Fort Warren (Massachusetts), especially noting the professionalism of its commanding officer, a career officer from North Carolina named Wilson, and two local families. He was paroled on July 24. While a prisoner of war, Hunton thought of his lawbooks, as well as worried that his wife and children were penniless in Lynchburg, especially since he had invested all his savings in now-worthless Virginia State Bonds. He learned they refused money offered them by a staff officer of Federal Major John W. Turner (against whom Hunton had fought for many months and found chivalrous), but managed to secure a $50 loan from family friend John H. Reid, then survived on that money until Hunton's brother Silas managed to get to Lynchburg and escorted them to Culpeper, where they stayed with the family of Hunton's sister Elizabeth and brother in law, Lt. Morehead (who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Ball's Bluff). Post-war politics After the war Hunton resumed his former law practice in northern Virginia, initially in Prince William County as well as Fauquier and Loudoun, but by year's end moved his family to Warrenton, where he bought a house in 1867. He later noted that two servant girls (one of whom he had bought so she would not be sold away from her family) had accompanied his wife and family to and from Lynchburg, so that after returning from prison, he told them they were free, and paid their stage fare from Clarke County to their family in Alexandria. As Hunton's career restarted, he also returned to politics, opposing Congressional Reconstruction and particularly disabilities which the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868 sought to place on former Confederates. The Constitutional Convention was necessary because Virginia's state constitution of 1850 explicitly endorsed slavery, and the constitutional convention during the American Civil War only had representatives from Union-occupied portions of the Commonwealth and was generally disregarded. Based on negotiations with the newly elected president, Ulysses S. Grant and successive military governors responsible for Virginia, the election to ratify the new state constitution separately considered the document (which was overwhelmingly ratified by voters) and the disabilities on former Confederates (which were narrowly defeated). Hunton thought the Freedman's Bureau created problems, and that he got along well with Gen. John Schofield, the governor of military district No. 1, as well as the local military judge Lysander Hill. Hunton was also nominated for the state