The Confederates were led in the fighting by Colonel Eppa Hunton of the 8th Virginia. It was he who rallied that regiment when a part of it was in retreat and turned threatened disaster into victory. Colonel Hunton had been born in Fauquier on the 2nd September, 1822, of a family long settled in that County. At the outbreak of the war he was practicing law in Prince William and held a commission as brigadier general in the Militia. After the Ordinance of Secession was adopted, he was commissioned a colonel by Governor Letcher and ordered to raise the 8th Virginia Infantry. For that purpose he proceeded to Leesburg and recruited his command. Chas. B. Tebbs became Lieut. Colonel and Norborne Berkeley, Major. Both were of Loudoun and Berkeley eventually succeeded Hunton in command of the Regiment. Of the ten companies in the regiment, six originally were made up of Loudoun men under Captains William N. Berkeley, Nathaniel Heaton, Alexander Grayson, William Simpson, Wampter, and John R. Carter. Of the remaining four companies, one was from Prince William, one from Fairfax and two from Fauquier. During the war the regiment covered itself with glory by its splendid fighting qualities from the first Manassas to Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and suffered frightful losses. It became known from these losses, as the "Bloody Eighth." Hunton, shot through the leg at Gettysburg, was promoted for his valour there to brigadier general. After the war he lived in Warrenton, practicing his profession with marked ability in Fauquier, Loudoun, and Prince William where juries, frequently including members of his former regiment, seldom failed to give him their verdict. He served as a member of the House of Representatives and later as United States Senator from Virginia, holding in his professional and political life the esteem and affection he had won on many a field of battle.