The descriptions of him are priceless.  “He looked the image of a bantam rooster or a gamecock,” recalled a veteran.  Perhaps it was his odd dress:  “He wore a large sombrero hat, without plume, cocked on one side, and decorated with a division badge; he had a hunting-shirt of gray…while he wore boots, his trousers cover them; those boots were as small as a woman’s.”  Or perhaps he was just plain odd, “the sauciest-looking manikin imaginable” and “the oddest and daintiest little specimen.”  His five-foot stature and frail 125 pound frame didn’t help.

William "Billy" Mahone was a genuine character, and his life was as unique as his stature.  Although a rising star in the Army of Northern Virginia by the end of the war, his post-war political career in the darkness of Reconstruction and Redemption is perhaps his true shining moment.  “Bantam” Billy Mahone revealed his character not only as a fighter on the battlefield, but as a progressive on the political stage.