Returning to Virginia, Barbour moved to the state's northwest corner. Monongalia County voters once elected him as one of their two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served in 1857–58.[4]
In January 1859, he was appointed as Superintendent at the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).[5] He served there until the American Civil War began in 1861.[6] In October 1859, abolitionist John Brown raided the arsenal. Brown's raiders captured the entire armory and town, which Brown knew to be minimally guarded by civilians, although ultimately he failed and was captured because he remained in town too long.[6] Recent research questions whether Brown really attempted to steal the weapons to support a slave rebellion, considering that explanation Virginia slaveholder propaganda.[7] Barbour wrote that he was visiting the federal armory at Springfield, Massachusetts. "Had I been here, I could have done no good. Old Brown would have taken Gen. Scott if he had been here. A military man could have done nothing more than a civilian, unless there had been a corps of soldiers under him. . . . It is ridiculous to talk about it, as if the presence of a military man [at Harper's Ferry] would have awed Old Brown."[8]
Despite the fiasco, voters from Jefferson County elected Barbour and fellow former delegate Logan Osburn to represent them in the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. While Osburn resolutely voted against secession on both April 4 and April 17, Barbour switched his vote, voting on April 17 to secede, as did his brother James Barbour, who was a delegate representing their native Culpeper County.[9]
American Civil War
During the American Civil War, Barbour served in the Confederate States Army as a quartermaster, on the staff of Joseph E. Johnston as well as Leonidas Polk. By December 1861, he had been promoted to quartermaster of all the Confederate armies, but complaints soon arose that he failed to settle accounts, gambled extensively and managed loosely.[10] Major Barbour served in Meridian, Mississippi and by 1864 was demoted to assistant quartermaster in Montgomery, Alabama, where he remained after the war ended, although paroled in Greensboro. Jubal Anderson Early disliked Barbour, who termed him "not energetic or efficient."[11]
^Helen P. Trimpi, Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men who Fought for the South (University of Tennessee Press 2010) p. 12
^Cynthia Miller Leonard, Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978 (Richmong, Virginia State Library 1978) p.
^United States Senate (1887). "Thursday, January 13, 1859". Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States. 11. Government Printing Office: 34.
^Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., Freedom's Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia, (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015)pp. 31-35, 55-56.
^See Alfred M. Barbour to Roger Pryor, Apr. 2, 1860, transcribed in "Notes and Queries," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol. XLII: 1 (1918): 175-76.
^"Archived copy"(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original on 2015-07-08. Retrieved 2016-07-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Robert E..L. Krick, Staff Officers in Gray: A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia(University of North Carolina Press 2003) p. 67
