and internal evidence are
against this claim. Similar reasons lead to the
conclusion that Imlay's novel, The Emigrants
(1793), was actually written after his arrival in
Europe.

As early as March 1793 he had become a fig-
ure of some importance in French political af-
fairs. The man who in his Kentucky days had
had dealings with James Wilkinson [g.^.] and
Benjamin Sebastian, both later involved in in-
trigues with the Spanish authorities, was now-
allied with Brissot and his associates who were
scheming to seize Louisiana from Spain. In the
character of an American well acquainted with
the Western country, he addressed at least two
communications regarding this project to the
Committee of Public Safety—Observations dn
Cap. May (translated in Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for 1896, I,
953-54) and the much longer MSmoire sur la

46]