George Armstrong Custer wrote about his friend Pierce Manning Butler Young, who left West Point to become a Confederate general: "I remember a conversation held at the table at which I sat during the winter of '60 '61. I was seated next to Cadet P. M. B. Young, a gallant young fellow, a classmate of mine, then and since the war an intimate and valued friend a major-general in the Confederate forces during the war and a member of Congress from his native State Georgia] at a later date. The approaching war was as usual the subject of conversation in which all participated, and in the freest...