Many lose love to war, while others may find it for the first time. Somewhere amongst those moments, glory and romance collide, leaving an abundance of parlor tears and quiet battlefields. Two mansions were the backdrop to the last act of the great American adventure of Patrick Ronayne Cleburne’s life. The first house was the beginning of a promising chapter of the Irish soldier’s personal life. The second house would be the climactic scene of a tale equivalent to a Shakespearian tragedy.



Major General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was a tall, quiet man, two years older than General John Bell Hood, commander of the Army of Tennessee.

But Cleburne appeared some 10 years younger, even with the ever-growing crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the scar left by a piercing Yankee round to his cheek.

Battle weary, he took little time in agreeing to be best man at the wedding of good friend Brigadier General William J. Hardee. The two confederates shared a mutual soldierly admiration.

Months before to the wedding, Hardee had revealed his love for a certain young lady, and his intentions toward her.

The first two weeks of Cleburne’s leave from the war would see the excited groom and his best man through the ceremony with a short vacation from the wintery encampment at Tunnel Hill, Ga.

They traveled by train to Montgomery, down the Alabama River by steamboat to Selma, where they spent the night.

Their destination, the Bleak House plantation near Demopolis, Ala., provided a riverfront landing where they disembarked at the home of Major Ivey Lewis and his wife the next day. Hardee would marry Lewis’ sister, Mary, on the evening of Jan. 13, 1864.

Mary Lewis was a lovely, slender lady of 26 with dark hair, who had been well educated abroad and, before the war, had collected fine art.

As Hardee and Cleburne made landing, servants bearing lanterns met and guided them to the new, Gothic-style manor house, adorned with carpets, walls decorated with European art, and boasting a parlor piano.

The evening of the wedding, it rained. But no contrary weather could dampen the spirit of the occasion, only the hemlines of the gorgeous, full gowns that cloaked rustling petticoats worn by all the lovely ladies in attendance.

By candlelight, the romantic atmosphere was infectious.

Cleburne stood silently during the ceremony in reverence of both the occasion and the charming young lady across from him.

Maid of Honor Susan Tarleton’s vivacious and witty charm captured Cleburne’s attention, and from that point on, his eyes remained on her.

Amid the ugliness of war, Cleburne had found an evening of deep Southern elegance and love at first sight. As the affair continued, he remained enslaved to her every fancy, his full devotion beyond duty only to her. The evening escaped too quickly, and Cleburne in all his shyness, pleaded for permission to call on her again. In all her shyness, she agreed to see him.

As the mud dried in the following day’s sunshine, the wedding party snuck away to Mobile for a time of gaiety and entertainment.

Cleburne, awkward when in the company of the opposite gender, seemed relaxed and focused as he escorted Miss Sue, and he would not chance losing her undivided attention.

Her brother, Robert, was attracted to Sue’s friend, Sarah Bernard “Sallie” Lightfoot. They would marry 10 months after meeting.

Sue’s younger sister, Grace, and Robert’s friend, Henry Goldthwaite, also clung to one another throughout those days and would wed shortly thereafter.

The three couples were almost inseparable as they took walks from the two-story, brick Tarleton home at 351 St. Louis Street in Mobile. They sang together as Sue tickled the keys of the Tarleton family’s parlor piano, and they enjoyed conversation during their friendly gatherings. They had all become dear friends.

As his two-week furlough came to an end, Cleburne asked for Miss Tarleton’s hand in marriage, but as any proper daughter of the South surely knows, a lady could not grant an immediate answer on such short acquaintance.

Duty required Cleburne to forfeit his room at the Battle House Hotel in Mobile and return to his troops, postponing the wooing of his Sue.

In the coming months, he wrote Sue with great dedication, and she reciprocated. At times, he would correspond with other members of their circle, including Miss Sallie, for advice and to share those hopeful moments of glee.

“After keeping me in cruel suspense for six weeks,” Cleburne joyfully revealed to Sallie, “she has at length consented to be mine, and we are engaged.”

June seemed the month to steal her betrothed general from the war for a romantic interlude. Sue, her sister, and Mary Hardee all met at La Grange, Ga., at the home of one of Hardee’s staff surgeons.

But Cleburne was unable to join Sue because of the state of the war, dashing any possible spontaneous matrimonial expectations.

During September 1864, losses of the recent engagement at Jonesboro weighed heavily on Cleburne’s mind. Hood criticized those under his command to the point of insult, insinuating a lack of effort during battle.

Hardee especially took great offense to the accusations and declared that he had enough, pressing for a transfer from Hood’s command as soon as possible.

