Download Commanders of the Confederacy

Commanders of the Confederacy
President Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an
American statesman and politician who served as President of
the Confederate States of America for its entire history from
1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. Davis believed
that corruption had destroyed the old Union and that the
Confederacy had to be pure to survive.[1] Davis was never
touched by corruption, but was unable to find a strategy that
would defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union.
Historians rank him below his war adversary Abraham
Lincoln in terms of military leadership, political acumen and
diplomatic skills. Davis's insistence on independence even in
the face of crushing defeat prolonged the war, and while not exactly disgraced, he was
displaced in Southern affection after the war by the leading general, Robert E. Lee. After
Davis was captured in 1865, he was held in a federal prison for two years, then released
as the treason charges against him were dropped.
A West Point graduate, Davis prided himself on the military skills he gained in the
Mexican-American War as a colonel of a volunteer regiment, and as U.S. Secretary of
War under Franklin Pierce.
Early life and military career
Davis was born in Christian County (later named Todd County), Kentucky, now home to
the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site. Davis himself was unsure of his exact birth year.
He wrote: "there has been some controversy about the year of my incarnation among the
older members of my family, and I am not a competent witness in the case, having once
supposed the year to have been 1807, I was subsequently corrected by being informed it
was 1808, and have rested upon that point because it was just as good, and no better than
another." [2]
Davis was the last of the ten children of Samuel Emory Davis and his wife Jane. The
younger Davis's grandfather immigrated from Wales and had once lived in Virginia and
Maryland. His father, along with his uncles, had served in the Continental Army during
the American Revolutionary War; he fought with the Georgia cavalry and fought in the
Siege of Savannah as an infantry officer. Also, three of his older brothers served during
the War of 1812. Two of them served under Andrew Jackson and received commendation
for bravery in the Battle of New Orleans.
During Davis's youth, the family moved twice; in 1811 to St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, and
in 1812 to Wilkinson County, Mississippi. In 1813, Davis began his education together
with his sister Mary, attending a log cabin school a mile from their home. Two years
later, Davis entered the Catholic school of Saint Thomas at St. Rose Priory, a school
operated by the Dominican Order in Washington County, Kentucky. At the time, he was
the only Protestant student.
Davis went on to Jefferson College at Washington, Mississippi, in 1818, and to
Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1821. In 1824, Davis entered the
United States Military Academy (West Point).[3] He completed his four-year term as a
West Point cadet, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in June 1828 following
graduation.
Davis was assigned to the 1st Infantry Regiment and was stationed at Fort Crawford,
Wisconsin. His first assignment, in 1829, was to supervise the cutting of timber on the
banks of the Red Cedar River for the repair and enlargement of the fort. Later the same
year, he was reassigned to Fort Winnebago. While supervising the construction and
management of a sawmill in the Yellow River in 1831, he contracted pneumonia, causing
him to return to Fort Crawford.
The year after, Davis was dispatched to Galena, Illinois, at the head of a detachment
assigned to remove miners from lands claimed by the Native Americans. His first combat
assignment was during the Black Hawk War of the same year, after which he was
assigned by his colonel, Zachary Taylor, to escort Black Hawk himself to prison—it is
said that the chief liked Davis because of the kind treatment he had shown. Another of
Davis's duties during this time was to keep miners from illegally entering what would
eventually become the state of Iowa.
In 1833, Davis was promoted to first lieutenant of the Regiment of Dragoons[4] and made
a regimental adjutant. In 1834 he was transferred to Fort Gibson in the Indian Territory.
Around this time, Davis fell in love with Colonel Taylor's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor.
Her father did not approve of the match, so Davis resigned his commission and married
Miss Taylor on June 17, 1835, at the house of her aunt near Louisville, Kentucky.
Marriage, plantation life and early political career
Jefferson Davis
Sarah Knox Taylor
The marriage proved
short. While visiting
Davis' oldest sister near
Saint Francisville,
Louisiana, both
newlyweds contracted
malaria, and Davis's wife
died three months after the
wedding on September 15,
1835. In 1836, he moved
to Brierfield Plantation in Warren County, Mississippi.
For the next eight years, Davis was a recluse, studying
government and history, and engaging in private
political discussions with his brother Joseph.[3]
The year 1844 saw Davis's first political success, as he was elected to the United States
House of Representatives, taking office on March 4 of the following year.
He married again on February 26, 1845, this time to the socially prominent Varina
Howell.
Second military career
The year 1846 saw the beginning of the Mexican-American War. He resigned his House
seat in June, and raised a volunteer regiment, the Mississippi Rifles, becoming its
colonel. On July 21, 1846 they sailed from New Orleans for the Texas coast. Davis armed
the regiment with percussion rifles and trained the regiment in their use, making it
particularly effective in combat.
In September of the same year, he participated in the successful siege of Monterrey,
Mexico. He fought bravely at the Battle of Buena Vista on February 22, 1847, and was
shot in the foot. In recognition of his bravery and initiative, commanding general Zachary
Taylor is reputed to have said, "My daughter, sir, was a better judge of men than I
was."[3]
President James K. Polk offered him a Federal commission as a brigadier general and
command of a brigade of militia. He declined the appointment, arguing that the United
States Constitution gives the power of appointing militia officers to the states, and not to
the Federal government.
Return to politics
Because of his war service, the Governor of Mississippi appointed Davis to fill out the
Senate term of the late Jesse Speight. He took his seat 5 December 1847, and was elected
to serve the remainder of his term in January 1848. In addition, the Smithsonian
Institution appointed him a regent at the end of December 1847.
The Senate made Davis chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. When his term
expired, he was elected to the same seat (by the Mississippi legislature, as the
Constitution mandated at the time). He had not served a year when he resigned (in
September 1851) to run for the Governorship of Mississippi on the issue of the
Compromise of 1850, which Davis opposed. This election bid was unsuccessful, as he
was defeated by Henry Stuart Foote by 999 votes.
Left without political office, Davis continued his political activity. He took part in a
convention on states' rights, held at Jackson, Mississippi in January 1852. In the weeks
leading up to the presidential election of 1852, he campaigned in numerous Southern
states for Democratic candidates Franklin Pierce and William R. King.
Pierce won the election and, in 1853, made Davis his Secretary of War.[5] In this capacity,
Davis gave to Congress four annual reports (in December of each year), as well as an
elaborate one (submitted on February 22, 1855) on various routes for the proposed
Transcontinental Railroad. The Pierce administration ended in 1857. The president lost
the Democratic nomination, which went instead to James Buchanan. Davis's term was to
end with Pierce's, so he ran successfully for the Senate, and re-entered it on March 4,
1857.
His renewed service in the Senate was interrupted by an illness that threatened him with
the loss of his left eye. Still nominally serving in the Senate, Davis spent the summer of
1858 in Portland, Maine. On the Fourth of July, he delivered an anti-secessionist speech
on board a ship near Boston. He again urged the preservation of the Union on October 11
in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and returned to the Senate soon after.
On February 2, 1860, as secessionist clamor in the South grew ever louder, Davis
submitted six resolutions in an attempt to consolidate opinion regarding states' rights,
including the right to maintain slavery in the South, and to further his own position on the
issue. Abraham Lincoln won the presidency that November. Matters came to a head, and
South Carolina seceded from the Union.
Though an opponent of secession in principle, Davis upheld it in practice on January 10,
1861. On January 21, 1861, he announced the secession of Mississippi, delivered a
farewell address, and resigned from the Senate.
Leadership of the Confederacy
Third Confederate National Flag
Four days after his resignation, Davis was
commissioned a Major General of Mississippi troops.[3]
On February 9, 1861, a constitutional convention at
Montgomery, Alabama named him provisional president
of the Confederate States of America and he was
inaugurated on February 18. In meetings of his own
Mississippi legislature, Davis had argued against secession; but when a majority of the
delegates opposed him, he gave in.
In conformity with a resolution of the Confederate Congress, Davis immediately
appointed a Peace Commission to resolve the Confederacy's differences with the Union.
In March 1861, before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the commission was to travel to
Washington, D.C., to offer to pay for any Federal property on Southern soil, as well as
the Southern portion of the national debt, but it was not authorized to discuss terms for
reunion. He appointed General P.G.T. Beauregard to command Confederate troops in the
vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina. He approved the cabinet decision to bombard Fort
Sumter, which started the war. When Virginia switched from neutrality and joined the
Confederacy, he moved his government to Richmond, Virginia, in May 1861. Davis and
his family took up his residence there at the White House of the Confederacy in late May.
Davis was elected to a six-year term as president of the Confederacy on November 6,
1861. He had never served a full term in any elective office, and that would turn out to be
the case on this occasion as well. He was inaugurated on February 22, 1862. In June,
1862, he assigned General Robert E. Lee to replace the wounded Joseph E. Johnston in
command of the Army of Northern Virginia, the main Confederate army in the Eastern
Theater. That December, he made a tour of Confederate armies in the west of the country.
Davis largely made the main strategic decisions on his own, or approved those suggested
by Lee. He had a very small circle of military advisors.
In August 1863, Davis declined General Lee's offer of resignation after his defeat at the
Battle of Gettysburg. As Confederate military fortunes turned for the worse in 1864, he
visited Georgia with the intent of raising morale.
Davis has received criticism over his conduct of the military affairs of the Confederacy.
Until late in the war, he resisted efforts to appoint a general-in-chief, essentially handling
those duties himself; on January 31, 1865, Lee assumed this role, but it was far too late.
Davis insisted on a strategy of trying to defend all Southern territory with ostensibly
equal effort, which diluted the limited resources of the South and made it vulnerable to
coordinated strategic thrusts by the Union into the vital Western Theater, such as the
capture of New Orleans. He made other poor strategic choices, such as allowing Lee to
invade the North on two occasions while the Western armies were under very heavy
pressure. Davis has been faulted for poor coordination and management of his generals.
This includes his reluctance to relieve his personal friend, Braxton Bragg, defeated in
important battles and distrusted by his subordinates; he relieved the cautious but capable
Joseph E. Johnston and replaced him with the reckless John Bell Hood, resulting in the
loss of Atlanta and the eventual loss of an army.
On April 3, 1865, with Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant poised to capture Richmond,
Davis escaped for Danville, Virginia, together with the Confederate cabinet, leaving on
the Richmond and Danville Railroad. He issued his last official proclamation as President
of the Confederacy, and then went south to Greensboro, North Carolina.
President Jefferson Davis met with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5,
1865 in Washington, Georgia, and the Confederate Government was officially dissolved.
The meeting took place at the Heard house, the Georgia Branch Bank Building, with
fourteen officials present. On May 10, he was captured at Irwinville, Georgia. After being
captured, he was held as a prisoner for two years in Fort Monroe, Virginia.
Administration and Cabinet
OFFICE
NAME
TERM
President
Jefferson Davis
1861–1865
Vice President
Alexander Stephens
1861–1865
Secretary of State
Robert Toombs
1861
Robert M. T. Hunter
1861–1862
Judah P. Benjamin
1862–1865
Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger 1861–1864
Secretary of War
Secretary of the Navy
George Trenholm
1864–1865
John H. Reagan
1865
LeRoy Pope Walker
1861
Judah P. Benjamin
1861–1862
George W. Randolph
1862
James Seddon
1862–1865
John C. Breckinridge
1865
Stephen Mallory
1861–1865
Postmaster General
John H. Reagan
1861–1865
Attorney General
Judah P. Benjamin
1861
Thomas Bragg
1861–1862
Thomas H. Watts
1862–1863
George Davis
1864–1865
Imprisonment and retirement
Jefferson Davis at his home c.1885
On May 19, 1865, Davis was imprisoned in a casemate
at Fortress Monroe, on the coast of Virginia. He was
placed in irons for three days. Davis was indicted for
treason a year later. While in prison, Davis arranged to
sell his Mississippi estate to one of his former slaves,
Ben Montgomery. Montgomery was a talented business
manager, mechanic, and even an inventor who had
become wealthy in part from running his own general
store.
The next year, after imprisonment of two years, he was
released on bail which was posted by prominent citizens
of both northern and southern states, including Horace
Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Gerrit Smith, who,
as a member of the Secret Six, had earlier supported John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry,
West Virginia. Davis visited Canada, Cuba and Europe. In December 1868, the court
rejected a motion to nullify the indictment, but the prosecution dropped the case in
February 1869.
In 1869 Davis became president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company in Memphis,
Tennessee. Upon Robert E. Lee's death in 1870, Davis presided over the memorial
meeting in Richmond, Virginia. Elected to the U.S. Senate again, he was refused the
office in 1875, having been barred from Federal office by the Fourteenth Amendment to
the United States Constitution. He also turned down the opportunity to become the first
president of The Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas, which is now Texas
A&M University.
In 1876, he promoted a society for the stimulation of U.S. trade with South America.
Davis visited England the next year, returning in 1878 to Beauvoir (Biloxi, Mississippi).
Over the next three years there, Davis wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government. Having completed that book, he visited Europe again, and traveled to
Alabama and Georgia the following year.
He completed A Short History of the Confederate States of America in October 1889.
Two months later, Davis died in New Orleans at the age of eighty-one. His funeral was
one of the largest ever staged in the South and ran a continuous march from New Orleans
to Richmond, Virginia, day and night. He is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
Legacy
Statue of Jefferson Davis
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Jefferson Davis is included on a bas relief sculpture
on Stone Mountain which is just east of Atlanta,
Georgia.
 A monument to Jefferson Davis was unveiled on
June 3, 1907 on Monument Avenue in Richmond,
Virginia.
 A statue of Jefferson Davis stands in Confederate
Park in Memphis, Tennessee.
 There is a statue of Jefferson Davis on the South
Mall of the Texas State Capitol.
 Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi, Jefferson
Davis Parish, Louisiana, Jeff Davis County, Texas,
and Jeff Davis County, Georgia, both created after
the civil war, were named after Jefferson Davis.
 Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution barred from office
anyone who had violated their oath to protect the
Constitution by serving in the Confederacy. That
prohibition included Davis. In 1978, pursuant to authority granted to Congress
under the same section of the Amendment, Congress posthumously removed the
ban on Davis with a two-thirds vote of each house and President Jimmy Carter
signed it. These actions were spearheaded by Congressman Trent Lott of
Mississippi. Congress had previously taken similar action on behalf of Robert E.
Lee.
The state of Alabama celebrates Davis's birthday on the first Monday in June. The
state of Mississippi observes Davis's birthday in conjunction with the Memorial
Day Federal holiday.
In the State of Florida, Jefferson Davis's birthday, June 3, is a legal holiday and
public holiday. [1]
A 351-foot tall concrete obelisk at the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in
Fairview, Kentucky, honors the former president.
A bust statue of Jefferson Davis is located in a park in Fitzgerald, Georgia.
Another bust of Davis is located outside of the Jeff Davis County Court House
building in Hazlehurst, Georgia.
In Virginia, several sections of U.S. Route 1 and / or 301 are named Jefferson
Davis Hwy.
Trivia
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"Jeff Davis" was the name of three famous horses during the war. It was the birth
name of Robert E. Lee's Traveller; the primary mount used by John Bell Hood;
and the name Ulysses S. Grant gave to one of his backup mounts.
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The Model 1858 Army hat, or Hardee hat, was regulation headgear for officers
and enlisted men of the U.S. Army during the American Civil War. It was
sometimes called the "Jeff Davis hat," probably because Army hats of this style
were adopted in 1855, when Jefferson Davis was serving as Secretary of War.
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Jefferson Davis' favorite hobbies included sailing and gambling.
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While Secretary of War, Davis attempted to found a camel-based American
cavalry, but the idea failed to take hold. Harry Turtledove's alternative history
novels frequently reference this point.
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Jefferson Davis's home at Beauvoir along with the presidential library, at 2244
Beach Boulevard, Biloxi, Mississippi, was severely damaged by Hurricane
Katrina[2].
References
Primary sources
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Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings ed. by William J. Cooper
(2003)
Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis: Constitutionalist; His Letters, Papers, and
Speeches (10 vols., 1923).
The Papers of Jefferson Davis (1971- ), edited by Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., James
T. McIntosh, and Lynda L. Crist; latest is vol. 11 (2004) to May 1865
Jefferson Davis. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881;
numerous reprints)
Secondary sources
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Allen, Felicity. Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart (1999) online edition
Ballard, Michael. Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the
Confederacy (1986) online edition
William J. Cooper. Jefferson Davis, American (2000)
William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (1991).
William E Dodd. Jefferson Davis (1907)
Clement Eaton, Jefferson Davis (1977).
Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate
Nationalism (1978).
Herman Hattaway and Richard E. Beringer. Jefferson Davis, Confederate
President. (2001)
Rable; George C. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution against Politics.
(1994). online edition
Neely Jr.' Mark E. Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil Liberties
(1993) online edition
Hudson Strode, Jefferson Davis (3 vols., 1955-1964)
Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865 (1979)
External links
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Jefferson Davis
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Works by Jefferson Davis at Project Gutenberg
o Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; delivered during the
summer of 1858, available at Project Gutenberg.
The Papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University
Biography of Jefferson Davis
Extensive Biography from public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
Jefferson Davis' final resting place
1. ^ Rable (1994) p 87
2. ^ The Papers of Jefferson Davis, 1:lxv-lxvi. Haskell M. Monroe, Jr., and James T.
McIntosh, ed. 1971.
3. ^ a b c d Hamilton, Holman (1978). "Jefferson Davis Before His Presidency", The
Three Kentucky Presidents. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.
ISBN 0813102464.
4. ^ DAVIS, Jefferson, (1808 - 1889). United States Congress. Retrieved on 200701-14.
5. ^ (1992) "Davis, Jefferson", in Kleber, John E.: The Kentucky Encyclopedia,
Associate editors: Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, and James C. Klotter,
Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813117720.
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12,
1870) was a career U.S. Army officer and the most
celebrated general of the Confederate forces during the
American Civil War.
Overview
Lee was the son of Maj. Gen. Henry Lee III "Light
Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and
his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829), who
was a niece of Thomas More and a descendant of King
Robert II of Scotland through the 2nd Earls of
Crawford.[1] A top graduate of West Point, Lee
distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the
U.S. Army for 32 years, during which time he fought in
the Mexican-American War.
Lee in early 1861 opposed the formation of the Confederacy and considered acceptance
of an offer from Abraham Lincoln for a senior command in the U.S. Army. However,
when Virginia seceded from the Union in April he chose his home state. His first major
role came in June 1862 when he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia, the
primary Confederate military force in the Eastern Theater. Before that though he was the
military advisor for President Jefferson Davis
Lee's greatest victories were the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the
Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, but both of his campaigns to
invade the North ended in failure. Barely escaping defeat at the Battle of Antietam in
1862, Lee was forced to return to Virginia. He was decisively defeated at the Battle of
Gettysburg in 1863, with his escape routes cut off by flooded rivers. Because of an
ineffectual pursuit by Union Maj. Gen. George Meade, Lee escaped again.
In spring 1864, the new Union commander, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant began a series of
battles designed to wear away Lee's army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the
Siege of Petersburg in 1864–65, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on a larger and betterequipped enemy, but was unable to replace his losses and his army was forced into
trenches, with insufficient resources to raise an effective offensive. In spring 1865, Lee
was forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond and began a strategic retreat.
His surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, represented the loss of only one of the
Confederate field armies, but it was a psychological blow from which the South did not
recover. All of the remaining armies capitulated by June 1865.
His victories against larger forces won him enduring fame as a crafty and daring
battlefield tactician, but his strategic decisions, such as invading the North in 1862 and
1863 and overlooking the Mississippi Valley, have generally been criticized by military
historians.
In 1865, as manpower reserves drained away, Lee made a plan to arm slaves to fight for
the Confederacy and free them, but it came too late to have any effect on the war. He
blocked dissenters from starting a guerrilla campaign to continue the war after his
surrender at Appomattox.
After the war, as a college president, Lee supported President Andrew Johnson's program
of Reconstruction and inter-sectional friendship, while opposing the Radical Republican
proposals to give freed slaves the vote and take the vote away from ex-Confederates. He
urged them to rethink their position between the North and South, and the reintegration of
former Confederates into the nation's political life. Lee became the great Southern hero of
the war, and his popularity grew in the North as well after 1880. He is still an iconic
figure of American history.
Early life and career
Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia,
the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Light Horse Harry") and Anne
Hill (née Carter) Lee. Lee's parents were members of the Virginia gentry class. Lee's
paternal ancestors were among the earliest settlers in Virginia. His mother grew up at
Shirley Plantation, one of most elegant homes in Virginia. His maternal great-greatgrandfather, Robert "King" Carter, was the wealthiest man in the colonies when he died
in 1732. "Light Horse Harry Lee" squandered the fortunes of his two wives before he fled
to the West Indies abandoning young Robert and his family and leaving them in financial
ruin.
Robert's father died when Robert was 11 years old leaving the family deeply in debt. The
family lost their home to creditors and Robert grew up in a series of houses in
Alexandria, Virginia. Robert attended Alexandria Academy, where the curriculum
included Greek, Latin, algebra, and geometry. Lee was considered a top student and
excelled at mathematics. His mother, a devout Christian, oversaw his religious instruction
at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria.
He entered the United States Military Academy in 1825. When he graduated in 1829,
second in his class of 46, not only had he attained the top academic record, but he had no
demerits. No other student in the History of the Academy has ever achieved this kind of
record. His classmates called him "The Model Cadet," but liked him anyway. He was
commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.
Engineering, family
Lee served for just over seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia.
In 1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula and played
a major role in the final construction of Fort Monroe and its opposite, Fort Calhoun. Fort
Monroe was completely surrounded by a moat. Fort Calhoun, later renamed Fort Wool,
was built on a man-made island across the navigational channel from Old Point Comfort
in the middle of the mouth of Hampton Roads. When construction was completed in
1834, Fort Monroe was referred to as the "Gibraltar of Chesapeake Bay."
While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–
1873), the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, at Arlington House, her parents'
home just across from Washington, D.C. The 3rd U.S. Artillery served as honor guard at
the marriage. They eventually had seven children, three boys and four girls: George
Washington Custis, William H. Fitzhugh, Robert Edward, Mary, Annie, Agnes, and
Mildred. All the children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862.
Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington from 1834 to 1837,
but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and
Michigan. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the engineering work
for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among his
projects was blasting a channel through the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi by
Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of 2.4 feet was the upper limit of
steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. In 1841,
he was transferred to Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor, where he took charge of
building fortifications. There he served as a vestryman at St. John's Episcopal Church,
Fort Hamilton.
Mexican-American War, West Point, and Texas
Robert Edward Lee, as a U.S. Army Colonel before the
Civil War
Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War
(1846–1848). He was one of Winfield Scott's chief aides in
the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was
instrumental in several American victories through his
personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes
of attack that the Mexicans had not defended because they
thought the terrain was impassable.
He was promoted to major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo
on April 18, 1847.[2] He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was
wounded at the last. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel.
After the Mexican War, he spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor, after
which he became the superintendent of West Point in 1852. During his three years at
West Point, he improved the buildings, the courses, and spent a lot of time with the
cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his
tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.
In 1855, Lee became Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry (under the command of
Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston) and was sent to the Texas frontier. There he helped
protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.
These were not happy years for Lee, as he did not like to be away from his family for
long periods of time, especially as his wife was becoming increasingly ill. Lee came
home to see her as often as he could.
Lee as a slave holder
As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee lived in close contact with slavery before he
joined the Army and held variously around a half-dozen slaves under his own name.
When Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee
(as executor of the will) came into control over some 63 slaves on the Arlington
plantation. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner
as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", providing a maximum of five
years for the legal and logistical details of manumission, Lee found himself in need of
funds to pay his father-in-law's debts and repair the properties he had inherited[3]. He
decided to make money during the five years that the will had allowed him control of the
slaves by working them on the plantation and hiring them out to neighboring plantations
and to eastern Virginia.
Lee, with no experience as a large-scale slave-owner, tried to hire an overseer to handle
the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin "I wish to get an energetic honest
farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make
them do their duty"[4]. But Lee failed to find a man for the job, and had to take a two-year
leave of absence from the army in order to run the plantation himself. He found the
experience frustrating and difficult; some of the slaves were unhappy and demanded their
freedom. Many of them had been given to understand that they were to be made free as
soon as Custis died.[5] In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney that "I have had some
trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the
previous week, rebelled against my authority--refused to obey my orders, & said they
were as free as I was, etc., etc.--I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail.
They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them"[6]. Less
than two months after they were sent to the Alexandria jail, Lee decided to remove these
three men and three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them under lock and
key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in Richmond, who was instructed to
keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" slaveholders to work them
until the end of the five year period.[7]
In 1859, three of the Arlington slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of
theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border
and forced to return to Arlington. On June 24, 1859, the New York Daily Tribune
published two anonymous letters (dated June 19, 1859[8] and June 21, 1859[9]), each of
which claimed to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and went so far as to
claim that Lee himself had whipped the woman when the officer refused to. Lee wrote to
his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your
grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy."[10]
Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the Tribune letters. Douglas S.
Freeman, in his 1934 biography of Lee, described the letters to the Tribune as "Lee's first
experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that
"There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes
flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station
forbade such a thing." Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000), found
the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but not at
all unlikely that Lee had had the slaves whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee
substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was an intrinsic and necessary part of slave
discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner,
overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and
potentially savage."[11]
Wesley Norris himself discussed the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview[12]
printed in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris stated that after they had been
captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a
lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them
tied to posts and whipped by the county constable, with fifty lashes for the men and
twenty for Mary Norris (he made no claim that Lee had personally whipped Mary
Norris). Norris claimed that Lee then had the overseer rub their lacerated backs with
brine.
After their capture, Lee sent the Norrises to work on the railroad in Richmond, Virginia,
and Alabama. Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by slipping through the
Confederate lines near Richmond to Union-controlled territory.[13] Lee freed all the other
Custis slaves after the end of the five year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of
manumission on December 29, 1862[14].
Lee's views on slavery
Since the end of the Civil War, it has often been suggested that Lee was in some sense
opposed to slavery. In the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, and after
his death, Lee became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and as
succeeding generations came to look on slavery as a terrible immorality, the idea that Lee
had always somehow opposed it helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern
honor and national reconciliation.
Some of the evidence cited in favor of the claim that Lee opposed slavery are the
manumission of Custis's slaves, as discussed above, and his support, towards the end of
the war, for enrolling slaves in the Confederate States Army, with manumission offered
as an eventual reward for good service. Lee gave his public support to this idea two
weeks before Appomattox, too late for it to do any good for the Confederacy.
In December of 1864, Lee was shown a letter by Lousiana Senator Edward Sparrow,
written by General St. John R. Liddell, which noted that Lee would be hard-pressed in the
interior of Virginia by spring, and the need to consider Patrick Cleburne's plan to
emanicipate the slaves and put all men in the army that were willing to join. Lee was said
to have agreed on all points and desired to get Negro soldiers, saying that "he could make
soldiers out of any human being that had arms and legs."[15]
Another source is Lee's 1856 letter to his wife[16], which can be interpreted in multiple
ways:
… In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an
institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its
disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while
my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the
former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially &
physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race,
& I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary
is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.
– Robert E. Lee, to Mary Anna Lee, December 27, 1856
Freeman's analysis[17] puts Lee's attitude toward slavery and abolition in historical
context:
This [letter] was the prevailing view among most religious people of Lee's class in the border
states. They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end
when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they
were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races. Lee shared these convictions of his
neighbors without having come in contact with the worst evils of African bondage. He spent no
considerable time in any state south of Virginia from the day he left Fort Pulaski in 1831 until he
went to Texas in 1856. All his reflective years had been passed in the North or in the border
states. He had never been among the blacks on a cotton or rice plantation. At Arlington the
servants had been notoriously indolent, their master's master. Lee, in short, was only acquainted
with slavery at its best and he judged it accordingly. At the same time, he was under no illusion
regarding the aims of the Abolitionist or the effect of their agitation.
– Douglas S. Freeman, R. E. Lee, A Biography, p. 372
Harper's Ferry and Texas, 1859-61
When John Brown led a band of 21 men (5 African Americans) and seized the federal
arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, Lee was given command of
detachments of Maryland and Virginia militia, soldiers , and United States Marines, to
suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders. [18] By the time Lee arrived later that night,
the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. When on October 18
Brown refused the demand for surrender, Lee attacked and after three minutes of
fighting, Brown and his followers were captured.
When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs
surrendered all the American forces (about 4000 men, including Lee) to the Texans.
Twiggs immediately resigned from the U. S. Army and was made a Confederate general.
Lee went back to Washington, where he was offered a senior command of the U.S.
Army.
Civil War
Mathew Brady portrait of Lee in 1865
Lee privately ridiculed the Confederacy in letters in early
1861, denouncing secession as "revolution" and a betrayal
of the efforts of the Founders. The commanding general of
the Union army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted
Lee for a top command. Lee said he was willing as long as
Virginia remained in the Union. Lee was asked by one of
his lieutenants if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or
the Union, to which he replied, "I shall never bear arms
against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a
musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which
case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."[19] After
Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, it was obvious that Virginia would
quickly secede and so Lee turned down the offer on April 18, resigned from the U.S.
Army on April 20, and took up command of the Virginia state forces on April 23.
Early role
At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, but upon
the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full
generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, displaying only the three
stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank, until the Civil War
had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate
Army.[citation needed]
Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia,
where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for
Confederate setbacks.[20] He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the
Carolina and Georgia seaboard, where he was hampered by the lack of an effective
Confederate navy. Once again blamed by the press, he became military adviser to
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, former U.S. Secretary of War.
Commander, Army of Northern Virginia
In the spring of 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac
under General George B. McClellan advanced upon Richmond from Fort Monroe,
eventually reaching the eastern edges of the Confederate capital along the Chickahominy
River. Following the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines,
on June 1, 1862, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, his first
opportunity to lead an army in the field. Newspaper editorials of the day objected to his
appointment due to concerns that Lee would not be aggressive and would wait for the
Union army to come to him. He oversaw substantial strengthening of Richmond's
defenses during the first three weeks of June and then launched a series of attacks, the
Seven Days Battles, against McClellan's forces. Lee's attacks resulted in heavy
Confederate casualties and they were marred by clumsy tactical performances by his
subordinates, but his aggressive actions unnerved McClellan, who retreated to a point on
the James River where Union naval forces were in control. These successes led to a rapid
turn-around of public opinion and the newspaper editorials quickly changed their tune on
Lee's aggressiveness.
After McClellan's retreat, Lee defeated another Union army at the Second Battle of Bull
Run. He then invaded Maryland, hoping to replenish his supplies and possibly influence
the Northern elections that fall in favor of ending the war. McClellan's men recovered a
lost order that revealed Lee's plans. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's forces, but now
he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed by an all-out attack at
Antietam. Yet McClellan was too slow in moving, not realizing Lee had been informed
by a spy that McClellan had the plans. Lee urgently recalled Jackson and in the bloodiest
day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults. He withdrew his battered army back to
Virginia.
Lee mounted on Traveller
Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy
Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside
as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Burnside ordered an attack across the
Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. Delays
in getting bridges built across the river allowed
Lee's army ample time to organize strong
defenses, and the attack on December 12, 1862,
was a disaster for the Union. Lincoln then named Joseph Hooker commander of the
Army of the Potomac. Hooker's advance to attack Lee in May, 1863, near
Chancellorsville, Virginia, was defeated by Lee and Stonewall Jackson's daring plan to
divide the army and attack Hooker's flank. It was a victory over a larger force, but it also
came with a great cost. Jackson, one of Lee's best subordinates, was accidently wounded
by his own troops, and later died of pneumonia.
Gettysburg
In the summer of 1863, Lee invaded the North again, hoping for a Southern victory that
would shatter Northern morale. He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at
the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July. Some of his subordinates were
new and inexperienced in their commands, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry was out of the area, and
Lee's decision to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line—the
disastrous Pickett's Charge—resulted in heavy Confederate losses. Lee was compelled to
retreat again. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's
ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to
President Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. That fall, Lee and
Meade met again in two minor campaigns that did little to change the strategic standoff.
Ulysses S. Grant and the Union offensive
In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to destroy
Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee stopped each
attack, but Grant had superior reinforcements and kept pushing each time a bit farther to
the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness,
Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. Grant eventually fooled Lee by stealthily
moving his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture
Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate
trenches and were besieged in Petersburg. He attempted to break the stalemate by sending
Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early
was defeated by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted
from June 1864 until April 1865, with Lee's outnumbered army shrinking daily because
of desertions by disheartened Confederates.
General-in-chief
Lee with son Custis (left) and Walter H. Taylor
(right).
On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to generalin-chief of Confederate forces.
As the South ran out of manpower the issue of
arming the slaves became paramount. By late 1864
the Army so dominated the Confederacy that civilian
leaders were unable to block the military's proposal,
strongly endorsed by Lee, to arm and train slaves in
Confederate uniform for combat. Everyone
understood that those slave soldiers and their families
would be emancipated. Lee explained, "We should
employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual
and general emancipation." The first units were in
[21]
training as the war ended. As the Confederate army was decimated by casualties,
disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee
abandoned Richmond and retreated west. His forces were surrounded and he surrendered
them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Other Confederate
armies followed suit and the war ended.
Lee resisted calls by some officers to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away
into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war. He insisted the war was over and
energetically campaigned for inter-sectional reconciliation. "So far from engaging in a
war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be
greatly for the interests of the South."[22]
After the war
One of the last known images of Lee, post-Civil War
Before the Civil War, Lee and his wife had lived at his
wife's family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion on
Arlington Plantation. The plantation had been seized by
Union forces during the war, and became part of
Arlington National Cemetery; immediately following
the war, Lee spent two months in a rented house in
Richmond, and then escaped the unwelcome city life by
moving into the overseer's house of a friend's plantation
near Cartersville.[23] (In December 1882, the U.S.
Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property
to Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated
without due process. On March 3, 1883, the Congress
purchased the property from Lee for $150,000.[24])
While living in the country, Lee wrote his son that he hoped to retire to a farm of his
own, but a few weeks later he received an offer to serve as the president of Washington
College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee accepted, and
remained president of the College from October 2, 1865 until his death. Over five years,
he transformed Washington College from a small, undistinguished school into one of the
first American colleges to offer courses in business, journalism, and Spanish. He also
imposed a sweeping and breathtakingly simple concept of honor — "We have but one
rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman" — that endures today at Washington and
Lee and at a few other schools that continue to maintain "honor systems." Importantly,
Lee focused the college on attracting male students from the North as well as the South.
It was during this time that the Kappa Alpha Order, a national collegiate fraternity, was
started at Washington College. Years later, Kappa Alpha Order would designate Lee as
their "Spiritual Founder", providing a model of character for all members to model
themselves after. The college, like most in the United States at the time, remained racially
segregated. After John Chavis, admitted in 1795, Washington (or Washington and Lee)
would not admit a second black student until 1966.
Postwar politics
Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the
Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction
that took effect in 1865-66. However he opposed the Radical Republican program that
took effect in 1867. In February 1866, he was called to testify before the Joint
Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, where he expressed support
for President Andrew Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate
states, and argued that restoration should return, as far as possible, the status quo ante in
the Southern states' governments (with the exception of slavery).[25] Lee said, "every one
with whom I associate expresses kind feelings towards the freedmen. They wish to see
them get on in the world, and particularly to take up some occupation for a living, and to
turn their hands to some work." Lee also expressed his "willingness that blacks should be
educated, and ... that it would be better for the blacks and for the whites." At a time in
early 1866 when most northerners opposed black suffrage, Lee warned that granting
suffrage would be unpopular. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black
Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a
great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."[26]
In an interview in May, 1866, Lee said, "The Radical party are likely to do a great deal of
harm, for we wish now for good feeling to grow up between North and South, and the
President, Mr. Johnson, has been doing much to strengthen the feeling in favor of the
Union among us. The relations between the Negroes and the whites were friendly
formerly, and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks, in a way
that will only do them harm."[27]
In 1868, Lee's ally Alexander H. H. Stuart drafted a public letter of endorsement for the
Democratic Party's presidential campaign, in which Horatio Seymour ran against Lee's
old foe Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Lee signed it along with thirty-one other exConfederates. The Democratic campaign, eager to publicize the endorsement, published
the statement widely in newspapers.[28] Their letter claimed paternalistic concern for the
welfare of freed Southern blacks, stating that "The idea that the Southern people are
hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is
entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed
from childhood to look upon them with kindness."[29] However, it also called for the
restoration of white political rule, arguing that "It is true that the people of the South, in
common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious
reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of
the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of
enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the
intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe
depositories of political power."[30]
In his public statements and private correspondence, however, Lee argued that a tone of
reconciliation and patience would further the interests of white Southerners better than
hotheaded antagonism to federal authority or the use of violence. He repeatedly expelled
white students from Washington College for violent attacks on local black men, and
publicly urged obedience to the authorities and respect for law and order.[31] In 1869-70
he was a leader in successful efforts to establish state-funded schools for blacks.[32] He
privately chastised fellow ex-Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Jubal Early for
their frequent, angry responses to perceived Northern insults, writing in private to them
as he had written to a magazine editor in 1865, that "It should be the object of all to avoid
controversy, to allay passion, give full scope to reason and to every kindly feeling. By
doing this and encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all their heart
and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of
the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be
advanced in science, in virtue and in religion."[33]
Lee applied for, but was never granted, the postwar amnesty offered to former
Confederates who swore to renew their allegiance to the United States. After he filled out
the application form, it was delivered to the desk of Secretary of State William H.
Seward, who, assuming that the matter had been dealt with by someone else and that this
was just a personal copy, filed it away until it was found decades later in his desk drawer.
Lee took the lack of response to mean that the government wished to retain the right to
prosecute him in the future.
Lee's example of applying for amnesty encouraged many other former members of the
Confederacy's armed forces to accept restored U.S. citizenship. In 1975, Lee's full rights
of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint U.S. Congressional resolution
effective 13 June 1865. At the 5 August 1975, signing ceremony, President Gerald R.
Ford acknowledged the discovery of Lee's oath of allegiance by Elmer Oris Parker, an
employee of the National Archives in 1970.[34]
Illness and death
So-called "Recumbent Statue" of Robert E. Lee
in Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia, of Lee
asleep on the battlefield, sculpted by Edward
Valentine. It is often mistakenly thought to be a
tomb or sarcophagus, but Lee is actually buried
elsewhere in the chapel.
On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke
that made speech impossible. Lee died from the
effects of pneumonia, a little after 9 a.m., October 12, 1870, two weeks after the stroke,
in Lexington, Virginia. He was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee
University, where his body remains today. According to J. William Jones' Personal
Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, his last words, on the day
of his death, were "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the tent," but this is debatable
because of conflicting accounts. Since Lee's stroke resulted in aphasia, last words may
have been impossible.
Legacy
Among white Southerners, Lee came to be even more revered after his surrender than he
had been during the war (when Stonewall Jackson had been the great Confederate hero,
particularly after Jackson's death at Chancellorsville). Admirers pointed to his character
and devotion to duty, not to mention his brilliant tactical successes in battle after battle
against a stronger foe. Military historians continue to pay attention to his battlefield
tactics and maneuvering, though many think he should have designed better strategic
plans for the Confederacy. His reputation continued to build and by 1900 his cult had
spread into the North, signaling a national apotheosis.[35]
Ancestry
Robert was the son of Maj. Gen. Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756-1818),
Governor of Virginia, and second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773-1829). Henry married
first, Matilda Lee (1766-1790), daughter of Hon. Philip Ludwell Lee, Sr., Esq. (17271775) and Elizabeth Steptoe (1743-1789), who married secondly, Philip Richard Fendall
I, Esq. (1734-1805).
Anne was the daughter of Hon. Charles Carter, Sr. (1737-1802) of "Shirley", and his
second wife, Anne Butler Moore (1756).
Henry III, was the son of Maj. Gen. Henry Lee II (1730-1787) of “Leesylvania” and,
Lucy Grymes (1734-1792) the "Lowland Beauty".
Lucy was the daughter of Hon. Charles Grymes (1693-1743) and Frances Jennings.
Henry II, was the third son of Capt. Henry Lee I (1691-1747) of “Lee Hall”,
Westmoreland County, and his wife, Mary Bland (1704-1764).
Mary was the daughter of Hon. Richard Bland, Sr. (1665-1720) and his second wife,
Elizabeth Randolph (1685-1719).
Henry I, was the son of Col. Richard Lee II, Esq., “the scholar” (1647-1715) and Laetitia
Corbin (ca. 1657-1706).
Laetitia was the daughter of Richard’s neighbor and, Councillor, Hon. Henry Corbin, Sr.
(1629-1676) and Alice (Eltonhead) Burnham (ca. 1627-1684).
Richard II, was the son of Col. Richard Lee I, Esq., "the immigrant" (1618-1664) and
Anne Constable (ca. 1621-1666).
Anne was the daughter of Thomas Constable and a ward of Sir John Thoroughgood.
Monuments, memorials and commemorations
Monuments

