[3][4] Dr. Best did not own slaves, nor join either side in the American Civil War, but practiced medicine slightly to the west in Clarke County,[5] including treating soldiers of both armies.

[6] After the war, Dr. Best moved a little further westward into Frederick County and established his practice in Brucetown, near the border with the new state of West Virginia and the old Winchester/Martinsburg Turnpike.

After his grandfather's death, young Hesseltine studied at the Millersburg Military Institute in Kentucky founded by his uncle, Col. Carl M. Best (including training drills with Civil War era rifles, which gave him a lifelong distaste of military regimentation),[7][8] then returned to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to attend Washington and Lee University (rather than nearby VMI) and received a bachelor's degree in 1922.

"[17] Hesseltine's graduate seminars (some gathered around a table he noted had once been used by students of Frederick Jackson Turner) became known for rigorous application of the historian's craft, beginning with cite checking the published work of other distinguished members of the history department, and discussing whether the errors found mattered.

They included T. Harry Williams, Kenneth M. Stampp, Frank Freidel, Richard N. Current and Stephen E.

[21][22] Hesseltine opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy in the years before the United States entered World War II, but in 1945 took leave to teach at the GI American University in England.

[25] Hesseltine died of a massive stroke or heart attack on December 8, 1963, and was survived by his widow and children.