Adding to the trials of wartime, there had been no letters from Mobile for some time. When one finally did arrive, it was not from Sue but about Sue.

She suffered from neuralgia, described as an acute pain along the course of a nerve. This neurological disorder, which was a common 19th century medical diagnosis, prevented her from writing. No more of the words that so uplifted his morale would arrive until her health’s improvement.

According to Cleburne’s aide, Learned Mangum, who was often privileged to Cleburne’s correspondence to Sue Tarleton, the general’s writings were, in Mangum’s words, “full of a most sweet and tender passion.”

Sue’s letters to Cleburne remained private, a gallant gentleman’s obligation.

Finally transferred in late September, Hardee left the Tennessee Army and Hood’s thumbnail.

Cleburne considered the same action, but his loyalty to the men under his command would not allow him to dessert them. He did, however, immediately make a direct request to Hood for a two-week leave to return to Mobile to marry his beloved Sue.

Hood’s reply was an absolute “no,” citing his plan to attack the Yankee army very soon. The Atlanta campaign barely behind, the information was bewildering.

Nevertheless, Cleburne wrote Sue and broke the news. Five days later she confined herself to her room, shedding tears over the letter.

In her tear-spun correspondence to her good friend Sallie, she remarked, “I don’t know if I am to get through it ... I believe I have had a regular fit of the blues.”

She had been in constant fear for her “Pat’s” life.

On Dec. 5, 1864, while passing time in the garden at her family’s home in Mobile, her darkest nightmare materialized. The surrounding tall brick walls could not muffle the outburst of a paperboy selling papers on the street, and she was stricken as he announced her fiance’s death in Tennessee.

She fainted dead away and remained in a state of shock for days. The Yankees had severed communication arteries.

His fate was unknown to her for some five days after his body lay in state on the back porch of the McGavock house at Carnton plantation, a mile from where he courageously fought and fell at the battle of Franklin on Nov. 30, 1864.

Cleburne had designated a good friend, one Doctor Nash, to carry out his last wishes concerning his personal belongings.

Nash kept the general’s new uniform and forwarded other items to Miss Tarleton, including his recovered sword, awarded him by the 15th Arkansas Regiment, with scabbard and his battle flag of the 29th Missouri Volunteers, which was captured at the battle of Ringgold Gap.

His fiancee still mourned the loss of her “General Pat” at the close of the following year.

During October 1867, Susan Tarleton finally married a friend of her brother, Robert.

Less than a year passed before her husband, Capt. Hugh L. Cole of South Carolina, found himself standing over her grave.

Sue died of an “effusion of the brain” on June 30, 1868. Her 30 year old brother Robert, who had survived prison camp and war’s atrocities, died Sept. 30, 1868, after a brief illness, leaving behind his wife Sallie and their three adorable children.

Confederate officer Henry Goldthwaite, who married Sue’s little sister, Grace Tarleton, after the Franklin fiasco, marched on with the remainder of Hood’s Tennessee Army to Columbia, where they suffered drastic losses.

Despite its tattered, war-worn condition, the surviving Confederate force blindly, but valiantly, attacked the Union stronghold at Nashville, where many were killed, wounded, or captured.

Hood’s army finished, he eventually resigned his commission.

Goldthwaite resigned his commission and became a practicing physician, moving his family north. He was a doctor at City Hospital and died in January 1895, leaving behind his wife, Grace; his son, George Tarleton Goldthwaite; and daughter, Mrs. J. H. Rose. His memorial service took place at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, and he was buried in Mobile, Ala., as announced in the Jan. 5, 1895 edition of The New York Times.

Cleburne’s remains were moved from Tennessee and interred in a hillside cemetery overlooking Helena, Ark., on April 30, 1870. A monument placed at his grave was dedicated in May 1891.

Greater than any stone tribute is the portrayal of the legendary general through the memories of those who knew him, loved him, and lost him to glory.



Sources for this

story included:

“Stonewall Of The West, Patrick Cleburne And The Civil War,” by Craig L. Symonds; “A Meteor Shining Brightly — Essays On Major General Patrick R. Cleburne,” edited by Mauriel Phillips Joslyn; “Pat Cleburne —

Confederate General,” by Howell and Elizabeth Purdue; The Alabama Historical

Quarterly, Alabama State

Department of Archives and History — Alderman Library, University of Virginia;

Medical Record – A Weekly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Francis L. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, MA; and The New York Times, Jan. 5, 1895, from

The New York Times archives.