Since it was built in 1884, the most prominent monument in New Orleans has
been a 60-foot-tall monument to General Lee. A sixteen and a half foot statue of
Lee stands tall upon a towering column of white marble in the middle of Lee
Circle. The statue of Lee, which weighs more than 7,000 pounds, faces the North
(because he believed that you should never turn your back on your enemy). Lee
Circle is situated along New Orleans' famous St. Charles Avenue. The New
Orleans streetcars roll past Lee Circle and New Orleans' best Mardi Gras parades
go around Lee Circle (the spot is so popular that bleachers are set up annually
around the perimeter for Mardi Gras). Around the corner from Lee Circle is New
Orleans' Confederate Museum, which contains the second largest collection of
Confederate memorabilia in the world.[36] In a tribute to Lee Circle (which had
formerly been known as Tivoli Circle), former Confederate soldier George
Washington Cable wrote:
"In Tivoli Circle, New Orleans, from the centre and apex of its green flowery
mound, an immense column of pure white marble rises in the ... majesty of
Grecian proportions high up above the city's house-tops into the dazzling sunshine
... On its dizzy top stands the bronze figure of one of the worlds greatest captains.
He is alone. Not one of his mighty lieutenants stand behind, beside or below him.
His arms are folded on that breast that never knew fear, and
his calm, dauntless gaze meets the morning sun as it rises,
like the new posperity of the land he loved and serve so
masterly, above the far distant battle fields where so many
thousands of his gray veterans lie in the sleep of fallen
heroes." (Silent South, 1885, The Century Illustrated
Monthly Magazine)
Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May
29, 1890. Richmond, Virginia.

A large, beautiful equestrian statue of Lee by
French sculptor Jean Antonin Mercié is the
centerpiece of Richmond, Virginia's famous Monument Avenue, which boasts
four other statues to famous Confederates. This impressive monument to Lee was
unveiled on May 29, 1890. Over 100,000 people attended this dedication.
Holidays
The birthday of Robert E. Lee is celebrated or commemorated in:
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The State of Virginia as part of Lee-Jackson Day, which was separated from the
Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday there in 2001. The King holiday falls on the third
Monday in January while the Lee-Jackson Day holiday is celebrated on the Friday
preceding it.
The state of Texas, as part of Confederate Heroes Day on January 19, Lee's actual
birthday.
The states of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi on the third Monday in January,
along with Martin Luther King, Jr.
The state of Georgia on the day after Thanksgiving.
The State of Florida, as a legal holiday and public holiday, on January 19. [1]
Geographic features
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Robert Lee, Texas
The Leesville half of Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina.
Fort Lee in Prince George County, Virginia.
Lee County, Alabama; Lee County, Arkansas; Lee County, Florida; Lee County,
Kentucky; Lee County, Mississippi; Lee County, North Carolina; Lee County,
South Carolina; and Lee County, Texas.
Lee Drive, Baton Rouge, Louisiana—one of the city's major streets, it is located
near the Louisiana State University. Robert E. Lee High School is located on the
street.
Lee Highway, a National Auto Trail in the United States connecting New York
City and San Francisco, California via the South and Southwest.
Lee Avenue, in Manassas, Virginia, was named after Robert E. Lee and intersects
with Grant Avenue in front of the old Prince William County Courthouse. Grant
Avenue was named after General Ulysses S. Grant.
Schools and universities
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Robert E. Lee Middle School, Orlando, Florida
Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
Lee-Davis High School, Mechanicsville, Virginia
Robert Lee High School, Robert Lee, Texas
Robert E. Lee High School, Thomaston, Georgia
Robert E. Lee High School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Robert E. Lee High School, Springfield, Virginia
Robert E. Lee High School, Staunton, Virginia
Robert E. Lee High School, Huntsville, Alabama
Robert E. Lee High School, Montgomery, Alabama
Robert E. Lee High School, Jacksonville, Florida
Robert E. Lee High School, Midland, Texas
Robert E. Lee High School, San Antonio, Texas
Robert E. Lee High School, Tyler, Texas
Robert E. Lee High School, Baytown, Texas
Robert E. Lee High School, Houston, Texas
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Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, Virginia
R.E. Lee High School, Thomaston, Georgia
Robert E. Lee Junior High School, Monroe, Louisiana
Robert E. Lee Junior High School, San Angelo, Texas
Robert E. Lee Elementary School, Richmond, Virginia
Lee-Jackson Elementary School, Mathews, Virginia
Robert E. Lee Elementary School, Spotsylvania, Virginia
Robert E. Lee Elementary School, Jackson, Mississippi
Memorials
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Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion and located in presentday Arlington National Cemetery, is maintained by the National Park Service as a
memorial to Lee.
The Virginia State Memorial at Gettysburg Battlefield is topped by an equestrian
statue of Lee by Frederick William Sievers, facing roughly in the direction of
Pickett's Charge.
Lee is one of the figures depicted in bas-relief carved into Stone Mountain near
Atlanta, Georgia. Accompanying him on horseback in the relief are Stonewall
Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
Despite his presidential pardon by Gerald Ford and his continuing to being held in
high regard by many Americans, Lee's portrayal on a mural on Richmond's Flood
Wall on the James River was considered offensive by some, was removed in the
late 1990s, but currently is back on the flood wall.
The USS Robert E. Lee (SSBN-601) was a submarine named for Lee, built in
1958
A Mississippi River steamboat was named for Lee after the Civil War.
In 1900, Lee was one of the first 29 individuals selected for the Hall of Fame for
Great Americans (the first Hall of Fame in the United States), designed by
Stanford White, on the Bronx, New York, campus of New York University, now
a part of Bronx Community College.
Robert E Lee
Monument,
Charlottesville, VA,
Leo Lentilli, sculptor,
1924
Robert E Lee, Virginia
Monument, Gettysburg,
PA, William Sievers,
sculptor, 1917
Lee by Mercié,
Statue of Lee on
Monument Avenue, the grounds of the
Richmond,
University of Texas
Virginia, 1890
at Austin
Statue of Lee in Dallas,
Texas
Trivia

Robert E. Lee was 5' 11" tall and wore a size 4-1/2 boot, equivalent to a modern
6-1/2 boot.

Some of his nicknames given to him by the press and his soldiers were: Marse
Robert, Granny Lee, King of Spades (referring to trench warfare).

Two relatives of Lee were naval officers on opposing sides in the Civil War:
Richard Lucian Page (Confederate States Navy and later a brigadier general in the
Confederate States Army) and Samuel Phillips Lee (U.S. Navy Captain).

Confederate Brig. Gen. Edwin Gray Lee, a son-in-law of William N. Pendleton,
was Robert E. Lee's second cousin. Another relation was Confederate Brig. Gen.
William Henry Fitzhugh Payne, an indirect relation of Mrs. Lee who was
descended from George Washington's father Augustine Washington and his first
wife, Jane Butler.

After the war Lee had financial difficulties. A Virginia insurance company
offered Lee $10,000 to use his name, but he declined the offer, relying wholly on
his university salary.[37]

Traveller, Lee's favorite horse, accompanied Lee to Washington College after the
war. He lost many hairs from his tail to admirers who wanted a souvenir of the
famous horse and his general. In 1870, when Lee died, Traveller was led behind
the General's hearse. Not long after Lee's death, Traveller stepped on a rusty nail
and developed tetanus. There was no cure, and he was put down. He was buried
next to the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. In 1907, his remains
were disinterred and displayed at the Chapel, before being reburied beside the Lee
Chapel in 1971.

Lee always said that education was his true calling.[citation needed] Not only did he
help bring about reconciliation through his work at Washington College (now
Washington and Lee University) but he also promoted new subjects such as
engineering, and introduced the first Reserve Officers Training Corps (or ROTC).
Up until then they were only held at the military service academies. Many
students enrolled from both the North as well as the South. The German minister
to Washington even enrolled his two sons there.[citation needed]

The Lee family line continues today with the Lees in Virginia and the Longs in
Tennessee. The Lee family inter-married with the Longs often enough that he
named his other beloved horse "Lucy Long" after a young lady he almost married.

Although they never became friends, Lee never forgot Grant's magnanimity and
generosity at Appomattox, and would not tolerate an unkind word to be said about
Grant in his presence. When a Washington College faculty member dared to do
just that when Grant ran for president, Lee's face flushed. "Sir," he said, "If you
should ever propose to say something disparaging about General Grant again,
either you or I will resign from this facility."[citation needed]

The General Lee, the souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger used in the television
program in 1979 The Dukes of Hazzard and the 2005 Dukes of Hazzard movie
adaptation was named after Robert E. Lee.

In the movie Gods and Generals, Lee was played by actor Robert Duvall, who is
related to Lee. After the Civil War, as Lee's legacy grew, many people of
Southern origin dug to find possible connection to Robert E. Lee, and such a
connection was analogous to the frequent northern claim of being descended from
Mayflower Pilgrims.

Lee is a character in the Harry Turtledove alternate history novel The Guns of the
South.

Actor Lee Marvin (1924-1987) was Lee's first cousin four times removed and was
named in his [Robert E. Lee] honor.

Neil Diamond wrote a popular song entitled 'On The Robert E. Lee' in his album
The Jazz Singer.

The asteroid 3155 Lee was named in honor of the Confederate General.
References
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Lee at Fredericksburg
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Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Fellman, Michael, The Making of Robert E. Lee, Random House, 2000, ISBN 0679-45650-3.
Freeman, Douglas S., R. E. Lee, A Biography (4 volumes), Scribners, 1934.
Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C., Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and
Generalship, Indiana University Press, 1957, ISBN 0-253-13400-5.
Hughes Jr., Nathaniel C., and Lidell, St. John R., Liddell's Record, Lousiana State
University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8071-2218-1.
Lee, Robert Edward, General, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee.
Nolan, Alan T., Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History,
University of North Carolina Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8078-4587-6.
Testimony of Wesley Norris, National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 14, 1866.
Reprinted in John W. Blassingame, (ed.) (1977), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries
of Letters, Speeches, and Interviews, and Autobiographies, ISBN 0-8071-0273-3.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders,
Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
John Brown Gordon
John Brown Gordon
John Brown Gordon (February 6, 1832 – January 9,
1904) served as one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted
Confederate generals during the American Civil War.
After the war, he was a U.S. Senator, a railroad
executive, and the Governor of Georgia from 1886 to
1890.
Early life
Gordon was descended from an ancient Scottish lineage,
the fourth child of twelve, born on his father's plantation
in Upson County, Georgia. Many Gordon family members fought in the Revolutionary
War. He was an outstanding student at the University of Georgia, but left before
graduating. He studied law in Atlanta and passed the bar examination. Gordon and his
father invested in a series of coal mines in Tennessee and Georgia. He also practiced law.
He represented Georgia in Congress for many years after the Civil War. Gordon married
Fanny Haralson, daughter of Hugh Anderson Haralson, in 1854, and they had a long and
happy marriage.
Civil War
Although lacking any military education or experience, Gordon was elected captain of a
company of mountaineers and quickly climbed from captain to brigadier general
(November 1, 1862), to major general (May 14, 1864). Though Gordon himself often
claimed he was promoted to lieutenant general, there is no official record of this
occurring.[1] Gordon was an aggressive general who, when he was in command, or when
he led a charge, was never defeated or repulsed. In 1864, Gordon was described by
General Robert E. Lee in a letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis as being one of
his best brigadiers, "characterized by splendid audacity".
Gordon was a brigadier general and brigade commander in D.H. Hill's division in the
Peninsula Campaign in 1862. During the subsequent Seven Days Battles, as Gordon
strode fearlessly among his men, enemy bullets shattered the handle of his pistol, pierced
his canteen, and tore away part of the front of his coat. He was wounded in the eyes
during the assault on Malvern Hill.
Gordon portrait by Mathew Brady.
Assigned by General Lee to hold the vital sunken road, or
"Bloody Lane", during the Battle of Antietam, Gordon's
propensity for being wounded reached new heights. First, a
Minié ball passed through his calf. Then, a second ball hit
him higher in the same leg. A third ball went through his
left arm. He continued to lead his men despite the fact that
the muscles and tendons in his arm were mangled, and a
small artery was severed by this ball. A fourth ball hit him
in his shoulder. Despite pleas that he go to the rear, he
continued to lead his men. He was finally stopped by a ball
that hit him in the face, passing through his left cheek and
out his jaw. He fell with his face in his cap and might have
drowned in his own blood if it hadn't drained out through a
bullet hole in the cap.
After months of recuperation, in June 1863 Gordon led a brigade of Georgians in Jubal
A. Early's division during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. His brigade
occupied Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River, the farthest east any organized
Confederate troops would reach. Union militia under Col. Jacob G. Frick burned the
mile-and-a-quarter-long covered wooden bridge to prevent Gordon from crossing the
river, and the fire soon spread to parts of Wrightsville. Gordon's troops formed a bucket
brigade and managed to prevent the further destruction of the town.
At the Battle of Gettysburg, Gordon's brigade smashed into the Union XI Corps on
Barlow's Knoll. There, he aided the wounded opposing division commander Francis
Barlow. This incident led to a story (which many people consider apocryphal) about the
two officers meeting later in Washington, D.C., unaware that Barlow had survived the
battle. The story was told by Barlow and by Gordon and was published in newspapers
and in Gordon's book.
Seated at Clarkson Potter's table, I asked Barlow: "General, are you related to the Barlow who
was killed at Gettysburg?" He replied: "Why, I am the man, sir. Are you related to the Gordon
who killed me?" "I am the man, sir," I responded. No words of mine can convey any conception
of the emotions awakened by those startling announcements. Nothing short of an actual
resurrection from the dead could have amazed either of us more. Thenceforward, until his
untimely death in 1896, the friendship between us which was born amidst the thunders of
Gettysburg was greatly cherished by both.
– John B. Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War
Many historians discount this story because of Gordon's tendency to exaggerate in postwar writings and because it is inconceivable to them that Gordon did not know that
Barlow subsequently fought against him in the Battle of the Wilderness.
In the Overland Campaign, Gordon commanded a division in Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's
(later Early's) corps. He proposed a flanking attack against the Union right in the Battle
of the Wilderness that might have had a decisive effect on the battle, had Early allowed
him freedom to launch it before late in the day. Gordon's success in turning back the
massive Union assault in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (the Bloody Angle)
prevented a Confederate rout. He left with Early for the Valley Campaigns of 1864 and
was wounded August 25, 1864, at Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Confederate engineer
Jedediah Hotchkiss's official report of the incident stated, "Quite a lively skirmish
ensued, in which Gordon was wounded in the head, but he gallantly dashed on, the blood
streaming over him." His wife Fanny, accompanying her husband on the campaign as
general's wives sometimes did, rushed out into the street at the Third Battle of Winchester
to urge Gordon's retreating troops to go back and face the enemy. Gordon was horrified
to find her in the street with shells and balls flying about her.
Returning to Lee's army after Early's defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Gordon
defended the line in the Siege of Petersburg and commanded the attack on Fort Stedman
on March 25, 1865 (where he was wounded again, in the leg). At Appomattox Court
House, he led his men in the last charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, capturing the
entrenchments and several pieces of artillery in his front just before the surrender. On
April 12, 1865, Gordon's Confederate troops officially surrendered to Bvt. Maj. Gen.
Joshua L. Chamberlain, acting for Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
Postbellum career
John Brown Gordon's statue is located on the
northeastern grounds of the Georgia State
Capitol.
Gordon was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1873,
and in 1879 became the first ex-Confederate to
preside over the Senate. The next day he
obtained a promise from President Ulysses S.
Grant to remove Federal officials in Georgia
who had gained their positions through fraud or
corruption.
Gordon resigned in May 1880 to promote a venture for the Georgia-Pacific Railroad. He
was elected Governor of Georgia in 1886 and returned to the U.S. Senate from 1891 to
1897. In 1903 Gordon published an account of his Civil War service entitled
Reminiscences of the Civil War. He engaged in a series of popular speaking engagements
throughout the country.
Grave of John Brown Gordon, Oakland
Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia
General Gordon was the first Commander-inChief of the United Confederate Veterans when
the group was organized in 1890 and held this
position until his death. He died in Miami,
Florida, at the age of 71 and was buried in
Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia; upwards
of 75,000 people viewed and took part in the
memorial ceremonies.
The statue of Gordon on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta is the only
public equestrian statue in the city.
U.S. Highway 19 in Gordon's native Upson County, Georgia, is named in his honor.
Quotations
"A more gallant, generous, and fearless gentleman and soldier has not been seen by our
country." — President Theodore Roosevelt
"He was a devout and humble Christian gentleman. I know of no man more beloved at
the South, and he was probably the most popular Southern man among the people of the
North." — Stephen D. Lee, Commander-in-Chief, United Confederate Veterans
References



Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Gordon, John B., Reminiscences of the Civil War, 1903.
Kross, Gary, "The Barlow-Gordon Incident", Blue & Gray Magazine, December
2001, 23-24, 48-51.
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

White, Gregory C., response to Kross article, Blue & Gray Magazine, February
2002, 5-6.
New York Times, July 4, 1888.
National Tribune, March 1979.
General James Longstreet
James Longstreet (January 8, 1821 – January 2, 1904) was one of the foremost
Confederate generals of the American Civil War, the principal subordinate to General
Robert E. Lee, who called him his "Old War Horse." He served under Lee as a corps
commander for many of the famous battles fought by the Army of Northern Virginia in
the Eastern Theater, but also with Gen. Braxton Bragg in the Army of Tennessee in
Western Theater. Biographer and historian Jeffry D. Wert wrote that "Longstreet ... was
the finest corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia; in fact, he was arguably
the best corps commander in the conflict on either side."[1]
Longstreet's talents as a general made significant contributions to the Confederate
victories at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chickamauga, in both offensive and
defensive roles. He also performed strongly during the Seven Days Battles, the Battle of
Antietam, and until he was seriously wounded, at the Battle of the Wilderness. His
performance in semiautonomous command at Knoxville, Tennessee, resulted in an
embarrassing Confederate defeat. His most controversial service was at the Battle of
Gettysburg, where he disagreed with General Lee on the tactics to be employed, and
reluctantly supervised the disastrous infantry assault known as Pickett's Charge.
He enjoyed a successful post-war career working for the U.S. Government as a diplomat,
civil servant, and administrator. However, his conversion to the Republican Party and his
cooperation with his old friend, President Ulysses S. Grant, as well as critical comments
he wrote in his memoirs about General Lee's wartime performance, made him anathema
to many of his former Confederate colleagues. Authors of the Lost Cause movement
focused on Longstreet's actions at Gettysburg as a primary reason for the Confederacy's
loss of the war. His reputation in the South was damaged for over a century and has only
recently begun a slow reassessment.
Life and Career
Longstreet was born in Edgefield District, South Carolina. He was the fifth child and
third son of James and Mary Ann Dent Longstreet, originally from New Jersey and
Maryland, respectively, who owned a cotton plantation close to where the village of
Gainesville would be founded in northeastern Georgia. James's ancestor Dirck Stoffels
Langestraet immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1657, but the surname
became Anglicized over the generations.[2] James's father was impressed by his son's
"rocklike" character on the rural plantation, giving him the nickname Peter, and he was
known as Pete or Old Pete for the rest of his life.[3]
James's father decided on a military career for his son, but felt that the local education
available to him would not be adequate preparation. At the age of nine, James was sent to
live with his aunt and uncle in Augusta, Georgia. His uncle, Augustus Baldwin
Longstreet, was a newspaper editor, educator, and a Methodist minister. James spent
eight years on his uncle's plantation, Westover, just outside the city, while he attended the
Richmond County Academy. His father died from a cholera epidemic while visiting
Augusta in 1833; although James's mother and the rest of the family moved to
Somerville, Alabama, following his father's death, James remained with uncle
Augustus.[4]
In 1837, Augustus attempted to obtain an appointment for James to the United States
Military Academy, but the vacancy for his congressional district had already been filled,
so James was appointed in 1838 by a relative, Reuben Chapman, who represented the
First District of Alabama, where Mary Longstreet lived. James was a poor student
academically and a disciplinary problem at West Point, ranking 54th out of 56 cadets
when he graduated in 1842. He was popular with his classmates, however, and befriended
a number of men who would become prominent during the Civil War, including George
Henry Thomas, William S. Rosecrans, John Pope, D.H. Hill, Lafayette McLaws, and his
closest friend, Ulysses S. Grant of the class of 1843. Longstreet was commissioned a
brevet second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry.[5]
Longstreet spent his first two years of service at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, where he
was soon joined by his friend, Lieutenant Grant. Longstreet introduced Grant to his
fourth cousin, Julia Dent, and the couple eventually married. Soon after that introduction,
Longstreet met Maria Louisa Garland, called Louise by her family, the daughter of
Longstreet's regimental commander, Lt. Col. John Garland. They were married in March
1848, after the Mexican-American War. Although their marriage would last for over 40
years and produce 10 children, Longstreet never mentioned Louise in his memoirs and
most anecdotes about their relationship came to historians through the writings of his
second wife.[6]
Mexican – American War
Longstreet served with distinction in the Mexican War with the 8th U.S. Infantry. He
received brevet promotions to captain for Contreras and Churubusco and to major for
Molino del Rey. In the Battle of Chapultepec on September 12, 1847, he was wounded in
the thigh while charging up the hill with his regimental colors; falling, he handed the flag
to his friend, Lt. George E. Pickett, who was able to reach the summit.[7]
After the war and his recovery from the Chapultepec wound, Longstreet and his new wife
served on frontier duty in Texas, primarily at Fort Bliss. He performed scouting missions
and also served as major and paymaster for the 8th Infantry from July 1858.[8]
After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Longstreet decided that his allegiance belonged to
the South. He was not enthusiastic about secession from the Union, but he had learned
from his uncle Augustus about the doctrine of states' rights early in his life and had seen
his uncle's passion for it. Although he was born in South Carolina and raised in Georgia,
he offered his services to the state of Alabama, which had appointed him to West Point,
and where his mother still lived. Furthermore, he was the senior West Point graduate
from that state, which implied a commensurate rank in the state's forces would be
available. He resigned from the U.S. Army in June 1861 to cast his lot with the
Confederacy in the Civil War.[9]
Civil War
First Bull Run and the Peninsula
Longstreet arrived in Richmond, Virginia, with a commission as a lieutenant colonel in
the Confederate States Army. He met with Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the
executive mansion on June 22, 1861, where he was informed that he had been appointed
a brigadier general with date of rank on June 17, a commission he accepted on June 25.
He was ordered to report to Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard at Manassas, where he was
given command of a brigade of three Virginia regiments—the 1st, 11th, and 17th
Virginia.[10]
Longstreet assembled his staff and trained his brigade incessantly. They saw their first
action at Blackburn's Ford on July 18, resisting a Union Army reconnaissance in force
that preceded the First Battle of Bull Run. When the main attack came at the opposite end
of the line on July 21, the brigade played a relatively minor role, although it endured
artillery fire for nine hours. Longstreet was infuriated that his commanders would not
allow a vigorous pursuit of the defeated Union Army. His trusted staff officer, Moxley
Sorrel, recorded that he was "in a fine rage. He dashed his hat furiously to the ground,
stamped, and bitter words escaped him." He quoted Longstreet as saying, "Retreat! Hell,
the Federal army has broken to pieces."[11] Longstreet was promoted to major general on
October 7 and assumed command of a division in the Confederate Army of the
Potomac—four infantry brigades and Hampton's Legion.[12]
Tragedy struck the Longstreet family in January 1862. A scarlet fever epidemic in
Richmond claimed the lives of his one-year-old daughter Mary Anne, his four-year-old
son James, and six-year-old Augustus ("Gus"). His 13-year-old son Garland almost
succumbed. The losses were devastating for Longstreet and he became withdrawn, both
personally and socially. In 1861, his headquarters were noted for parties, drinking, and
poker games. After he returned from the funeral, the headquarters social life became
more somber, he rarely drank, and he became a devout Episcopalian.[13]
Longstreet turned in a mixed performance in the Peninsula Campaign that spring. He
executed well as a rear guard commander at Yorktown and Williamsburg, delaying the
advance of Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's army toward Richmond. At the
Battle of Seven Pines, he marched his men in the wrong direction down the wrong road,
causing congestion and confusion with other Confederate units, diluting the effect of the
massive Confederate counterattack against McClellan. His report unfairly blamed fellow
general Benjamin Huger for the mishaps.[14] General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded
during the battle and he was replaced in command of the Army of Northern Virginia by
Gen. Robert E. Lee.
During the Seven Days Battles that followed in late June, Longstreet had operational
command of nearly half of Lee's army—15 brigades—as it drove McClellan back down
the Peninsula. Longstreet performed aggressively and well in his new, larger command,
particularly at Gaines' Mill and Glendale. Lee's army in general suffered from weak
performances by Longstreet's peers, including, uncharacteristically, Maj. Gen. Thomas J.
"Stonewall" Jackson, and was unable to destroy the Union Army. Moxley Sorrel wrote of
Longstreet's confidence and calmness in battle: "He was like a rock in steadiness when
sometimes in battle the world seemed flying to pieces." Gen. Lee said, "Longstreet was
the staff in my right hand." He had been established as Lee's principal lieutenant.[15]
Second Bull Run, Maryland, and Fredericksburg
The military reputations of Lee's corps commanders are often characterized as Stonewall
Jackson representing the audacious, offensive component of Lee's army, whereas
Longstreet more typically advocated and executed defensive strategies and tactics.
Jackson has been described as the army's hammer, Longstreet its anvil.[16] In the Northern
Virginia Campaign of August 1862, this stereotype did not hold true. Longstreet
commanded the Right Wing (later to become known as the First Corps) and Jackson
commanded the Left Wing. Jackson started the campaign under Lee's orders with a
sweeping flanking maneuver that placed his corps into the rear of Union Maj. Gen. John
Pope's Army of Virginia, but he then took up a defensive position and effectively invited
Pope to assault him. On August 28 and August 29, the start of the Second Battle of Bull
Run, Pope pounded Jackson as Longstreet and the remainder of the Army marched north
to reach the battlefield. Postwar criticism of Longstreet claimed that he marched his men
too slowly, leaving Jackson to bear the brunt of the fighting for two days, but they
covered roughly 30 miles in a little over 24 hours and Gen. Lee did not attempt to get his
army concentrated any faster.[17]
When Longstreet's men arrived around midday on August 29, Lee ordered a flanking
attack on the Union Army, which was concentrating its attention on Jackson. Longstreet
delayed for the rest of the afternoon, requesting time for personal reconnaissance, and
forcing a frustrated Lee to issue his order three times. By 6:30 p.m., the division of Brig.
Gen. John Bell Hood moved forward against the troops of the Union V Corps, but
Longstreet withdrew them at 8:30 p.m. Once again, Longstreet was criticized for his
performance and the postbellum advocates of the Lost Cause claimed that his slowness,
reluctance to attack, and disobedience to Gen. Lee were a harbinger of his controversial
performance to come on July 2, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg. Lee's biographer,
Douglas Southall Freeman, wrote: "The seeds of much of the disaster at Gettysburg were
sown in that instant—when Lee yielded to Longstreet and Longstreet discovered that he
would."[18]
Despite this criticism, the following day, August 30, was one of Longstreet's finest
performances of the war. Pope came to believe that Jackson was starting to retreat and
Longstreet took advantage of this by launching a massive assault on the Union army's left
flank with over 25,000 men. For over four hours, they "pounded like a giant hammer"[19]
with Longstreet actively directing artillery fire and sending brigades into the fray.
Longstreet and Lee were together during the assault and both of them came under Union
artillery fire. Although the Union troops put up a furious defense, Pope's army was forced
to retreat in a manner similar to the embarrassing Union defeat at First Bull Run, fought
on roughly the same battleground. Longstreet gave all of the credit for the victory to Lee,
describing the campaign as "clever and brilliant." It established a strategic model he
believed to be ideal—the use of defensive tactics within a strategic offensive.[20]
Longstreet's reputation as a defensive general was cemented by his performance in the
final two major battles of 1862. In the Maryland Campaign of September, at the Battle of
Antietam, Longstreet held his part of the Confederate defensive line against Union forces
twice as numerous. (He coordinated his defense on the battlefield while wearing carpet
slippers and riding sidesaddle, on account of a painful boot-chafed heel.) At the end of
that bloodiest day of the Civil War, Lee greeted his subordinate by saying, "Ah! Here is
Longstreet; here's my old war-horse!" On October 9, a few weeks after Antietam,
Longstreet was promoted to lieutenant general. Lee arranged for Longstreet's promotion
to be dated one day earlier than Jackson's, making the Old War-Horse the senior
lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. In an army
reorganization in November, Longstreet's command, now
designated the First Corps, consisted of five divisions,
approximately 41,000 men.[21]
Fredericksburg.
In December, Longstreet's First Corps played the decisive
role in the Battle of Fredericksburg. There, Longstreet
positioned his men behind a stone wall on Marye's Heights
and held off fourteen assaults by Union forces. About
10,000 Union soldiers fell; Longstreet lost only 500. His
great defensive success was not based entirely on the advantage of terrain, however.
Remembering the slaughter at Antietam that had been magnified by a lack of defensive
works, Longstreet ordered trenches, abatis, and fieldworks to be constructed, which
would set a precedent for future defensive battles of the Army of Northern Virginia.[22]
Suffolk
In the early spring of 1863, Longstreet suggested to Lee that his corps be detached from
the Army of Northern Virginia and sent to reinforce the Army of Tennessee, where Gen.
Braxton Bragg was being challenged in Middle Tennessee by Union Maj. Gen. William
S. Rosecrans, Longstreet's roommate at West Point. It is possible that Longstreet believed
that an independent command in the West offered better opportunities for advancement
than a corps under Lee's shadow. Lee did detach two divisions from the First Corps, but
ordered them to Richmond, not Tennessee. Seaborne movements of the Union IX Corps
potentially threatened vital ports on the mid-Atlantic coast. The division of George
Pickett started for the capital in mid-February, was followed by John Hood's, and then
Longstreet himself was ordered to take command of the detached divisions and the
Departments of North Carolina and Southern Virginia.[23]
In April, Longstreet besieged Union forces in the city of Suffolk, Virginia, a minor
operation, but one that was very important to Lee's army, still stationed in war-devastated
central Virginia. It enabled Confederate authorities to collect huge amounts of provisions
that had been under Union control. However, this operation caused Longstreet and
15,000 men of the First Corps to be absent from the Battle of Chancellorsville in May.
Despite Lee's brilliant victory at Chancellorsville, Longstreet once again came under
criticism, claiming that he could have marched his men back from Suffolk in time to join
Lee.[24]
Gettysburg
Campaign plans
Following Chancellorsville and the death of Stonewall Jackson, Longstreet and Lee met
in mid-May to discuss options for the army's summer campaign. Longstreet advocated,
once again, detachment of all or part of his corps to be sent to Tennessee. The
justification for this course of action was becoming more urgent as Union Maj. Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant was advancing on the critical Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi
River, Vicksburg. Longstreet argued that a reinforced army under Bragg could defeat
Rosecrans and drive toward the Ohio River, which would compel Grant to break his hold
on Vicksburg. Lee was opposed to a division of his army, however, and instead
advocated a large-scale offensive or raid into Pennsylvania.[25] In his memoirs, Longstreet
described his reaction to Lee's proposal:
“His plan or wishes announced, it became useless and improper to offer
suggestions leading to a different course. All that I could ask was that the policy of the
campaign should be one of defensive tactics; that we should work so as to force the
enemy to attack us, in such good position as we might find in our own country, so well
adapted to that purpose—which might assure us of a grand triumph. To this he readily
assented as an important and material adjunct to his general plan.”
This was written years after the campaign and is affected by hindsight, both of the results
of the battle and of the postbellum criticism of the Lost Cause authors. In letters of the
time, Longstreet made no reference to such a bargain with Lee. In April 1868, Lee said
that he "had never made any such promise, and had never thought of doing any such
thing." Yet in his post-battle report, Lee wrote, "It had not been intended to fight a
general battle at such a distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy."[27]
The Army of Northern Virginia was reorganized after Jackson's death. Two division
commanders, Richard S. Ewell and A.P. Hill, were promoted to lieutenant general and
assumed command of the Second and Third Corps, respectively. Longstreet's First Corps
gave up the division of Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson during the reorganization,
leaving him with the divisions of Lafayette McLaws, George Pickett, and John Hood.[28]
In the initial movements of the campaign, Longstreet's corps followed Ewell's through the
Shenandoah Valley. A spy he had hired, James Harrison, was instrumental in warning the
Confederates that the Union Army of the Potomac was advancing north to meet them
more quickly than they had anticipated, prompting Lee to order the immediate
concentration of his army near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.[29]
Battle of Gettysburg
Longstreet's actions at the Battle of Gettysburg would be the centerpiece of the
controversy that surrounded him for over a century. He arrived on the battlefield late in
the afternoon of the first day, July 1, 1863. By then, two Union corps had been driven by
Ewell and Hill back through the town into defensive positions on Cemetery Hill. Lee had
not intended to fight before his army was fully concentrated, but chance and questionable
decisions by A.P. Hill brought on the battle, which was an impressive Confederate
victory on the first day. Meeting with Lee, Longstreet was concerned about the strength
of the Union defensive position and advocated a strategic movement around the left flank
of the enemy, to "secure good ground between him and his capital," which would
presumably compel the Union commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, to attack
defensive positions erected by the Confederates. Instead, Lee exclaimed, "If the enemy is
there tomorrow, we must attack him."[30]
Lee's plan for July 2 called for Longstreet to attack the Union's left flank, which would be
followed up by Hill's attack on Cemetery Ridge near the center, while Ewell
demonstrated on the Union right. Longstreet got off to a slow start, waiting for some of
his brigades to arrive and forced to take a long detour while approaching the enemy
position. Postbellum criticism of Longstreet claims that he was ordered by Lee to attack
in the early morning and that his delays were a significant contributor to the loss of the
battle.[31] However, Lee agreed to the delays for arriving troops and did not issue his
formal order for the attack until 11 a.m. Historians do agree that Longstreet did not
aggressively pursue Lee's orders.[32] Once the assault began, around 4 p.m., Longstreet
pressed the assault by McLaws and Hood (Pickett's division had not yet arrived)
competently against fierce Union resistance, but it was largely unsuccessful, with
significant casualties.[33]
On July 3, Lee ordered Longstreet to coordinate a massive assault on the center of the
Union line, employing the division of George Pickett and brigades from A.P. Hill's corps.
Longstreet displayed great reluctance to following this order, which he considered to
have no chance of success. He claims to have told Lee:
“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by
couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as
well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever
arranged for battle can take that position.”
During the artillery barrage that preceded the infantry assault, Longstreet attempted to
pass the responsibility for launching Pickett's division to his artillery chief, Lt. Col.
Edward Porter Alexander. And when the time came to actually order Pickett forward,
Longstreet could only nod in assent, not verbalize the order. The assault, known as
Pickett's Charge, suffered the heavy casualties that Longstreet anticipated. It was the
decisive point in the Confederate loss at Gettysburg and Lee ordered a retreat back to
Virginia the following day.[35]
Criticism of Longstreet after the war was based not only on his reputed conduct at the
Battle of Gettysburg, but also intemperate remarks he made about Robert E. Lee and his
strategies, such as:
“That he [Lee] was excited and off his balance was evident on the afternoon of the 1st,
and he labored under that oppression until enough blood was shed to appease him.”
Tennessee
In mid August 1863, Longstreet resumed his attempts to be transferred to the Western
Theater. He wrote a private letter to Secretary of War James Seddon, requesting that he
be transferred to serve under his old friend Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. He followed this up
in conversations with his congressional ally, Senator Louis Wigfall, who had long
considered Longstreet a suitable replacement for Braxton Bragg. Since Bragg's army was
under increasing pressure from Rosecrans outside of Chattanooga, Lee and President
Davis agreed to the request on September 5. In one of the most daunting logistical efforts
of the Confederacy, Longstreet, with the divisions of Lafayette McLaws and John Hood,
a brigade from George Pickett's division, and Porter Alexander's 26-gun artillery
battalion, traveled over 16 railroads on a 775 mile route through the Carolinas to reach
Bragg in northern Georgia. Although the entire operation would take over three weeks,
Longstreet and lead elements of his corps arrived on September 17.[37]
The First Corps veterans arrived in the early stages of the Battle of Chickamauga. Bragg
placed Longstreet in command of the Left Wing of his army, Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk the
Right. On September 20, 1863, Longstreet organized an attack of eight brigades in a deep
column against a narrow front. By chance, a mistaken order from General Rosecrans
caused a gap to appear in the Union line and Longstreet took advantage of it, but the
organization of the attack was well suited to the terrain and would have made a powerful
impact on the Union line regardless. The Union right collapsed and Bragg's army came
close to destroying their enemy. As Rosecrans and a number of his units retreated toward
Chattanooga, it was only the stout defense of Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas that
prevented a total rout. Bragg also neglected to pursue the retreating Federals
aggressively. Nevertheless, Chickamauga was the greatest Confederate victory in the
Western Theater and Longstreet deserved a good portion of the credit.[38]
Longstreet soon clashed with the much maligned Bragg and became leader of a group of
senior commanders of the army who conspired to have him removed. Bragg's
subordinates had long been dissatisfied with his leadership and abrasive personality; the
arrival of Longstreet, the senior lieutenant general in the army, proved to be a catalyst
toward action. Longstreet wrote to Seddon, "I am convinced that nothing but the hand of
God can save us or help us as long as we have our present commander." The situation
became so grave that President Davis was forced to intercede in person. What followed
was one of the most bizarre scenes of the war, with Bragg sitting red faced as a
procession of his commanders condemned him. Longstreet stated that Bragg "was
incompetent to manage an army or put men into a fight" and that he "knew nothing of the
business." Davis sided with Bragg and did nothing to resolve the conflict.[39]
Bragg retained his position and retaliated against Longstreet by reducing his command to
only those units that he brought with him from Virginia. After participating in some
minor battles that preceded the Battle of Chattanooga, Longstreet and his men were
dispatched to East Tennessee to deal with an advance by Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose
Burnside. Longstreet was selected for this assignment partially due to enmity on Bragg's
part, but also because the War Department intended for Longstreet's men to return to
Lee's army and this movement was in the correct direction.[40]
Longstreet was criticized for the slow pace of his advance toward Knoxville in November
and some of his troops began using the nickname Slow Peter. Burnside evaded him at the
Battle of Campbell's Station and settled into entrenchments around the city, which
Longstreet besieged unsuccessfully. The Battle of Fort Sanders failed to bring a
Confederate breakthrough. When Bragg was defeated by Grant at Chattanooga on
November 25, Longstreet was ordered to join forces with the Army of Tennessee in
northern Georgia. He demurred and began to move back to Virginia, soon pursued by
Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman in early December. The armies went into winter quarters
and the First Corps rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring. The only real
effect of the minor campaign was to deprive Bragg of troops he sorely needed in
Chattanooga. Longstreet's second independent command (after Suffolk) was a failure and
his self-confidence was damaged. He reacted to the failure of the campaign by blaming
others, as he had done at Seven Pines. He relieved Lafayette McLaws from command and
requested the court martial of Brig. Gens. Jerome B. Robertson and Evander M. Law. He
also submitted a letter of resignation to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper on December
30, 1863, but his request to be relieved was denied.[41]
As his corps suffered through a severe winter in Eastern Tennessee with inadequate
shelter and provisions, Longstreet again developed strategic plans. He called for an
offensive through Tennessee into Kentucky in which his command would be bolstered by
P.G.T. Beauregard and 20,000 men. Although he had the concurrence of Gen. Lee,
Longstreet was unable to convince President Davis or his newly appointed military
adviser, Braxton Bragg.[42]
Wilderness to Appomattox
Longstreet helped save the Confederate Army from defeat in his first battle back with
Lee's army, the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, where he launched a powerful
flanking attack along the Orange Plank Road against the Union II Corps and nearly drove
it from the field. Once again, he developed innovative tactics to deal with difficult terrain,
ordering the advance of six brigades by heavy skirmish lines, which allowed his man to
deliver a continuous fire into the enemy, while proving to be elusive targets themselves.
Wilderness historian Edward Steere attributed much of the success of the Army to "the
display of tactical genius by Longstreet which more than redressed his disparity in
numerical strength."[43]
Longstreet was wounded during the assault—accidentally shot by his own men not a mile
away from the place where Jackson suffered the same fate a year earlier. A bullet passed
through his shoulder, severing nerves, and tearing a gash in his throat. The momentum of
the attack subsided without Longstreet's active leadership and Gen. Lee delayed further
movement until units could be realigned. This gave adequate time for the Union
defenders to reorganize and the subsequent attack was a failure. E.P. Alexander called the
removal of Longstreet the critical juncture of the battle: "I have always believed that, but
for Longstreet's fall, the panic which was fairly underway in Hancock's [II] Corps would
have been extended & have resulted in Grant's being forced to retreat back across the
Rapidan."[44]
Longstreet missed the rest of the 1864 spring and summer campaign, where Lee sorely
missed his skill in handling the army. He was treated in Lynchburg, Virginia, and
recuperated in his native Georgia. He rejoined Lee in October 1864, with his right arm
paralyzed and in a sling, initially unable to ride a horse. For the remainder of the Siege of
Petersburg, he commanded the defenses in front of the capital of Richmond, including all
forces north of the James River and Pickett's Division at Bermuda Hundred. He retreated
with Lee in the Appomattox Campaign, commanding both the First and Third Corps,
following the death of A.P. Hill on April 2. As Lee considered surrender, Longstreet
advised him of his belief that Grant would treat them fairly, but as Lee rode toward
Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, Longstreet said, "General, if he does not give
us good terms, come back and let us fight it out."[45]
Postbellum
After the war, Longstreet and his family settled in New Orleans, a location popular with a
number of former Confederate generals. He entered into a cotton brokerage partnership
there and also became the president of the newly created Great Southern and Western
Fire, Marine and Accident Insurance Company. He actively sought the presidency of the
Mobile and Ohio Railroad, but was unsuccessful, and also failed in an attempt to get
investors for a proposed railroad from New Orleans to Monterrey, Mexico. (In 1870, he
was named president of the newly organized New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad.)
He applied for a pardon from President Andrew Johnson, endorsed by his old friend
Ulysses S. Grant. Johnson refused, however, telling Longstreet in a meeting: "There are
three persons of the South who can never receive amnesty: Mr. Davis, General Lee, and
yourself. You have given the Union cause too much trouble." The United States Congress
restored his rights of citizenship in June 1868.[46]
Longstreet was the only senior Confederate officer to become a scalawag and join the
Republican party during Reconstruction. He endorsed Grant for president in 1868,
attended his inauguration ceremonies and, six days later, received an appointment as
surveyor of customs in New Orleans. For these acts, he lost favor with many Southerners.
His old friend Harvey Hill wrote to a newspaper: "Our scalawag is the local leper of the
community." Unlike a Northern carpetbagger, Hill wrote, Longstreet "is a native, which
is so much the worse." The Republican governor of Louisiana appointed Longstreet the
adjutant general of the state militia and by 1872 he became a major general in command
of all militia and state police forces within New Orleans. During riots in 1874, protesting
election irregularities, Longstreet rode to meet protesters, but was pulled from his horse,
shot by a spent bullet, and taken prisoner. Federal troops were required to restore order.
Longstreet's use of African-American troops during the disturbances increased the
denunciations by fellow Southerners.[47]
James Longstreet in later life, affecting the sideburns of his
opponent at Fredericksburg and Knoxville.
In 1875, the Longstreet family left New Orleans with
concerns over health and safety, returning to Gainesville,
Georgia. By this time, Louise had given birth to ten
children, five of whom lived to adulthood. He applied for
various jobs through the Rutherford B. Hayes
administration and was briefly considered for Secretary of
the Navy. He served briefly as deputy collector of internal
revenue and as postmaster of Gainesville. In 1880 Hayes
appointed Longstreet as his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and later, he served from
1897 to 1904, under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, as U.S.
Commissioner of Railroads.[48]
On one of his frequent return trips to New Orleans on business, Longstreet converted to
Catholicism in 1877 and was a devout believer until his death. He served as a U.S.
marshal from 1881 to 1884, but the return of a Democrat administration ended his
political careers and he went into semiretirement on a farm near Gainesville, where he
raised turkeys and planted orchards and vineyards on terraced ground that his neighbors
referred to jokingly as "Gettysburg." A devastating fire in April 1889 destroyed his house
and many of his personal possessions. That December, Louise Longstreet died. He
remarried in 1897, in a ceremony at the governor's mansion in Atlanta, to Helen Dortch,
age 34. Although Longstreet's children reacted poorly to the marriage, Helen became a
devoted wife. She outlived him by 58 years, dying in 1962.[49]
After Louise's death, and after bearing criticism of his war record from other
Confederates for decades, Longstreet refuted most of their arguments in his memoirs
entitled From Manassas to Appomattox, a labor of five years that was published in 1896.
He outlived most of his detractors, and died of pneumonia in Gainesville, where he is
buried in Alta Vista Cemetery. He was one of only a few general officers from the Civil
War to live into the 20th century.[50]
Legacy
Because of criticism from authors in the Lost Cause movement, Longstreet's war career
was disparaged for many years after his death. It formally began on January 19, 1872, the
anniversary of Robert E. Lee's birth, and less than two years after Lee's death. Jubal
Early, in a speech at Washington College, exonerated Lee of mistakes at Gettysburg and
accused Longstreet of attacking late on the second day and of being responsible for the
debacle on the third. The following year, William N. Pendleton, Lee's artillery chief,
claimed in the same venue that Longstreet disobeyed an explicit order to attack at sunrise
on July 2. Longstreet failed to challenge these assertions publicly until 1875, and the
delay proved damaging to his reputation. In the 20th century, Douglas Southall Freeman's
biography of Lee and his three-volume work, Lee's Lieutenants, kept criticism of
Longstreet foremost in Civil War scholarship. Clifford Dowdey, a Virginia
newspaperman and novelist, was noted for his severe criticism of Longstreet in the 1950s
and 1960s.[51]
After Longstreet's death, Helen Longstreet privately published Lee and Longstreet at
High Tide in his defense, in which she stated, "the South was seditiously taught to believe
that the Federal Victory was wholly the fortuitous outcome of the culpable disobedience
of General Longstreet."[52]
The publication of Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels in 1974, based in part on
Longstreet's memoirs, as well as the 1993 film Gettysburg, have been credited with
helping to restore Longstreet's reputation as general and to dramatically raise his public
visibility.[53]
Longstreet Road is a major east-west road on Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It is notable as
the site of the All-American Run, conducted annually by the 82nd Airborne Division as
the start of All-American Week.
Longstreet's monument at Gettysburg National Military
Park
In 1998, one of the last monuments erected at Gettysburg
National Military Park was dedicated as a belated tribute to
Longstreet, an equestrian statue by sculptor Gary Casteel.
He is depicted on his favorite horse, Hero, at ground level
in a grove of trees in Pitzer Woods, unlike most generals,
who are elevated on tall bases overlooking the battlefield,
indicative of the continuing controversy surrounding
him.[54]
References

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

Alexander, Edward P., and Gallagher, Gary W. (editor), Fighting for the
Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander,
University of North Carolina Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8078-4722-4.
Coddington, Edwin B., The Gettysburg Campaign; a study in command,
Scribner's, 1968, ISBN 0-684-84569-5.
Dickson, Charles Ellis, "James Longstreet", Encyclopedia of the American Civil
War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Heidler, David S., and Heidler,
Jeanne T., eds., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-04758-X.
Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Gallagher, Gary, Lee and His Generals in War and Memory, Louisiana State
University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8071-2958-5.
Hartwig, D. Scott, A Killer Angels Companion, Thomas Publications, 1996, ISBN
0-939631-95-4.
Longstreet, James, From Manassas to Appomattox, 2nd ed., Lippincott, 1912.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
Wert, Jeffry D., General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most
Controversial Soldier: A Biography, Simon & Schuster, 1993, ISBN 0-67170921-6.
New Georgia Encyclopedia biography of Helen Dortch Longstreet
Jubal Anderson Early
Jubal Anderson Early (November 3, 1816 – March 2, 1894) was a lawyer and
Confederate general in the American Civil War.
Early Years:
Early was born in Franklin County, Virginia, and graduated from the United States
Military Academy in 1837. He fought against the Seminole in Florida as a second
lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery regiment before resigning from the army for the first
time in 1838. He practiced law in the 1840s as a prosecutor for both Franklin and Floyd
Counties in Virginia. He was noted for a case in Mississippi, where he beat the top
lawyers in the state. His law practice was interrupted by the Mexican-American War
from 1846–1848. He was a delegate in the Virginia General Assembly.
Civil War
Early was a Whig and strongly opposed secession at the April 1860 Virginia convention
for that purpose. However, he was soon aroused by the aggressive movements of the
Federal government (President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress
the rebellion) and accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the Virginia Militia.
He was sent to Lynchburg, Virginia to raise three regiments and then commanded one of
them, the 24th Virginia Infantry, as a colonel in the Confederate States Army.
Early was promoted to brigadier general after the First Battle of Bull Run (or First
Manassas) in July 1861. In that battle, he displayed valor at Blackburn's Ford and
impressed General P.G.T. Beauregard. He fought in most of the major battles in the
eastern theater, including the Seven Days Battles, Second Bull Run, Antietam,
Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and numerous battles in the Shenandoah
Valley. During the Gettysburg Campaign, Early's Division occupied York, Pennsylvania,
the largest Northern town to fall to the Rebels during the war.
Early was trusted and supported by the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia,
Robert E. Lee. Lee affectionately referred to Early as his "Bad Old Man" because of his
irascible demeanor and short temper, but appreciated Early's aggressive fighting and
ability to command units independently. Most of Early's soldiers referred to him as "Old
Jube" or "Old Jubilee" with enthusiasm and affection. His subordinate generals often felt
little of this affection. Early was an inveterate fault-finder and offered biting criticism of
his subordinates at the least opportunity; in the reverse case, he was generally blind to his
own mistakes and reacted fiercely to criticism or suggestions from below.
Early was wounded at Williamsburg in 1862, while leading a charge against staggering
odds.
Serving under Stonewall Jackson
He convalesced in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and returned in two months, under the
command of Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, in time for Malvern Hill.
There, Early demonstrated his career-long lack of aptitude for battlefield navigation and
his brigade was lost in the woods; it suffered 33 casualties without any significant action.
In the Second Manassas campaign, Early was noted for his performance at the Battle of
Cedar Mountain and arrived in the nick of time to reinforce A.P. Hill on Jackson's left on
Stony Ridge.
At Antietam, Early ascended to division command when his commander, Alexander
Lawton, was wounded. Lee was impressed with his performance and retained him at that
level. At Fredericksburg, Early saved the day by counterattacking the division of George
G. Meade, which penetrated a gap in Jackson's lines. He was promoted to major general
on January 17, 1863. At Chancellorsville, Lee gave him a force of 5,000 men to defend
Fredericksburg at Marye's Heights against superior forces (two corps) under Maj. Gen.
John Sedgwick. Early was able to delay the Union forces and pin down Sedgwick while
Lee and Jackson attacked the remainder of the Union troops to the west. Sedgwick's
eventual attack on Early up Marye's Heights is sometimes known as the Second Battle of
Fredericksburg.
Gettysburg and the Overland Campaign
During the Gettysburg Campaign, Early commanded a division in the corps of Richard S.
Ewell. His troops were instrumental in defeating Union defenders at Winchester,
capturing a number of prisoners, and opening up the Shenandoah Valley for Lee's
oncoming forces. Early's division, augmented with cavalry, eventually marched eastward
across the South Mountain range in Pennsylvania, seizing vital supplies and horses along
the way. He captured Gettysburg on June 26 and demanded a ransom, which was never
paid. Two days later, he entered York County and seized York, the largest Northern town
to fall to the Confederates during the war. Here, his ransom demands were partially met,
including a payment of $28,000 in cash. Elements of Early's command on June 28
reached the Susquehanna River, the farthest east in Pennsylvania that any organized
Confederate force would penetrate. On June 30, Early was recalled as Lee concentrated
his army to meet the oncoming Federals.
Approaching Gettysburg from the northeast on July 1, 1863, Early's division was on the
leftmost flank of the Confederate line. He soundly defeated Francis Barlow's division
(part of the Union XI Corps), inflicting three times the casualties to the defenders as he
suffered, and drove the Union troops back through the streets of town, capturing many of
them. In the second day at Gettysburg, he assaulted East Cemetery Hill as part of Ewell's
efforts on the Union right flank. Despite initial success, Union reinforcements arrived to
repulse Early's two brigades. On the third day, Early detached one brigade to assist
Edward "Allegheny" Johnson's division in an unsuccessful assault on Culp's Hill.
Elements of Early's division covered the rear of Lee's army during its withdrawal from
Gettysburg on July 4 and July 5.
Early served in the Shenandoah Valley over the winter of 1863 – 1864. During this
period, he occasionally filled in as corps commander during Ewell's absences for illness.
On May 31, 1864, Lee expressed his confidence in Early's initiative and abilities at
higher command levels, promoting him to the temporary rank of lieutenant general.
Upon his return from the Valley, Early fought in the Battle of the Wilderness and
assumed command of the ailing A.P. Hill's Third Corps during the march to intercept
Ulysses S. Grant at Spotsylvania Court House. At Spotsylvania, Early occupied the
relatively quiet right flank of the Mule Shoe. At the Battle of Cold Harbor, Lee replaced
the ineffectual Ewell with Early as commander of the Second Corps.
The Valley, 1864
Early's most important service was that summer and fall, in the Valley Campaigns of
1864, when he commanded the Confederacy's last invasions of the North. As Confederate
territory was rapidly being captured by the Union armies of Grant and William Tecumseh
Sherman, Lee sent Early's corps to sweep Union forces from the Shenandoah Valley and
to menace Washington, D.C., hoping to compel Grant to dilute his forces against Lee
around Petersburg, Virginia. Early defeated several Union armies, including at
Monocacy, where Union General Lew Wallace had only 5,800 men defending against
Early's 15,000. Although Early won, the battle cost him a day's delay and Washington
had time to reinforce. This invasion caused considerable panic in the North and Early was
able to get close to the outskirts of Washington. He sent his cavalry to the west side of
Washington, while his infantry attacked Fort Stevens. Abraham Lincoln watched the
assault, the only sitting president to come under hostile military fire. As Early withdrew,
he said to one of his officers, "Major, we haven't taken Washington, but we scared Abe
Lincoln like hell."
Early withdrew to the Valley. He defeated the Union army under George H. Crook at
Kernstown on July 24, 1864. Six days later, his cavalry burned much of the city of
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in retaliation for David Hunter's actions in the Valley
(particularly the burning of the Virginia Military Institute) and because of the town's
failure to pay his demanded ransom. Through early August, Early's cavalry and guerrilla
forces attacked the B&O Railroad in various places.
Grant, losing patience and realizing Early could attack Washington any time he pleased,
dealt with the threat by sending out an army under Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan. At times
outnumbering the Confederates three to one, Sheridan defeated Early in three battles
starting in early August and laid waste to much of the agricultural properties in the
Valley, denying their use as supplies for Lee's army. In a brilliant surprise attack, Early
routed two thirds of the Union army at the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864,
but his troops were hungry and exhausted and fell out of their ranks to pillage the Union
camp; Sheridan managed to rally his troops and defeat Early decisively. Most of the men
of Early's corps rejoined Lee at Petersburg in December, while Early remained to
command a skeleton force. His force was nearly destroyed at Waynesboro and Early
barely escaped capture with a few members of his staff. Lee relieved Early of his
command in March 1865, because he doubted Early's ability to inspire confidence in the
men he would have to recruit to continue operations. He wrote to Early of the difficulty
of this decision:
“While my own confidence in your ability, zeal, and devotion to the cause is unimpaired,
I have nevertheless felt that I could not oppose what seems to be the current of opinion, without
injustice to your reputation and injury to the service. I therefore felt constrained to endeavor to
find a commander who would be more likely to develop the strength and resources of the country,
and inspire the soldiers with confidence. ... [Thank you] for the fidelity and energy with which
you have always supported my efforts, and for the courage and devotion you have ever
manifested in the service...”
– Robert E. Lee, letter to Early
After the War
General Early, disguised as a farmer, while escaping to
Mexico, 1865.
Early fled when the Army of Northern Virginia was
surrendering on April 9, 1865. He rode horseback to Texas,
hoping to find a Confederate force still holding out, then
proceeded to Mexico, and from there sailed to Cuba and
Canada. Living in Toronto, he wrote his memoirs, A
Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence, in
the Confederate States of America, which focused on his
Valley Campaign. They were published in 1867. He
returned to Virginia in 1869, resuming the practice of law.
He was pardoned in 1868 by President Andrew Johnson,
but still remained an unreconstructed rebel. He was among
the most vocal of those who promoted a bitter Lost Cause
movement and who vilified the actions of Lt. Gen. James
Longstreet at Gettysburg. He was involved with the
Louisiana Lottery along with retired General P.G.T. Beauregard.
At the age of 77, after falling down a flight of stairs, Early died in Lynchburg, Virginia.
He is buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.
Early's contributions to the Confederacy's last efforts at survival were very significant.
Some historians contend that he extended the war six to nine months because of his
efforts at Washington and in the Valley. The following quote summarizes an opinion held
by his admirers:
“Honest and outspoken, honorable and uncompromising, Jubal A. Early epitomized
much that was the Southern Confederacy. His self-reliance, courage, sagacity, and devotion to the
cause brought confidence then just as it inspires reverence now.”
– James I. Robertson, Jr., Alumni Distinguished Professor of History, Virginia Tech; Member of
the Board, Jubal A. Early Preservation Trust
In popular media
On the science fiction series Firefly, a bounty hunter named Jubal Early appears in the
last episode, "Objects in Space".
Jubal Early was the name of the character portrayed by Pat Morita, the self proclaimed
"Handyman" assistant to Jean-Claude Van Damme's lead character, in the 1999 film
Inferno, also known in the UK as Desert Heat.[1]
References
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


Early, Jubal A., & Gallagher, Gary W., A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for
Independence in the Confederate States of America, University of South Carolina
Press, 2001, ISBN 1-57003-450-8.
Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Gallagher, Gary W., Ed., Struggle for the Shenandoah: Essays on the 1864 Valley
Campaign, Kent State University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-87338-429-6.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
General Joseph Wheeler
Joseph Wheeler (September 10, 1836 – January 25, 1906) was an American military
commander and politician. He has the rare distinction of serving as a general during war
time for two opposing forces: first as a major general in the Confederate States Army
during the American Civil War and later as a major general in the U.S. Army during the
Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War. Between the wars he served as a
U.S. Representative from Alabama.
Early life
Although of New England ancestry, he was born near Augusta, Georgia and spent most
of his early life growing up with relatives in the North. However, he was appointed to the
U.S. Military Academy from Georgia and always considered himself a Georgian. He
graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1859 and was commissioned a second
lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Dragoons. In 1860, he was transferred to the Mounted Rifles.
Civil War
At the start of the war in 1861, Wheeler resigned from the
U.S. Army to join the Confederate States Army. He was
ordered to Huntsville, Alabama to take command of the
newly formed 19th Alabama Infantry Regiment, which he
led into battle at Shiloh in April 1862. Wheeler later
transferred to the cavalry and rose to the rank of major
general. Nicknamed "Fighting Joe", Wheeler was
considered by General Robert E. Lee to be one of the two
most outstanding Confederate cavalry leaders and saw
action in many campaigns, including opposing William T.
Sherman's advance on Atlanta.
Bronze statue by Berthold Nebel, in the National Statuary
Hall Collection.
Congress
After the war, Wheeler became a planter and a lawyer near
Courtland, Alabama, where he married and raised a family.
His home, Pond Spring, in an area now known as Wheeler, is a historic site of the
Alabama Historical Commission.
In 1880, Wheeler was elected from Alabama as a Democrat to the United States House of
Representatives. Wheeler's opponent, Greenback incumbent William M. Lowe, contested
the election, and after a contentious legal battle which lasted over a year, Lowe was
declared the winner and assumed the seat on June 3, 1882. Lowe, however, served only
four months before dying of tuberculosis. Wheeler won a special election to return and
serve out the remaining weeks of the term.[1]
Wheeler supported the election of Luke Pryor in 1882 and did not run for reelection, but
was elected again in 1884, and reelected to seven subsequent terms before resigning in
1900. While in Congress, Wheeler strove to heal the breach between the North and the
South and championed economic policies that would help rebuild the South.
Spanish-American War
In 1898, Wheeler volunteered for the Spanish-American war, receiving an appointment to
major general of volunteers by President William McKinley. He assumed command of
the cavalry division, which included Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and was
nominally second-in-command of the V Corps. He sailed for Cuba and led his
dismounted troopers to victory at the Battle of Las Guasimas, the first major engagement
of the war. During the excitement of the battle Wheeler supposedly called out "Come on,
we've got the damn Yankees on the run!" He fell seriously ill during the campaign and
turned over command of the division to Brig. Gen. Samuel S. Sumner. He was still
incapacitated when the Battle of San Juan Hill began but once he heard the sound of
guns, "Fighting Joe" returned to the front despite his illness. Being the senior officer
present at the front he first issued orders to the 1st Division, under Jacob F. Kent, before
returning to his own command. Upon taking the heights, Wheeler assured General
William R. Shafter that the position could be held against a possible counterattack. He led
the division through the siege of Santiago and was a senior member of the peace
commission.
At the close of the fighting on Cuba, Wheeler sailed for the Philippines to fight against
the insurrectionists. He commanded a brigade in General Arthur MacArthur's Division
during the Philippine-American War in 1899–1900, where he was commissioned a
brigadier general in the U.S. Regular Army.
Later life
Wheeler was the author of several books on military history and strategy and civil
subjects. He also appeared in an early film, Surrender of General Toral (1898) with
William Rufus Shafter. After long illness, Wheeler died in New York City and is one of
the few former Confederate officers buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1925, the state of Alabama donated a bronze statue of Joseph Wheeler to the U.S.
Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. Additionally, several locations in Alabama
are named after Wheeler including Joe Wheeler State Park, Wheeler Lake and Dam, and
the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Also, Joseph Wheeler High School in Marietta,
Georgia, and Wheeler County, Georgia are named after him. During World War II, the
United States Navy named a Liberty Ship in honor of Wheeler.
Trivia
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Wheeler was a small man, barely tall enough to make the entrance standards for
the U. S. Military Academy.
Wheeler's only son died shortly after his return from serving in Cuba; he drowned
while swimming in the ocean.
While serving in the Philippines, Wheeler encountered an infantryman who was
complaining about the heat and being tired. Wheeler promptly dismounted, took
the man's rifle and pack, told him to mount his horse, and marched the rest of the
way with the infantry.
Joseph Wheeler High School, in Marietta, Georgia, is named after him.
Wheeler is portrayed in the TV film Rough Riders by Gary Busey, although
Busey is much taller than Wheeler was, and had a mustache only instead of a full
beard.
See also

Slavery and State's Rights (speech by Wheeler in 1894)
Notes
1. ^ Lawley, Jim, "Gen. Joe Wheeler was entangled in recount." References

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
Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Lawley, Jim. "Gen. Joe Wheeler was entangled in recount." The Decatur Daily,
December 10, 2000, online edition (retrieved July 14, 2001).
To kill A Mockingbird. By Harper Lee. "...and his grandaddy was Brigadier
General Joe Wheeler and left his his sword."(52)
P. G. T. Beauregard
Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard
Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard
(pronounced IPA: /'boʊ.ɹɪ.ˌgɑɹd/) (May 28, 1818 –
February 20, 1893), was a Louisiana-born general
for the Confederate Army during the American
Civil War. He was also an author, civil servant,
politician, and inventor.
Beauregard was the first prominent Confederate
general. He commanded the defenses of Charleston,
South Carolina, for the Battle of Fort Sumter on
April 12, 1861, and three months later was the
victor at the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas,
Virginia.
He also commanded armies in the Western Theater,
including the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the Siege of Corinth in northern
Mississippi. His arguably greatest achievement was saving the city of Petersburg,
Virginia, and thus also the Confederate capital of Richmond from assaults by
overwhelmingly superior Union Army forces in June 1864. However, his influence over
Confederate strategy was marred by his poor professional relationships with President
Jefferson Davis and other senior generals and officials. Today he is commonly referred to
as P.G.T. Beauregard, but during the war he rarely used his first name and signed
correspondence as G.T. Beauregard.
Early life
Beauregard was born at the "Contreras" plantation in St. Bernard Parish outside New
Orleans, to a white Creole family. He attended New Orleans schools and then went to a
"French school" in New York City. He trained at the United States Military Academy at
West Point, New York. He graduated in 1838 and excelled both as an artilleryman and
military engineer. His nickname to many of his Army friends was The Little Creole (and
also Bory, The Little Frenchman, Felix, and The Little Napoleon).
During the Mexican-American War, Beauregard served as an engineer under General
Winfield Scott. He was brevetted to captain for the battles of Contreras and Churubusco
and again to major for Chapultepec, where he was wounded in the shoulder and thigh.
In 1841, Beauregard married the former Marie Laure Villeré, the daughter of Jules
Villeré, a sugar planter in Plaquemines Parish. Marie was a paternal granddaughter of
Jacques Villeré, the second governor of Louisiana. The couple had three children: René,
Henry, and Laure. Marie died in 1850. Ten years later, the widower Beauregard married
Caroline Deslonde, the daughter of André Deslonde, a sugar planter from St. James
Parish. Caroline was also a sister-in-law of John Slidell, a U.S. senator from Louisiana
and later a Confederate diplomat.
Beauregard briefly entered politics in his hometown and was narrowly defeated in the
election for mayor of New Orleans in 1858. He was chief engineer in charge of drainage
in New Orleans from 1858 to 1861, and directed the building of the federal customs
house there. He then returned to teach at West Point, where he rose to become the
superintendent of the Military Academy in January 1861, but resigned after only five
days when Louisiana seceded from the Union.
Civil War
Beauregard entered the Confederate Army as a brigadier general in March 1861, but was
promoted on July 21 to be one of the eventual eight full generals in the Confederate
Army; his date of rank made him the fifth most senior general. He recommended
stationing strong forces to protect New Orleans, but was overruled by President Davis.
Hence began the friction between Beauregard and Davis that would intensify as years
progressed.
Beauregard's first assignment from the Confederate government was command of the
forces in Charleston, where he opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter. This was the
start of the American Civil War, but no one was killed in the exchange. Beauregard and
General Joseph E. Johnston of Virginia led Confederate forces to victory in the First
Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), where they defeated Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell, one
of Beauregard's West Point classmates. During the battle, he employed Quaker Guns,
something he would use in subsequent battles.
After Bull Run, Beauregard advocated the use of a standardized battle flag other than the
"Stars and Bars" national flag in order to avoid visual confusion with the U.S. flag. He
worked with Johnston and William Porcher Miles in creating and producing the
Confederate Battle Flag. Throughout his career he worked to systematize the use of this
flag and helped to make it the most popular symbol of the Confederacy.[1]
Beauregard was transferred to Tennessee and assumed command of Confederate forces at
the Battle of Shiloh when General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed. Although
successful the first day of battle, April 6, 1862, Beauregard called off the attack
prematurely, assuming that the Union army was defeated. He was forced to retreat the
second day after Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant received reinforcements and
counterattacked. Beauregard later was forced to retreat from his base of supplies, Corinth,
Mississippi, by forces under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck. He then turned over the
command of the army to General Braxton Bragg of Alabama.
Beauregard then took command of coastal defenses in Georgia and South Carolina. He
successfully defended Charleston from repeated Union attacks from 1862 to 1864. In
1864, he assisted Robert E. Lee in the defense of Richmond. He defeated Benjamin
Butler in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign near Drewry's Bluff. He followed this victory
with a desperate defense of Petersburg. His tiny 2,200-man force resisted an assault by
16,000 Federals, known as the Second Battle of Petersburg. He gambled by withdrawing
his Bermuda Hundred defenses to reinforce Petersburg. He assumed that Butler would
not capitalize on the opening. His gamble succeeded, and he held Petersburg long enough
for Lee's army to arrive.
Self-confident in the wake of this victory over Butler, Beauregard proposed to Lee and
Davis that he lead a great invasion of the North, which would defeat Grant and Butler and
win the war. Instead, probably to remove him as an irritant to Lee in Virginia, Beauregard
was appointed commander of Confederate forces in the West. Since all of his forces were
engaged elsewhere (in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi), he had insufficient
resources to halt the superior Union forces under William Tecumseh Sherman in their
march to the sea. He and Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Durham, North
Carolina, in April 1865.
Postbellum life
Beauregard, later in life.
After the war, Beauregard spoke in favor of civil rights and
voting for the recently freed slaves, an opinion uncommon
among high-ranking Confederates. Beauregard was a
Democrat who worked to end Republican rule during
Reconstruction.
Beauregard's military writings include Principles and
Maxims of the Art of War (1863), Report on the Defense of
Charleston, and A Commentary on the Campaign and
Battle of Manassas (1891). He was the uncredited coauthor of The Military Operations of General Beauregard
in the War Between the States (1884). He contributed the
article "The Battle of Bull Run" to Century Illustrated
Monthly Magazine in November 1884. Beauregard and Davis published a series of bitter
accusations and counter-accusations and blamed each other in retrospect for the
Confederate defeat.
General Beauregard declined offers to take command of the armies of Romania (1866)
and Egypt (1869). Instead he became involved in promotion of railroads, both as a
company director and a consulting engineer. He was the president of the New Orleans,
Jackson & Mississippi Railroad from 1865 to 1870, and president of the New Orleans
and Carrollton Street Railway, 1866 to 1876, for which he invented a system of cablepowered street railway cars.
Beauregard served in the government of the State of Louisiana, first as adjutant general
for the state militia (later National Guard), and then less successfully as manager of the
Louisiana Lottery. Though considered personally honest, he failed to reform corruption
in the lottery. Perhaps the leading critic of the lottery on moral grounds was Benjamin M.
Palmer, longtime pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, who worked to
kill the project.
In 1888, Beauregard was elected as New Orleans' commissioner of public works.
P.G.T. Beauregard died in New Orleans and is interred in the tomb of the Army of
Tennessee in the historic Metairie Cemetery there. Beauregard Parish in western
Louisiana and Camp Beauregard, a National Guard camp near Pineville in central
Louisiana, are named in his honor.
References
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Basso, Hamilton, Beauregard: The Great Creole (1933)
Coski, John M. The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem,
Belknap Press, 2005, ISBN 0-674-01983-0.
Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Fortier, Alcee, Louisiana, Vol. 1 (1909)
Roman, Alfred, The Military Operations of General Beauregard (1884)
Wakelyn, Jon L., Biographical Directory of the Confederacy (1977)

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
Williams, T. Harry, P.G.T. Beauregard:Napoleon in Gray (1955)
"Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol.
I (1988), pp. 54-55.
Beauregard obituary, New Orleans Daily Picayune, February 21, 1893.
Richard Stoddert Ewell
(1817-1872)
As Stonewall Jackson's successor, the gallant Richard S. Ewell proved to be a
disappointment and the argument as to why is still around today. Some claim it was the
loss of a leg, others that it was the influence of the "Widow Brown" who he married
during his recovery. But the fact of the matter is that he was ill-prepared by Jackson for
the loose style of command practiced by Lee.
A West Pointer (1840) and veteran of two decades as a company officer, he never
quite made the adjustment to commanding large-scale units. He once went out foraging
for his division and returned-with a single steer-as if he was still commanding a company
of dragoons. Resigning his captaincy on May 7, 1861, to serve the South, he held the
following assignments: colonel, Cavalry (1861); brigadier general, CSA June 17, 1861);
commanding brigade (in lst Corps after July 20), Army of the Potomac (June 20 October 22, 1861); commanding brigade, Longstreet's Division, Potomac District,
Department of Northern Virginia (October 22, 1861 -February 21, 1862); major general,
CSA January 23, 1862); commanding E. K. Smith's (old) Division, same district and
department (February 21-May 17, 1862); commanding same division, Valley District,
same department (May 17 - June 26, 1862); commanding division, 2nd Corps, Army of
Northern Virginia June 26 - August 28, 1862); commanding the corps (May 30, 1863May 27, 1864); lieutenant general, CSA (May 23, 1863); and commanding Department
of Richmond June 13, 1864 April 6, 1865).
After serving at lst Bull Run he commanded a division under Jackson in the
Shenandoah Valley Campaign where he complained bitterly about being left in the dark
about plans. Jackson's style of leadership was to prove the undoing of Ewell once Jackson
was gone. Ewell fought through the Seven Days and at Cedar Mountain before being
severely wounded and losing a leg at Groveton, in the beginning of the battle of 2nd Bull
Run. After a long recovery, he returned to duty in May 1863 and was promoted to
command part of Jackson's old corps. At 2nd Winchester he won a stunning victory and
for a moment it looked like a second Stonewall had come. However, at Gettysburg he
failed to take advantage of the situation on the evening of the first day when given
discretionary orders by Lee.
He required exact instructions, unlike his predecessor. After serving through the fall
campaigns he fought at the Wilderness where the same problem developed. At
Spotsylvania one of his divisions was all but destroyed. After the actions along the North
Anna he was forced to temporarily relinquish command due to illness but Lee made it
permanent. He was given command in Richmond and was captured at Sayler's Creek on
April 6, 1865, during the retreat to Appomattox. After his release from Fort Warren in
July "Old Baldy" retired to a farm near Spring Hill, Tennessee, where he died on January
25, 1872. He is buried in the Old City Cemetery, Nashville, Tennessee. (Hamlin, Percy
Gatling, "Old Bald Head")
Richard Stoddert Ewell was born in Georgetown in the
District of Columbia on 8 February, 1817, he grew up on the
family farm near Centreville, Virginia. His father was a navy
doctor but died when Richard was nine. To provide for her
10 children, Ewell’s mother taught school. In 1836, he
entered West Point and graduated in 1840, thirteenth in the
class. The woman he had hoped to marry, wed someone else
the year before and so Ewell sought service on the frontier.
Appointed 2nd lieutenant in the First Dragoons and
promoted to 1st lieutenant in 1845, he spent six years in the
West fighting against Indians.
During the Mexican-American War, Ewell was
brevetted for gallantry at the Battles of Contreras and
Churubusco in August 1847. After the U.S. troops overran Chapultepec on September 13,
Ewell and Captain Philip Kearny aggressively pursued the fleeing Mexicans to the gates
of Mexico City, where terrific musket fire stopped the advance. Kearny’s arm was
mangled, and Ewell had two horses shot from under him as he led the dragoons in retreat
from the San Antonio garita (gate). After the Mexican War, promoted to captain in 1849,
he served for a time in Baltimore, Maryland before being assigned to New Mexico
Territory in 1850. There he won further distinction against the Apaches. When not
fighting Indians Ewell worked a silver mine he owned, but the mine proved to be barren.
In January 1861 he applied for sick leave and came home. By April he was in the
Confederate Army, appointed lieutenant colonel of cavalry. Ewell was slightly wounded
at Fairfax Court House, Virginia on 1 June and promoted to brigadier general on 17 June.
Then he commanded a brigade at First Manassas but saw little of the action during the
battle.
On 24 January, 1862, President Davis promoted him to major general commanding a
division and was sent to the Shenandoah Valley to reinforce Maj.Gen. Stonewall Jackson.
It was a frustrating experience. Jackson kept his campaign plans secret. And so much so,
that Ewell at first considered his commander insane. "He is as crazy as a March hare!" he
declared. Even after Stonewall had soundly defeated the Yankees in several clashes,
Ewell was not fully convinced that he had been wrong. He would only concede: "... [he]
does curious thing; but he has method in his madness..."
Ewell's troops engaged and routed the Federals in the battle at Front Royal on May
23, 1862. Two days later, moving against Banks at Winchester, Ewell made the initial
attack, and one of his brigades under Gen. Richard Taylor led a final charge that routed
the enemy. On June 6, 1862, after a violent skirmish with Union cavalry, Ewell revealed
a previously unseen, tender side to his surly character - he personally loaded each of his
wounded into ambulances. When he finished, he dug into his meager purse and gave
most of his money to a local farmer, who had volunteered to house the injured. The funds
were to be used for whatever the men might need.
After Jackson retreated to avoid a pincer by Federal Gens. John
C. Fremont and James Shields that threatened his rear, Ewell
personally planned, directed, and won a battle with Fremont at Cross
Keys on June 8, 1862. The climax of this Valley Campaign was the
battle of Port Republic on June 9, 1862. The key to the Confederate
victory was a Union battery, located on a wooded hill that
overlooked the combat. Brigadier General Richard Taylor's men had
made an earlier attempt to dislodge the enemy cannon but had
failed. Taylor's men were trapped. "There seemed nothing left but to
set our backs to the mountain and die hard," the brigadier general
recalled. "At that instant, crashing through the underwood, came Ewell..." Riding ahead
of the troops he was leading to the rescue, Ewell charged the Union guns. His horse was
shot out from under him, but he continued his lonely attack on foot. When his force
suddenly surged into view, the Federals turned and fled. The artillery was captured and
Ewell himself aimed one of the cannon at the retiring enemy.
With the valley secured, Jackson’s men moved to Richmond where they saw action
at Gaines’ Mill on 27 June. Next, Jackson and Ewell were sent north around Manassas
Junction in the rear of the enemy. This march culminated in the Second Battle of
Manassas on 28 August. At Groveton he was wounded in the right knee and had his left
leg amputated. Ewell recuperated under the care of his first cousin, Lizinka Campbell
Brown, whom he eventually married in May 1863. In the spring of 1863 he returned to
duty and when Stonewall Jackson died, Ewell was appointed his successor and promoted
to lieutenant general on 23 May.
On 13 June, he led his men on a spectacular victory at Winchester in the Valley.
Over 4,000 Federals were captured, 23 cannon and 300 supply wagons fell into
Confederate hands. Then they marched into Pennsylvania to meet the enemy at
Gettysburg on 1 July. Ewell launched an attack on the Federal right, but failed to take
Cemetery Ridge, for which he received considerable criticism. In 1864 he commanded
his corps in the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, but Ewell’s broken health forced Lee to
transfer him from corps command to responsibility for the defense of Richmond. On 29
September he managed to save the Confederate capital from capture by some 8,000
Federals with only a handful of Southern troops. Gathering about 200 stragglers they
stood, without entrenchments, silhouetted against an empty woods to their rear. Union
troops thinking reinforcements were in the woods refused to attack.
Meanwhile, Ewell’s wife made arrangements to take the oath of allegiance to the
Federal Union when she learned that Ewell wasn’t given the leadership of his corps back
to him.
In 1865, during the retreat toward Appomattox, Ewell commanded a mixed corps of
soldiers, sailors and marines; surrounded and forced to surrender at Sayler’s Creek, he
was imprisoned until summer. Taken to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, he was ostracized
by his fellow officers but began to recover his health.
After his release from the Yankee prison,
Richard Ewell moved to his wife’s plantation in
Maury County, Tennessee, where he died of
pneumonia on January 25, 1872, just five days after
Lizinka succumbed to the same illness. Douglas S.
Freeman described Ewell as “bold, pop-eyed and long
beaked, with a piping voice that seems to fit his
appearance as a strange, unlovely bird”; his sharp
tongue matched his fighting spirit, but the loss of his leg, headaches, indigestion, and
sleeplessness drained both his energy and effectiveness”. “A truer and nobler spirit never
drew sword”, proclaimed General Longstreet.
Edmund Kirby Smith
(1824-1893)
Following the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson and the closing of the Mississippi,
Confederate General E. Kirby Smith was confronted with the command of a virtually
independent area of the Confederacy and with all of its inherent administrative problems.
The Floridian West Pointer (1845)nicknamed "Seminole" at the academy-had been
posted to the infantry upon his graduation and won two brevets in the Mexican War. In
1855 he transferred to the cavalry and served until his resignation as major in the 2nd
Cavalry on April 6, 1861. In the meantime he had taught mathematics at his alma mater
and been wounded in 1859 fighting Indians in the Nescutunga Valley of Texas. When
Texas seceded, Smith refused to surrender his command to the state forces under Ben
McCulloch.
Joining the Confederacy, his assignments included: lieutenant colonel, Cavalry
(spring 1861); chief of staff, Army of the Shenandoah (spring-summer 1861); brigadier
general, CSA (June 17, 1861); commanding 4th Brigade, Army of the Shenandoah (ca.
June-July 20,1861); commanding 4th Brigade, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac (July 2021, 1861); major general, CSA (October 11, 1861); commanding 4th Division, Potomac
District, Department of Northern Virginia (October 22, 1861-February 21, 1862);
commanding Department of East Tennessee (March 8-August 25, ca. October 31 December 1862, and December 23, 1862 - January 1863); commanding Army of
Kentucky, Department #2 (August 25 - November 20, 1862); lieutenant general, CSA
(October 9, 1862); also commanding corps, Army of Tennessee (November 20-December
1862); commanding Southwestern Army (January 14-March 7, 1863); commanding
Trans-Mississippi Department (March 7, 1863-April 19, 1865 and April 22-May 26,
1865); and general, PACS (February 19, 1864).
After serving as Joseph E. Johnston's staff head in the Shenandoah Valley he was
promoted to brigadier general and given command of a brigade which he led at 1st Bull
Run. Wounded severely in that action, he returned to duty as a major general and division
commander in northern Virginia. Early in 1862 he was dispatched to command in East
Tennessee. Cooperating with Braxton Bragg in the invasion of Kentucky, he scored a
victory at Richmond and was soon named to the newly created grade of lieutenant
general.
Early in 1863 he was transferred to the Trans-Mississippi West where he remained
for the balance of the war. With the fall of the Mississippi River to the Union Forces he
was virtually cut off from Richmond. He was forced to deal himself with such matters as
impressment of supplies, destruction of cotton to prevent capture, and blockade-running
through Mexico, in addition to his normal military duties. He also, in an irregular fashion,
promoted officers to general's rank, sometimes making his actions subject to the
president's approval and sometimes not. Davis approved some and never acted on others.
Smith could be forgiven for exceeding his authority in such matters due to the situation of
his command as an almost separate country.
In the spring of 1864 he soundly defeated Nathanial P. Banks' Red River Campaign
and then dispatched reinforcements northward to defeat Steele's cooperating column in
Arkansas. With the pressure relieved, Smith attempted to send reinforcements east of the
Mississippi but, as in the case of his earlier attempts to relieve Vicksburg, it proved
impracticable due to Union naval control of the river. Instead he dispatched Sterling
Price, with all available cavalry, on an unsuccessful invasion of Missouri. Thereafter the
war west of the river was principally one of small raids and guerrilla activity. By now a
full general, he surrendered his department--the only significant Confederate army left-on May 26, 1865.
After the war he was active in the telegraph business and education. At the time of
his death he was the last of the full Confederate ex-generals. (Parkes, Joseph H., General
Kirby Smith C.S.A.)
Edmund Kirby Smith
Portrait of Edmund Kirby Smith during the Civil War
Edmund Kirby Smith (May 16, 1824 – March 28, 1893)
was a career U.S. Army officer, an educator, and a general
in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War,
notable for his command of the Trans-Mississippi
Department of the Confederacy after the fall of Vicksburg.
Early life and the U.S. Army
Smith was born in St. Augustine, Florida to Joseph Lee
Smith and his wife Frances Kirby Smith. Both his parents
were natives of Connecticut, and moved to Florida in 1821
shortly before the elder Smith was named a Federal judge
there.
In 1836 his parents sent him to a military boarding school in Virginia, which he attended
until his enrollment in the United States Military Academy in 1841. He graduated from
that institution in 1845, where he was nicknamed "Seminole" for his native state, and was
commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 5th U.S. Infantry.
In the Mexican-American War he served under General Zachary Taylor at the Battle of
Palo Alto and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. He served under General Winfield Scott
later, and received brevet promotions to first lieutenant for Cerro Gordo and to captain
for Contreras and Churubusco. His older brother, Ephraim Kirby Smith, a captain in the
Regular Army served with him in the 5th U.S. Infantry in both the campaign with Taylor
and Scott, until he died from wounds suffered at the Battle of Molino del Rey in 1847.
After that war, he served as a captain in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, primarily in Texas, but he
also taught mathematics at West Point and was wounded in 1859 fighting Indians in the
Nescutunga Valley of Texas. When Texas seceded, Smith, now a major, refused to
surrender his command at Camp Colorado in what is now Coleman, Texas, to the Texas
State forces under Benjamin McCulloch and expressed his willingness to fight to hold it.
Civil War
Virginia
After serving briefly as General Joseph E. Johnston's assistant adjutant general in the
Shenandoah Valley, Smith was promoted to brigadier general on June 17, 1861, and
given command of a brigade in the Army of the Shenandoah, which he led at the First
Battle of Bull Run on July 21. Wounded severely in the neck and shoulder, he
recuperated while commanding the Department of Middle and East Florida. He returned
to duty in October as a major general and division commander in the Confederate Army
of the Potomac in northern Virginia.
Kentucky
In February 1862, he was sent west to command the Army of East Tennessee.
Cooperating with Gen. Braxton Bragg in the invasion of Kentucky, he scored a victory at
Richmond on August 30, 1862, and was named in October to the newly created grade of
lieutenant general, becoming a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee.
Trans-Mississippi Department
In January 1863, Smith was transferred to command the Trans-Mississippi Department
(primarily Arkansas, Western Louisiana, and Texas) and he would remain west of the
Mississippi River for the balance of the war. As forces under Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S.
Grant tightened their grip on the river, Smith attempted to intervene. However, his
department never had more than 30,000 men stationed over an immense area and he was
not able to concentrate forces adequately to challenge Grant or the Union Navy on the
river.
Following the Union capture of the remaining strongholds at Vicksburg and Port Hudson
and the closing of the Mississippi, he was virtually cut off from the Confederate capital at
Richmond and was confronted with the command of a virtually independent area of the
Confederacy, with all of its inherent administrative problems. The area became known in
the Confederacy as "Kirby Smithdom".
In spring 1864, Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, directly under Smith's command, soundly
defeated Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks at the Battle of Mansfield in the Red River
Campaign on April 8, 1864. After the Battle of Pleasant Hill on April 9, Smith joined
Taylor and dispatched half of Taylor's Army, Walker's Greyhounds, under the command
of Maj. Gen. John George Walker northward to defeat Union Maj. Gen. Frederick
Steele's incursion into Arkansas. This decision, strongly opposed by Taylor, caused great
enmity between the two men.
With the pressure relieved, Smith attempted to send reinforcements east of the
Mississippi but, as in the case of his earlier attempts to relieve Vicksburg, it proved
impracticable because of Union naval control of the river. Instead he dispatched Sterling
Price, with all available cavalry, on an unsuccessful invasion of Missouri. Thereafter the
war west of the river was principally one of small raids and guerrilla activity. By now a
full general (as of February 19, 1864, one of only eight such men in the Confederacy), he
surrendered his department—the only significant Confederate army left—on May 26,
1865, and arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 2, whence he fled to Mexico and then to
Cuba to escape potential prosecution for treason. He returned to take an oath of amnesty
at Lynchburg, Virginia, on November 14, 1865.
Postwar career
After the war, Smith was active in the telegraph business and education. From 1866 to
1868, he was president of the Atlantic and Pacific and Telegraph Company. When that
effort ended in failure, he started a preparatory school in Newcastle, Kentucky. In 1870,
he combined efforts with former Confederate General Bushrod Johnson and became
president of the University of Nashville. In 1875 he left that post to become professor of
mathematics at the University of the South at Sewanee from 1875 to 1893. At the time of
his death in Sewanee, he was the last surviving man who had been a full general in the
war. He is buried in the University Cemetery at Sewanee.
In memoriam
A men's dormitory building on the campus of LSU in Baton Rouge is named KirbySmith Hall. At 13 floors, it is the tallest building on campus.
The state of Florida erected a statue honoring General Smith in the National Statuary Hall
Collection of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Florida also named a Middle School after him, called Kirby Smith Middle School
References





Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Parks, Joseph Howard, General Edmund Kirby Smith, CSA, Louisiana State
University Press, 1954, ISBN 0-8071-1800-1.
Prushankin, Jeffery S.,A Crisis in Confederate Command: Edmund Kirby Smith,
Richard Taylor and the Army of the Trans-Mississippi, Louisiana State University
Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8071-3088-5
Sifakis, Stewart, Who Was Who In The Civil War, Facts on File, 1989, ISBN 08160-2202-X.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders,
Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
George Pickett
Portrait of George E. Pickett
George Edward Pickett (January 28[1] or January 16, 1825
– July 30, 1875) was a career U.S. Army officer who
became a general in the Confederate States Army during
the American Civil War. He is best remembered for his
participation in the futile and bloody assault at the Battle of
Gettysburg that bears his name, Pickett's Charge.
Early years
Pickett was born in Richmond, Virginia, the first of eight children of Robert and Mary
Pickett,[2] a prominent family of Old Virginia. He was the cousin of future Confederate
general Henry Heth.[3] He went west to Springfield, Illinois, to study law, but at the age
of 17 he was appointed to the United States Military Academy. Legend has it that
Pickett's West Point appointment was secured for him by Abraham Lincoln, but this is
largely believed to be a story circulated by his widow following his death. Lincoln, as an
Illinois state legislator, could not nominate candidates, although he did give the young
man advice after he was accepted[4]; Pickett was actually appointed by Illinois
Congressman John T. Stuart, a friend of Pickett's uncle and a law partner of Abraham
Lincoln.
Pickett was a popular cadet at West Point, charming and dapper, but a class clown,
demonstrating his aversion to intellectual pursuits and hard work by graduating last (a
position nicknamed the "goat") of 59 students in his 1846 class. He was commissioned a
brevet second lieutenant in the U.S. 8th Infantry Regiment and almost immediately
became engaged in the Mexican-American War. He gained national recognition when he
was the first to climb the parapet during the Battle of Chapultepec, retrieving an
American flag from his wounded colleague, future Confederate general James
Longstreet, and unfurling it over the fortress while under fire. He received a brevet
promotion to captain for his exploit. After the war, while serving on the Texas frontier, he
was promoted to first lieutenant in 1849 and to captain, in the 9th U.S. Infantry, in March
1855.
In January 1851, Pickett married Sally Harrison Steward Minge, the daughter of Dr. John
Minge of Virginia, the great-great-grandniece of President William Henry Harrison, and
the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence. She died during childbirth that November, immediately following an
Indian raid at Fort Gates, Texas.
Captain Pickett next served in the Washington Territory, and in 1859 occupied San Juan
Island, thus becoming involved in a territorial dispute with Great Britain that has been
nicknamed the Pig War (because it was instigated in response to an American farmer who
had killed a pig belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company). While commanding a garrison
of only 68 men, he stood up to a British force of three warships and a thousand men. His
presence, and British orders that called for no confrontations, prevented their landing. He
was quoted as saying defiantly, "We'll make a Bunker Hill of it."[4] Once again the young
officer was in the national limelight. President James Buchanan dispatched Lieutenant
General Winfield Scott to negotiate a settlement between the parties.
Civil War
Early assignments
After the firing on Fort Sumter, Virginia seceded from the Union and Pickett began a
journey home from Oregon to serve his state, despite his personal detestment of the
institution of slavery. Arriving after the First Battle of Bull Run, he resigned his
commission in the U.S. Army on June 25, 1861; he had been holding a commission as a
major in the Confederate States Army Artillery since March 16.[3] Within a month he was
appointed colonel in command of the Rappahannock Line of the Department of
Fredericksburg, under the command of Major General Theophilus H. Holmes. Holmes's
influence obtained a commission for Pickett as a brigadier general on January 14, 1862.[3]
Pickett made a colorful general. He rode a sleek black charger, "Old Black", wearing a
small blue cap, with buffed gloves over the sleeves of an immaculately tailored uniform
that had a double row of gold buttons on the coat and shiny gold spurs on his highly
polished boots. He held an elegant riding crop whether mounted or walking. His
mustache drooped gracefully beyond the corners of his mouth and then turned upward at
the ends. His hair was the talk of the Army: "long ringlets flowed loosely over his
shoulders, trimmed and highly perfumed, his beard likewise was curling and giving up
the scent of Araby."[5]
Pickett's first combat command was during the Peninsula Campaign, leading a brigade
that was nicknamed the Gamecocks. (The brigade would eventually be led by Richard B.
Garnett in Pickett's Charge.) They performed well at Williamsburg, Seven Pines and
Gaines' Mill. At Gaines' Mill, Pickett was knocked off his horse by a bullet in the
shoulder, and although he made an enormous fuss that he was mortally wounded, a staff
officer examined the wound and rode away, stating that he was "perfectly able to take
care of himself." However, Pickett was out of action for three months on medical leave
and his arm would remain stiff for at least a year.[4]
When he returned to the Army in September 1862, Pickett was given command of a twobrigade division in the corps commanded by his old colleague from Mexico, Maj. Gen.
James Longstreet, and was promoted to major general on October 10. His division would
not see serious combat until the Gettysburg Campaign the following summer. At the
Battle of Fredericksburg in December, they were lightly engaged, with no fatalities.
Longstreet's entire corps was absent from the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville,
detached on the Suffolk Campaign.
Before the Gettysburg Campaign, Pickett fell in love with a Virginia teenager, LaSalle
Corbell "Sallie" Pickett (1843–1941), commuting back and forth from his duties in
Suffolk to be with her. Although Sally would later insist that she met him in 1852 (at age
9), she did not marry the 38-year-old widower until November 13, 1863.
Gettysburg and Pickett's Charge
Pickett's division arrived at the Battle of Gettysburg on the evening of the second day,
July 2, 1863. They had been delayed performing guard duty on the Confederate lines of
communication through Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. After two days of heavy fighting,
General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had driven the Union Army of the
Potomac to the high ground south of Gettysburg and had been unable to dislodge them.
General Lee's plan for July 3 called for a massive assault on the center of the Union lines
on Cemetery Ridge. He directed General Longstreet to assemble a force of three divisions
for the attack—two exhausted divisions from the corps of A.P. Hill (under Brig. Gen. J.
Johnston Pettigrew and Maj. Gen. Isaac R. Trimble) and Pickett's fresh division from
Longstreet's corps. Lee referred to Pickett as leading the charge (although Longstreet was
actually in command), which is one of the reasons that it is generally not known to
popular history by the more accurate name "Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Assault."
Following a two-hour artillery barrage that was meant to soften up the Union defenses,
the three divisions stepped off across open fields almost a mile from Cemetery Ridge.
Pickett inspired his men by shouting, "Charge the enemy, and remember old Virginia!"[6]
Pickett's division, with the brigades of Brig. Gens. Lewis A. Armistead, Richard B.
Garnett, and James L. Kemper, was on the right flank of the assault. It received punishing
artillery fire on its flank and then volleys of infantry rifle fire as it approached its
objective. Armistead's brigade made the farthest progress through the Union lines.
Armistead was mortally wounded, falling near "The Angle" at what is now considered
the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. But neither of the other two divisions made
comparable progress across the fields and Armistead's success was not reinforced.
Pickett's Charge was a bloodbath. While the Union lost about 1,500 killed and wounded,
the Confederate casualty rate was over 50%. Pickett's three brigade commanders and all
thirteen of his regimental commanders were casualties. Kemper was wounded and
Garnett and Armistead did not survive. Trimble and Pettigrew were the most senior
casualties, the former losing a leg and the latter wounded in the hand and dying on the
retreat to Virginia. Pickett himself has received some historical criticism for surviving the
battle personally unscathed, but his position well to the rear of his troops (probably at the
Codori farm on the Emmitsburg Road) was command doctrine at the time for division
commanders.
As soldiers straggled back to the Confederate lines along Seminary Ridge, Lee feared a
Union counteroffensive and tried to rally his center, telling returning soldiers that the
failure was "all my fault." Pickett was inconsolable for the rest of the day and never
forgave Lee for ordering the charge. When Lee told Pickett to rally his division for the
defense, Pickett allegedly replied, "General Lee, I have no division now."[7] Pickett's
official report for the battle has never been found. It is rumored that Gen. Lee rejected it
for its bitter negativity and demanded that it be rewritten, never filing an updated version.
To his dying day, Pickett mourned the great loss of his men. After the war, it is said that
he met once with General Lee in a meeting described as "icy." John Singleton Mosby
seems to be the only witness to support this claim of coldness between Lee and Pickett.
Others were present and are on record denying such an exchange. Mosby related that
afterward Pickett said bitterly, "That man destroyed my division."[7] Most historians find
this encounter less than likely, especially as Pickett was on record elsewhere as having
said, after being asked why Pickett's Charge failed, that "I've always thought the Yankees
had something to do with it."[8]
Five Forks
After Gettysburg, despite never receiving condemnation by Lee or Longstreet, Pickett's
career went into decline. He commanded the Department of Southern Virginia and North
Carolina over the winter, and then served as a division commander in the Defenses of
Richmond, part of the Siege of Petersburg. On April 1, 1865, Pickett's defeat at the Battle
of Five Forks was a pivotal moment that unraveled the tenuous Confederate line and
caused Lee to order the evacuation of Richmond, Virginia, and retreat toward
Appomattox Court House. It was a final humiliation for Pickett, because he was two
miles away from his troops at the time of the attack, enjoying a shad bake with some
other officers. By the time he returned to the battlefield, it was too late. After the Battle of
Sayler's Creek, he was relieved of command. He was paroled at Appomattox Court
House on April 9, 1865.
A legend (told by Pickett's widow) also stated that when the Union Army marched into
Richmond, she received a surprise visitor. He acted graciously and inquired about
Pickett. After receiving a response he said, "Tell them that his good friend Abraham
Lincoln came to pay his respects."
Postbellum
Despite his parole, Pickett fled to Canada. He returned to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1866 to
work as an insurance agent.
Pickett had difficulty seeking amnesty after the Civil War. This was a problem shared by
other former Confederate officers who had been West Point graduates and had resigned
their commissions at the start of the war. Former Union officers, including Ulysses S.
Grant, supported pardoning Pickett, but it was not until one year prior to his death that
George Pickett received a full pardon by Act of Congress (June 23, 1874).[9]
Pickett died in Norfolk and is buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.
In memoriam
Pickett's grave site at Hollywood Cemetery
Decades after Pickett's death, his widow Sallie became a
well-known writer and speaker on "her Soldier," eventually
leading to the creation of an idealized Pickett who was the
perfect Southern gentleman and soldier. A considerable
amount of controversy attends Sallie Pickett's lionizing of
her husband. Two books published posthumously in her
husband's name, The Heart of a Soldier, As Revealed in the
Intimate Letters of Gen'l George E. Pickett (published in
1913) and Soldier of the South: General Pickett's War
Letters to His Wife (1928), have been described as
"unreliable works that were fictionalized by Pickett's
wife."[10] (Sallie was also the author, under her own name, of Pickett and His Men,
published in 1913.) As a result, General Pickett has become a figure partially obscured by
"Lost Cause" mythology.
Pickett today is widely perceived as being a tragic hero of sorts—a flamboyant officer
who wanted to lead his troops into a glorious battle, but always missed the opportunity—
until the disastrous charge at Gettysburg. Douglas Southall Freeman's works (especially
Lee's Lieutenants), as well as Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels (1975) (and
Gettysburg (1993), the film adaptation in which he is portrayed by Stephen Lang) have
greatly enhanced this reputation in popular culture.
Pickett's grave is marked by an elaborate memorial in Hollywood Cemetery.
Commissioned in 1875 by the Pickett Division Association, a group of veterans from his
division, it was originally intended to be placed at Gettysburg National Military Park at
the "High Water Mark" of Pickett's Charge, but was built in Richmond when the U.S.
War Department refused permission for the battlefield placement. A monument to Pickett
also stands in the American Camp on San Juan Island, Washington, erected by the
Washington University Historical Society, October 21, 1904.
Fort Pickett in Blackstone, Virginia, is named in his honor. Originally a site for the
Civilian Conservation Corps, it was an active U.S. Army training facility in World War II
and is currently occupied by the Virginia National Guard.
In popular media
Actor Stephen Lang portrayed George Pickett in the 1993 film Gettysburg, for which he
received critical praise. In the 2003 prequel Gods and Generals, Billy Campbell
portrayed Pickett.
References
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


Boritt, Gabor S., ed., Why the Confederacy Lost (Gettysburg Civil War Instutute
Books), Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-508549-3.
Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
Vouri, Mike, George Pickett and the "Pig War" Crisis, essay by San Juan Island
National Historical Park interpreter at the Pickett Society web site.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders,
Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
Pickett Society biography
Benjamin F. Cheatham
Benjamin F. Cheatham
Benjamin Franklin Cheatham (October 20, 1820 –
September 4, 1886), known also as Frank, was a
Tennessee farmer, California gold miner, and a general in
the Confederate States Army during the American Civil
War, serving in many battles of the Western Theater.
Early years
Cheatham was born in Nashville, Tennessee. At the start of
the Mexican-American War, he joined the 1st Tennessee
Infantry Regiment as a captain and finished the war as
Colonel of the 3rd Tennessee. He moved to California in
1849 for the Gold Rush, but returned to Tennessee in 1853,
where he worked as a planter and served as a brigadier
general[1] in the Tennessee Militia.
Civil War
Cheatham joined the Confederate States Army as a brigadier general on May 9, 1861, and
became a brigade commander in the Western District of Department Number Two, under
Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk. His first test in the war was November 7 at the Battle of
Belmont (Missouri), leading three regiments in Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow's division
against Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, also in his first Civil War combat. In
December, Cheatham and his division received the Thanks of Congress, "for the
desperate courage they exhibited in sustaining for several hours, and under most
disadvantageous circumstances an attack by a force of the enemy greatly superior to their
own, both in numbers and appointments; and for the skill and gallantry by which they
converted what at first threatened so much disaster, into a triumphant victory."
Cheatham was promoted to major general, on March 10, 1862, and was appointed
commander of the 2nd Division, First Corps, Army of Mississippi. He led his division at
the Battle of Shiloh and was wounded, although it is unclear whether this occurred on
April 6 or April 7, 1862.[2] General Braxton Bragg became commander of the Army
(soon to be designated the Army of Tennessee) and Cheatham served under him at
Perryville and Stones River. At the latter battle, Cheatham performed sluggishly, ordering
piecemeal assaults; observers claimed he had been drinking heavily and was unable to
command his units effectively.
Cheatham continued as a division commander under Bragg at the Battle of Chickamauga
and, following that rare Confederate victory in the West, was elevated to corps command
on September 29, 1863. He was on the right flank of Missionary Ridge when Bragg was
defeated by Grant at Chattanooga, engaged to block the Union Army in the final hours of
the battle.
In 1864, Cheatham fought well in the Atlanta Campaign under General Joseph E.
Johnston, and later Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, inflicting heavy casualties on William T.
Sherman's Union Army at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and being wounded at the
Battle of Ezra Church. He was in corps command for the battles around Atlanta,
replacing William J. Hardee, who had resigned when Hood took command.
Cheatham's most famous service came as a corps commander under Hood in the
Franklin-Nashville Campaign. He was engaged in all the major battles of the campaign,
receiving notoriety when the Union Army under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield was able to
slip by him and escape from the Battle of Spring Hill, which foiled Hood's plan and led to
the disastrous Confederate defeat at Franklin. Hood accused Cheatham of dereliction of
duty and the enmity between them lasted for the rest of their lives. After the collapse of
Hood's army at Nashville, Cheatham rejoined Johnston's army for the Carolinas
Campaign (as a division commander, the highest position this small army could justify),
surrendering to General Sherman in North Carolina in April 1865.
Postbellum
After the war, Cheatham declined an offer of Federal civil service employment from
President Grant. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States House of
Representatives in 1872. He served for four years as superintendent of the Tennessee
state prison and postmaster of Nashville (1885–1886). He died in Nashville and is buried
there in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Cheatham's son, Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, Jr. (1867–1944), was a major general in
the U.S. Army, serving with distinction in the Spanish-American War and World War I.
After the war, a camp of the Association of Confederate Soldiers Tennessee Division was
named the Frank Cheatham Bivouac in his honor.
References
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


Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Evans, Clement A., Ed., Confederate Military History, A Library Of Confederate
States History, Written By Distinguished Men Of The South, 1899 biography of
Cheatham
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders,
Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
Arlington Cemetery page on Cheatham's son
General J. E. B. Stuart
James Ewell Brown Stuart (February 6, 1833 – May 12, 1864)
was an American soldier from Virginia and a Confederate Army
general during the American Civil War. He was known to his
friends as "Jeb".
Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of
reconnaissance and the use of cavalry in offensive operations.
While he cultivated a cavalier image (red-lined gray cape, yellow
sash, hat cocked to the side with a peacock feather, red flower in
his lapel, often sporting cologne), his serious work made him
Robert E. Lee's eyes and ears and inspired Southern morale. He was killed in May 1864
during the Overland Campaign, at the Battle of Yellow Tavern.
Childhood
James Ewell Brown Stuart was born at Laurel Hill, a plantation in Patrick County,
Virginia near the Virginia/North Carolina border. His father, Archibald Stuart, was a
politician and attorney, and represented Patrick County in both houses of the Virginia
General Assembly. He served one term in the United States House of Representatives.
His father was a cousin of Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart. Elizabeth Stuart, his mother,
was known as a strictly religious woman with a great love of nature.
Education
At the age of 14, James was enrolled at school in Wytheville. He attended Emory &
Henry College from 1848 to 1850. He entered the Class of 1854 at the United States
Military Academy at West Point, New York. Robert E. Lee was Commandant of the
Academy at that time. Stuart graduated 13th in his class of 46 in 1854. He achieved the
rank of cavalry sergeant, the highest rank attainable for these cadets.
United States Army
In 1854, Stuart was assigned to the U.S. Mounted Rifles in Texas. He was soon
transferred to, and promoted in, the newly formed 1st Regiment, U.S. Cavalry. Stuart's
leadership ability was soon recognized. He was a veteran of Indian conflicts and Bleeding
Kansas. Stuart was wounded in July 1857, while fighting on the frontier against Native
Americans. In 1859, Stuart carried the orders for Colonel Robert E. Lee to proceed to
Harpers Ferry to crush John Brown's raid on the U.S. Arsenal there. During the siege,
Stuart volunteered to be Lee's aide-de-camp, and read the ultimatum to Brown before the
final assault.
He was promoted to captain on April 22, 1861, but resigned from the US Army on May
14, 1861 to join the Confederate States Army following the secession of Virginia.
Confederate Army
J.E.B. Stuart was commissioned as a Lt. Colonel of Infantry in the Confederate Army on
May 24, 1861. His later promotions were:

Colonel, 1st Virginia Cavalry (July 16, 1861)


Brigadier general, CSA (September 24, 1861) =)***
Major general, CSA (July 25, 1862)
Stuart's commands in the Army of Northern Virginia included:
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Cavalry Brigade (October 22, 1861 – July 28, 1862)
Cavalry Division (July 28, 1862 – September 9, 1863)
Second Corps (temporarily replacing Jackson, May 3–6, 1863)
Cavalry Corps (September 9, 1863 – May 11, 1864).
After early service in the Shenandoah Valley, Stuart led his regiment in First Bull Run
and participated in the pursuit of the routed Federals. He then directed the army's outposts
until given command of the cavalry brigade. He led the cavalry in the Army of Northern
Virginia at

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

Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles
Second Battle of Bull Run
Antietam
Fredericksburg
Chancellorsville
Gettysburg
Wilderness
Stuart was also a raider. Twice he slipped around McClellan's army, once in the
Peninsula Campaign and once after the Battle of Antietam. While these exploits were not
militarily significant, they improved Southern morale. During the Second Bull Run
Campaign, he lost his signature plumed hat and cloak to pursuing Federals, but in a later
raid, managed to overrun Union army commander John Pope's headquarters and not only
captured his full uniform, but also intercepted orders that provided Lee with much
valuable intelligence. At the end of 1862, Stuart led a raid north of the Rappahannock
River, inflicting some 230 casualties while losing only 27 of his own men.
In May 1863, at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stuart was appointed by Lee to take
command of the Second Corps for a few days after Stonewall Jackson had been mortally
wounded and did as well commanding infantry as he did cavalry.
Returning to the cavalry, the Gettysburg Campaign represented two low points in Stuart's
career. He commanded the Southern horsemen at the Battle of Brandy Station, the largest
cavalry engagement on the North American continent, on June 9, 1863. The battle was a
draw and the Confederates held the field. However, falling victim to a surprise attack was
an embarrassing blow to a cavalryman and the fight revealed the rising competency of the
Union cavalry and foreshadowed the decline of the formerly invincible Southern
mounted arm.
As Lee and Union General George G. Meade marched toward each other at Gettysburg,
Lee ordered Stuart to screen the Confederate army as it moved down the Shenandoah
Valley and to maintain contact with the lead element, Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps,
as it advanced in the direction of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Stuart somehow
misinterpreted these orders and once again attempted to circle the Union army and
eventually found himself well to the east of Ewell, out of contact with the Union army,
and out of communications with Lee. Lee, in turn, was left blinded in enemy territory
without detailed knowledge of the terrain, roads, or his opponent's strength and positions.
This lack of knowledge was the primary reason that the Battle of Gettysburg started on
July 1, 1863, before Lee could concentrate his army as planned. Stuart arrived late on the
second day of the battle--bringing with him a caravan of captured Union supply wagons-and received a stinging rebuke from Lee. (It is unlikely Lee would have attacked on July
2 in the way he did if he had known the disposition of the Union forces at the Peach
Orchard.) On the final day of the battle, Stuart failed to get into the enemy's rear and
disrupt their line of communications, being checked by Union cavalry under Generals
David McM. Gregg and George Armstrong Custer.
During the Overland Campaign, Grant's drive on Richmond in the spring of 1864, Stuart
halted Philip Sheridan's cavalry at Yellow Tavern on the outskirts of Richmond on May
11. A dismounted Union cavalryman shot him from a distance of thirty feet with a pistol;
Stuart died the next day in the Confederate capital. The last words he spoke were in a
whisper, "I am resigned; God's will be done." He was 31 years old. J.E.B. Stuart was
buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.
Heritage, memorials
Like his intimate friend, Stonewall Jackson, General J.E.B. Stuart was a legendary figure
and is considered one of the greatest cavalry commanders of all time. Stuart was a son-inlaw of Brigadier General Philip St. George Cooke of the Union service; his wife's brother
was Brigadier General John Rogers Cooke of the Confederacy. He was survived by his
wife and his children, J.E.B. Stuart Jr. and Virginia Pelham Stuart. His widow, Flora
Cooke Stuart, wore the black of mourning for the remaining 49 years of her life.
A statue of General J.E.B. Stuart by sculptor Frederick Moynihan was dedicated on
Richmond's famed Monument Avenue at Stuart Circle in 1907. Like General Stonewall
Jackson, his equestrian statue faces north, indicating that he died in the War. The U.S.
Army named two models of World War II tanks, the M3 and M5, the Stuart tank in its
old adversary's honor. A high school in Falls Church, Virginia, J.E.B. Stuart High
School, is also named after him. The school's team nickname, Raiders, honors his Civil
War tactics.
In December 2006, a personal Confederate battle flag, sewn by his wife, Flora, was sold
at auction for a world-record price for any Confederate flag, for $956,000 (including
buyer's premium)[1].
The 34-inch by 34-inch flag was hand-sewn for Stuart by Flora Cooke Stuart in 1862.
Stuart carried it into some of his most famous battles, but in December of that year it fell
from a tent front into a campfire and was damaged. Stuart returned it to his wife with a
letter describing the accident and telling of his despondency over the banner's damage.
The flag remained with the Stuart family until 1969 when it was given to Stuart Hall,
Staunton, Virginia, by a granddaughter of the Confederate general. Flora Cooke Stuart
was headmistress of the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, which was renamed
"Stuart Hall" in her honor in 1907.The school quietly sold the flag and letter to a private
collector in 2000. In 2006, the flag and letter, which had been displayed in a single frame
in the Stuart Hall front parlor, sold separately at auction.
General Patrick Cleburne
Patrick Ronayne Cleburne (March 16 or March 17, 1828
– November 30, 1864) was a major general in the
Confederate States Army during the American Civil War,
killed at the Battle of Franklin.
Early life
Cleburne was born in Ovens, County Cork, Ireland, the
second son of Dr. Joseph Cleburne, a solid, middle-class
physician. Patrick's mother died when he was eighteen
months old and he was an orphan at fifteen. He followed
his father into the study of medicine, but failed his entrance exam to Trinity College of
Medicine in 1846. In response to this failure, he enlisted in the 41st Regiment of Foot of
the British Army.
Three years later, Cleburne bought his discharge and emigrated to the United States with
two brothers and a sister. After spending a short time in Ohio, he settled in Helena,
Arkansas, where he obtained employment as a pharmacist and was readily accepted into
the town's social order. By 1860, he had become a naturalized citizen, begun the practice
of law, and was very popular with the local residents. During this time, he became close
friends with Thomas C. Hindman, another future Confederate general from Helena.
Service in the Confederate Army
When the secession crisis broke out, Cleburne sided firmly with the Southern states. His
choice was not due to any love of slavery, which he claimed not to care about, but out of
affection for the Southern people who had adopted him as one of their own, and out of a
distrust of centralized governments. When war threatened, Cleburne joined the local
company (the Yell Rifles) as a private soldier and was quickly elected captain. He rose
quickly through the ranks and was promoted to brigadier general on March 4, 1862.
Cleburne served at the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Richmond (Kentucky), where he
was wounded in the face, and the Battle of Perryville. After the Army of Tennessee
retreated to its namesake state in late 1862, Cleburne was promoted to division command
and served at the Battle of Stones River, where his division advanced three miles as it
routed the Union right wing and drove it back to the Nashville Pike and its final line of
defense.
During the campaigns of 1863 in Tennessee, General Cleburne became more and more
outspoken about the incompetence of the commander of the army, General Braxton
Bragg, which may have retarded his advancement within the army. During this time
Cleburne and his soldiers played a role at the Confederate victory at the Battle of
Chickamauga with a rare night assault and probably saved the Army of Tennessee from
utter destruction by holding off a much larger United States Army on Missionary Ridge
at the Battle of Chattanooga and at the Battle of Ringgold Gap in northern Georgia, in
which Cleburne's men protected the Army of the Tennessee as it made its way through
the gap, escaping south and east to Tunnel Hill, Georgia. Cleburne and his troops
received an official thanks from the Confederate Congress for their actions during this
campaign.
Cleburne's strategic utilization of terrain, ability to hold ground where others failed, and
his ability to use his smaller force to stymie the movements of the enemy earned him his
fame during this time and gained him the nickname "Stonewall of the West." Federal
troops were quoted as dreading seeing the flag of Cleburne's Division across the
battlefield from them.
It became obvious to Cleburne that the Confederate States were losing the war because of
the drain on manpower and resources they were facing. In 1864, he dramatically called
upon the leadership of the Army of Tennessee and put forth a proposal to emancipate
slaves and enlist them in the Confederate Army to secure Southern independence. This
proposal was met with extreme hostility and was officially suppressed on order of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Cleburne would find his military career stalled
from this point on and he was passed over for advancement to corps commander.
Death and legacy
Prior to the campaigning season of 1864, Cleburne became engaged to Susan Tarleton of
Mobile, Alabama. Their marriage was never to be as Cleburne was killed during an ill
conceived assault, which Cleburne opposed, on Union fortifications at the Battle of
Franklin, just south of Nashville, Tennessee, on November 30, 1864. He was last seen
advancing on foot toward the Union entrenchment with his sword raised after his horse
was shot out from under him. Confederate war records indicate he died of a shot to the
abdomen.
Cleburne's remains were laid to rest at St. John's Church near Mount Pleasant, Tennessee,
where they remained for six years. In 1870, he was disinterred and returned to his
adopted hometown of Helena, Arkansas, with much fanfare. (His specific location of
interment is in dispute. Various sources claim Maple Hill Cemetery, Magnolia Cemetery,
and Evergreen Cemetery in Helena.)
Several geographic features are named after Patrick Cleburne, including:




Cleburne County, Alabama
Cleburne County, Arkansas
City of Cleburne, Texas
Lake Pat Cleburne, Texas
References

Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Stonewall Jackson
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21,[1]
1824 – May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general during
the American Civil War. He is most famous for his
audacious Valley Campaign of 1862 and as a corps
commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under
General Robert E. Lee. His own troops accidentally shot
him at the battle of Chancellorsville and he died of
complications from an amputated arm and pneumonia several days later.
Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in
United States history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army
right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide even today as examples of
innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well at the First Battle of Bull Run (where
he received his famous nickname), Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.
Jackson was not universally successful as a commander, however, as displayed by his
weak and confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond in 1862. His
death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects,
but the morale of its army and the general public; as Jackson lay dying, General Robert E.
Lee stated, "He has lost his left arm; I have lost my right."
Early years
Paternal ancestry
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was the great-grandson of John Jackson (1715 or 1719 – 1801)
and Elizabeth Cummins (also known as Elizabeth Comings and Elizabeth Needles) (1723
– 1828). John Jackson was born in Coleraine, County Londonderry, in Northern Ireland,
of Scots-Irish descent. While living in London, he was convicted of the capital crime of
larceny for stealing £ 170; the judge at the Old Bailey sentenced him to a seven-year
indenture in America. Elizabeth, a strong, blonde woman over 6 feet tall, born in London,
was also convicted of larceny in an unrelated case for stealing 19 pieces of silver,
jewelry, and fine lace, and received a similar sentence. They both were transported on the
prison ship Litchfield, which departed London in May 1749 with 150 convicts. John and
Elizabeth met on board and were in love by the time the ship arrived at Annapolis,
Maryland. Although they were sent to different locations in Maryland for their indenture,
the couple married in July 1755.[2]
The family migrated west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to settle near Moorefield,
Virginia, (now West Virginia) in 1758. In 1770, they moved further west to the Tygart
Valley. They began to acquire large parcels of virgin farmland near the present-day town
of Buckhannon, including 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) in Elizabeth's name. John and his
two teenage sons were early recruits for the American Revolutionary War, fighting in the
Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780; John finished the war as captain and
served as a lieutenant of the Virginia Militia after 1787. While the men were in the Army,
Elizabeth converted their home to a haven, "Jackson's Fort," for refugees from Indian
attacks.[3]
John and Elizabeth had four children. Their second son was Edward Jackson (March 1,
1759 – December 25, 1828), and Edward's third son was Jonathan Jackson, Thomas's
father.[4]
Early childhood
Thomas Jackson was the third child of Julia Beckwith (née Neale) Jackson (1798 – 1831)
and Jonathan Jackson (1790 – 1826), an attorney. Both of Jackson's parents were natives
of Virginia. The family already had two young children and were living in Clarksburg, in
what is now West Virginia. This is where their third child, Thomas, was born. He was
named for his maternal grandfather.
Two years later, Jackson's father and sister Elizabeth (age six) died of typhoid fever.
Jackson's mother gave birth to Thomas's sister Laura Ann the next day. Julia Jackson thus
was widowed at 28 and was left with much debt and three young children (including the
newborn). She sold the family's possessions to pay the debts. She declined family charity
and moved into a small rented one-room house. Julia took in sewing and taught school to
support herself and her three young children for about four years.
In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson remarried. Her new husband, Blake Woodson[5], an
attorney, did not like his stepchildren. There were continuing financial problems. The
following year, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother, she died of complications,
leaving her three older children orphaned.[6] Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in a
homemade coffin in Westlake Cemetery along the James River and Kanawha Turnpike in
Fayette County within the corporate limits of present-day Ansted, West Virginia.
Jackson's Mill, owned by Cummins Jackson.
Working and teaching at Jackson's Mill
Jackson was seven years old when his mother
died. He and his sister Laura Ann were sent to
live with their paternal uncle, Cummins Jackson, who owned a grist mill in Jackson's
Mill (near present-day Weston in Lewis County in central West Virginia). Cummins
Jackson was strict with Thomas, who looked up to Cummins as a schoolteacher. His
older brother, Warren, went to live with other relatives on his mother's side of the family,
but he later died of tuberculosis in 1841 at the age of 20.
Jackson helped around his uncle's farm, tending sheep with the assistance of a sheepdog,
driving teams of oxen and helping harvest the fields of wheat and corn. Formal education
was not easily obtained, but he attended school when and where he could. Much of
Jackson's education was self-taught. He would often sit up at night reading by the
flickering light of burning pine knots. The story is told that Thomas once made a deal
with one of his uncle's slaves to provide him with pine knots in exchange for reading
lessons. This was in violation of a law in Virginia that forbade teaching a slave to read or
write which had been enacted following the infamous and bloody Nat Turner incident in
Southampton County. Nevertheless, Jackson secretly taught the slave to read, as he had
promised. In his later years at Jackson's Mill, Thomas was a schoolteacher.
West Point
In 1842, Jackson was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point,
New York. Because of his inadequate schooling, he had difficulty with the entrance
examinations and began his studies at the bottom of his class. As a student, he had to
work harder than most cadets to absorb lessons. However, displaying a dogged
determination that was to characterize his life, he became one of the hardest working
cadets in the academy. Jackson graduated 17th out of 59 students in the Class of 1846. It
was said by his peers that if they had stayed there another year, he would have graduated
first.
U.S. Army and the Mexican War
Jackson began his U.S. Army career as a brevet second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery
Regiment and was sent to fight in the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. Again,
his unusual strength of character emerged. During the assault on Chapultepec Castle, he
refused what he felt was a "bad order" to withdraw his troops. Confronted by his
superior, he explained his rationale, claiming withdrawal was more hazardous than
continuing his overmatched artillery duel. His judgment proved correct, and a relieving
brigade was able to exploit the advantage Jackson had broached. In contrast, he obeyed
what he also felt was a "bad order" when he raked a civilian throng with artillery fire after
the Mexican authorities failed to surrender Mexico City at the hour demanded by the U.S.
forces.[7] The former episode, and later aggressive action against the retreating Mexican
army, earned him field promotion to the brevet rank of major.
He served at the Siege of Veracruz and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec, and Mexico
City, eventually earning two brevet promotions. It was in Mexico that Jackson first met
Robert E. Lee.
Lexington and the Virginia Military Institute
In the spring of 1851,[8] Jackson accepted a newly created teaching position at the
Virginia Military Institute (VMI), in Lexington, Virginia. He became Professor of
Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Instructor of Artillery. Jackson's teachings are
still used at VMI today because they are military essentials that are timeless, to wit:
discipline, mobility, assessing the enemy's strength and intentions while attempting to
conceal your own, and the efficiency of artillery combined with an infantry assault.
However, despite the quality of his work, he was not popular as a teacher. The students
mocked his apparently stern, religious nature and his eccentric traits. In 1856, a group of
alumni attempted to have Jackson removed from his position.[9]
Little as he was known to the white inhabitants of Lexington, Jackson was revered by
many of the African-Americans in town, both slave and free. He was instrumental in the
organization in 1855 of Sunday school classes for blacks at the Presbyterian Church.
Mary Anna Jackson taught with Jackson, as "he preferred that my labors should be given
to the colored children, believing that it was more important and useful to put the strong
hand of the Gospel under the ignorant African race, to lift them up." [10] The pastor, Dr.
William Spottswood White, described the relationship between Jackson and his Sunday
afternoon students: "In their religious instruction he succeeded wonderfully. His
discipline was systematic and firm, but very kind. ... His servants reverenced and loved
him, as they would have done a brother or father. ... He was emphatically the black man's
friend." He addressed his students by name and they in turn referred to him affectionately
as "Marse Major." [11]
Jackson's family owned six slaves in the late 1850s. Three (Hetty, Cyrus, and George, a
mother and two teenage sons) were received as a wedding present. Albert requested that
Jackson purchase him and allow him to work for his freedom; he was employed as a
waiter in one of the Lexington hotels and Jackson rented him to VMI. Amy also
requested that Jackson purchase her from a public auction and she served the family as a
cook and housekeeper. The sixth, Emma, was a four-year-old orphan with a learning
disability, accepted by Jackson from an aged widow and presented to his second wife,
Anna, as a welcome-home gift.[12] After the war began, he appears to have hired out or
sold his slaves. Mary Anna Jackson, in her 1895 memoir, said, "our servants ... without
the firm guidance and restraint of their master, the excitement of the times proved so
demoralizing to them that he deemed it best for me to provide them with good homes
among the permanent residents." [13] James Robertson wrote about Jackson's view on
slavery:[14]
Jackson neither apologized for nor spoke in favor of the practice of slavery. He probably opposed
the institution. Yet in his mind the Creator had sanctioned slavery, and man had no moral right to
challenge its existence. The good Christian slaveholder was one who treated his servants fairly
and humanely at all times.
– James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend
While an instructor at VMI, in 1853, Thomas Jackson married Elinor "Ellie" Junkin,
whose father was president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee
University) in Lexington. An addition was built onto the president's residence for the
Jacksons, and when Robert E. Lee became president of Washington College he lived in
the same home, now known as the Lee-Jackson House.[15] Ellie died during childbirth and
the child, a son, died immediately afterward.
After a tour of Europe, Jackson married again, in 1857. Mary Anna Morrison was from
North Carolina, where her father was the first president of Davidson College. They had a
daughter named Mary Graham on April 30, 1858, but the baby died less than a month
later. Another daughter was born in 1862, shortly before her father's death. The Jacksons
named her Julia Laura, after his mother and sister.
Jackson purchased the only house he ever owned while in Lexington. Built in 1801, the
brick town house at 8 East Washington Street was purchased by Jackson in 1859. He
lived in it for two years before being called to serve in the Confederacy. Jackson never
returned to his home.
In November 1859, at the request of the governor of Virginia, Major William Gilham led
a contingent of the VMI Cadet Corps to Charles Town to provide an additional military
presence at the execution by hanging on December 2, 1859 of militant abolitionist John
Brown following his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Major Jackson was
placed in command of the artillery, consisting of two howitzers manned by 21 cadets.
Civil War
In 1861, as the American Civil War broke out, Jackson became a drill master for some of
the many new recruits in the Confederate Army. On April 27, 1861, Virginia Governor
John Letcher ordered Colonel Jackson to take command at Harpers Ferry, where he
would assemble and command the famous "Stonewall Brigade", consisting of the 2nd,
4th, 5th, 27th, and 33rd Virginia Infantry regiments. All of these units were from the
Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. He was promoted to brigadier general on June
17.[16]
First Bull Run
Jackson rose to prominence and earned his most famous nickname at the First Battle of
Bull Run (also known as First Manassas) in July 1861. As the Confederate lines began to
crumble under heavy Union assault, Jackson's brigade provided crucial reinforcements on
Henry House Hill. Brig. Gen. Barnard Elliott Bee, Jr., exhorted his own troops to re-form
by shouting, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here,
and we will conquer. Follow me."[17] There is some controversy over Bee's statement and
intent, which could not be clarified because he was killed almost immediately after
speaking and none of his subordinate officers wrote reports of the battle. Major Burnett
Rhett, chief of staff to General Joseph E. Johnston, claimed that Bee was angry at
Jackson's failure to come immediately to the relief of Bee's and Bartow's brigades while
they were under heavy pressure. Those who subscribe to this opinion believe that Bee's
statement was meant to be pejorative: "Look at Jackson standing there like a damned
stone wall!"[18] Regardless of the controversy and the delay in relieving Bee, Jackson's
brigade, which would henceforth be known as the Stonewall Brigade, stopped the Union
assault and suffered more casualties than any other Southern brigade that day.[19] After
the battle, Jackson was promoted to major general (October 7, 1861)[16] and given
command of the Valley District, with headquarters in Winchester.
Valley Campaign
For more details on this topic, see Valley Campaign.
In the spring of 1862, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's massive Army of the
Potomac approached Richmond from the southeast in the Peninsula Campaign, Maj. Gen.
Irvin McDowell's large corps was poised to hit Richmond from the north, and Maj. Gen.
Nathaniel P. Banks's army threatened the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson was ordered by
Richmond to operate in the Valley to defeat Banks's threat and prevent McDowell's
troops from reinforcing McClellan.
Jackson possessed the attributes to succeed against his poorly coordinated and sometimes
timid opponents: a combination of great audacity, excellent knowledge and shrewd use of
the terrain, and the ability to inspire his troops to great feats of marching and fighting.
The campaign started with a tactical defeat at Kernstown on March 23, 1862, when faulty
intelligence led him to believe he was attacking a much smaller force than was actually
present, but it was a strategic victory for the Confederacy, forcing President Abraham
Lincoln to keep Banks's forces in the Valley and McDowell's 30,000-man corps near
Fredericksburg, subtracting about 50,000 soldiers from McClellan's invasion force. In
addition, it was Jackson's only defeat in the Valley.
By adding Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's large division and Maj. Gen. Edward
"Allegheny" Johnson's small division, Jackson increased his army to 17,000 men. He was
still significantly outnumbered, but attacked portions of his divided enemy individually at
McDowell, defeating both Brig. Gens. Robert H. Milroy and Robert C. Schenck. He
defeated Banks at Front Royal and Winchester, ejecting him from the Valley. Lincoln
decided that the defeat of Jackson was an immediate priority (even though Jackson's
orders were solely to keep Union forces occupied away from Richmond). They ordered
Irvin McDowell to send 20,000 men to Front Royal and Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont to
move to Harrisonburg. If both forces could converge at Strasburg, Jackson's only escape
route up the Valley would be cut.
After a series of maneuvers, Jackson defeated Frémont at Cross Keys and Brig. Gen.
James Shields at Port Republic on June 8 and June 9. Union forces were withdrawn from
the Valley.
It was a classic military campaign of surprise and maneuver. Jackson pressed his army to
travel 646 miles in 48 days of marching and won five significant victories with a force of
about 17,000 against a combined force of 60,000. Stonewall Jackson's reputation for
moving his troops so rapidly earned them the oxymoronic nickname "foot cavalry". He
became the most celebrated soldier in the Confederacy (until he was eventually eclipsed
by Lee) and lifted the morale of the Southern public.
Peninsula
McClellan's Peninsula Campaign toward Richmond stalled at the Battle of Seven Pines
on May 31 and June 1. After the Valley Campaign ended in mid-June, Jackson and his
troops were called to join Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in defense of the
capital. By utilizing a railroad tunnel under the Blue Ridge Mountains and then
transporting troops to Hanover County on the Virginia Central Railroad, Jackson and his
forces made a surprise appearance in front of McClellan at Mechanicsville. Reports had
last placed Jackson's forces in the Shenandoah Valley; their presence near Richmond
added greatly to the Union commander's overestimation of the strength and numbers of
the forces before him. This proved a crucial factor in McClellan's decision to re-establish
his base at a point many miles downstream from Richmond on the James River at
Harrison's Landing, essentially a retreat that ended the Peninsula Campaign and
prolonged the war almost three more years.
Jackson's troops served well under Lee in the series of battles known as the Seven Days
Battles, but Jackson's own performance in those battles is generally considered to be
poor.[20] He arrived late at Mechanicsville and inexplicably ordered his men to bivouac
for the night within clear earshot of the battle. He was late and disoriented at Gaines'
Mill. He was late again at Savage's Station, and at White Oak Swamp, he failed to
employ fording places to cross White Oak Swamp Creek, attempting for hours to rebuild
a bridge, which limited his involvement to an ineffectual artillery duel and a missed
opportunity. At Malvern Hill, Jackson participated in the futile, piecemeal frontal assaults
against entrenched Union infantry and massed artillery and suffered heavy casualties, but
this was a problem for all of Lee's army in that ill-considered battle. The reasons for
Jackson's sluggish and poorly coordinated actions during the Seven Days are disputed,
although a severe lack of sleep after the grueling march and railroad trip from the
Shenandoah Valley was probably a significant factor. Both Jackson and his troops were
completely exhausted.
Second Bull Run to Fredericksburg
The military reputations of Lee's corps commanders are often characterized as Stonewall
Jackson representing the audacious, offensive component of Lee's army, whereas his
counterpart, James Longstreet, more typically advocated and executed defensive
strategies and tactics. Jackson has been described as the army's hammer, Longstreet its
anvil.[21] In the Northern Virginia Campaign of August 1862, this stereotype did not hold
true. Longstreet commanded the Right Wing (later to become known as the First Corps)
and Jackson commanded the Left Wing. Jackson started the campaign under Lee's orders
with a sweeping flanking maneuver that placed his corps into the rear of Union Maj. Gen.
John Pope's Army of Virginia, but he then took up a defensive position and effectively
invited Pope to assault him. On August 28 and August 29, the start of the Second Battle
of Bull Run (or the Second Battle of Manassas), Pope pounded Jackson as Longstreet and
the remainder of the Army marched north to reach the battlefield.
On August 30, Pope came to believe that Jackson was starting to retreat and Longstreet
took advantage of this by launching a massive assault on the Union army's left flank with
over 25,000 men. Although the Union troops put up a furious defense, Pope's army was
forced to retreat in a manner similar to the embarrassing Union defeat at First Bull Run,
fought on roughly the same battleground.
When Lee decided to invade the North in the Maryland Campaign, Jackson took Harpers
Ferry, then hastened to join the rest of the army at Sharpsburg, Maryland, where they
fought McClellan in the Battle of Antietam. Antietam was primarily a defensive battle
fought against superior odds, although McClellan failed to exploit his advantage.
Jackson's men bore the brunt of the initial attacks on the northern end of the battlefield
and, at the end of the day, successfully resisted a breakthrough on the southern end when
Jackson's subordinate, Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill, arrived at the last minute from Harpers Ferry.
The Confederate forces held their position, but the battle was extremely bloody for both
sides, and Lee withdrew the Army of Northern Virginia back across the Potomac River,
ending the invasion. Jackson was promoted to lieutenant general on October 10 and his
command was redesignated the Second Corps.
Before the armies camped for winter, Jackson's Second Corps held off a strong Union
assault against the right flank of the Confederate line at the Battle of Fredericksburg, in
what became a decisive Confederate victory. Just before the battle, Jackson was delighted
to receive a letter about the birth of his daughter, Julia Laura Jackson, on November
23.[22]
Chancellorsville
At the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Army of Northern Virginia was faced with a serious
threat by the Army of the Potomac and its new commanding general, Major General
Joseph Hooker. General Lee decided to employ a risky tactic to take the initiative and
offensive away from Hooker's new southern thrust—he decided to divide his forces.
Jackson and his entire corps were sent on an aggressive flanking maneuver to the right of
the Union lines. This flanking movement would be one of the most successful and
dramatic of the war. While riding with his infantry in a wide berth well south and west of
the Federal line of battle, Jackson employed Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry to provide
for better reconnaissance in regards to the exact location of the Union right and rear. The
results were far better than even Jackson could have hoped. Lee found the entire right
side of the Federal lines in the middle of open field, guarded merely by two guns that
faced westward, as well as the supplies and rear encampments. The men were eating and
playing games in carefree fashion, completely unaware that an entire Confederate corps
was less than a mile away. What happened next is given in Lee's own words:
So impressed was I with my discovery, that I rode rapidly back to the point on the Plank road
where I had left my cavalry, and back down the road Jackson was moving, until I met
"Stonewall" himself. "General," said I, "if you will ride with me, halting your column here, out of
sight, I will show you the enemy's right, and you will perceive the great advantage of attacking
down the Old turnpike instead of the Plank road, the enemy's lines being taken in reverse. Bring
only one courier, as you will be in view from the top of the hill." Jackson assented, and I rapidly
conducted him to the point of observation. There had been no change in the picture.
I only knew Jackson slightly. I watched him closely as he gazed upon Howard's troops. It was
then about 2 P.M. His eyes burned with a brilliant glow, lighting up a sad face. His expression
was one of intense interest, his face was colored slightly with the paint of approaching battle, and
radiant at the success of his flank movement. To the remarks made to him while the unconscious
line of blue was pointed out, he did not reply once during the five minutes he was on the hill, and
yet his lips were moving. From what I have read and heard of Jackson since that day, I know now
what he was doing then. Oh! "beware of rashness," General Hooker. Stonewall Jackson is praying
in full view and in rear of your right flank! While talking to the Great God of Battles, how could
he hear what a poor cavalryman was saying. "Tell General Rodes," said he, suddenly whirling his
horse towards the courier, "to move across the Old plank road; halt when he gets to the Old
turnpike, and I will join him there." One more look upon the Federal lines, and then he rode
rapidly down the hill, his arms flapping to the motion of his horse, over whose head it seemed,
good rider as he was, he would certainly go. I expected to be told I had made a valuable personal
reconnaissance—saving the lives of many soldiers, and that Jackson was indebted to me to that
amount at least. Perhaps I might have been a little chagrined at Jackson's silence, and hence
commented inwardly and adversely upon his horsemanship. Alas! I had looked upon him for the
last time.
– Fitzhugh Lee, address to the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1879
Jackson immediately returned to his corps and arranged his divisions into a line of battle
to charge directly into the oblivious Federal right. The Confederates marched silently
until they were merely several hundred feet from the Union position, then released a
bloodthirsty cry and full charge. Many of the Federals were captured without a shot fired,
the rest were driven into a full rout. Jackson pursued relentlessly back toward the center
of the Federal line until dusk.
The plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson
died in Guinea Station, Virginia
Darkness ended the assault. As Jackson and his staff were
returning to camp on May 2, they were mistaken for a
Union cavalry force by a Confederate North Carolina
regiment who shouted, "Halt, who goes there?," but fired
before evaluating the reply. Jackson was hit by three
bullets, two in the left arm and one in the right hand. Several other men in his staff were
killed in addition to many horses. Darkness and confusion prevented Jackson getting
immediate care. He was dropped from his stretcher while being evacuated because of
incoming artillery rounds. Because of his injuries, Jackson's left arm had to be amputated
by Dr. Hunter McGuire. Jackson was moved to Thomas C. Chandler's 740-acre
plantation named "Fairfield." He was offered Chandler's home for recovery, but Jackson
refused and suggested using Chandler's plantation office building instead. He was
thought to be out of harm's way, but unknown to the doctors, he already had classic
symptoms of pneumonia, complaining of a sore chest. This soreness was mistakenly
thought to be the result of his rough handling in the battlefield evacuation. Jackson died
of complications of pneumonia on May 10. In his delirium, his dying words were, "Let us
cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees." His body was moved to the
Governor's Mansion in Richmond for the public to mourn, and he was then moved to be
buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, Lexington, Virginia. However, the
arm that was amputated on May 2 was buried separately by Jackson's chaplain, at the J.
Horace Lacy house, "Ellwood", in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania County, near the field
hospital.
Upon hearing of Jackson's death, Robert E. Lee mourned the loss of both a friend and a
trusted commander. The night Lee learned of Jackson's
death, he told his cook, "William, I have lost my right arm"
(deliberately in contrast to Jackson's left arm) and "I'm
bleeding at the heart."
Legacy
"Stonewall" