was initially assigned to protect the Rappahannock River as well as the Rappahannock river port cities of Falmouth and Fredericksburg. James D. Hunter served only months before being furloughed on account of sickness in July 1862, but did participate in raids under Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and Capt. William Latane (who became a Confederate martyr as the only casualty of Stuart's vaunted ride around Union troops) and in General Lee's Seven Day offensive which ended the Union Peninsular Campaign. While his eldest son R.M.T. Hunter Jr. died early in the war of disease, his second son, Robert D. Hunter, served as a staff officer in the Army of Northern Virginia and as an engineer. When some suggested late in the war that their slaves could be armed and serve in the Confederate Army to win their freedom, Senator R.M.T. Hunter vehemently opposed the proposal with a long speech against it, but after the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to the contrary, voted as instructed but with an emphatic protest. Later years In 1867, President Andrew Johnson pardoned Hunter for his activities supporting the Confederate States. He unsuccessfully ran to become U.S. Senator again in 1874, to succeed Unionist Republican John F. Lewis. However, Confederate veteran Robert E. Withers of the Conservative Party won. After that loss, Hunter accepted an appointment as the Treasurer of Virginia, serving from 1874 to 1880, when he returned to his farm. Hunter also published Origin of the Late War, about the causes of the Civil War. From 1885 until his death, he was customs collector of the Port of Tappahannock, Virginia, near his home. He died near Lloyds, Virginia, in 1887, and was buried at the Garnett family burial ground in Loretto in Essex County. Personal life He married Mary Evelina Dandridge (1817–1893) on October 4, 1836, in Jefferson County (then in Virginia, but which became West Virginia during the American Civil War). They had sons Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter Jr. (1839-1861), James Dandridge Hunter (1844-1892), Philip Stephen Hunter (1848–1919) and Muscoe Russell Garnett Hunter (1850-1865). Their daughters (educated and unmarried) were Martha Taliaferro Hunter (1841-1909), Sarah Stephena Hunter (1846-1865), Annie Buchanan Hunter (1852-1853) and Mary Evelina Hunter 1854-1881). In 1860 and later censuses, R. M. T. Hunter's unmarried sisters Martha Fenton Hunter (1800-1866) and Jane Swann Hunter (1804-1880) and half-sister Sara (Sully) Hunter (1822-1874) also lived on the family plantation. Legacy In 1942, a United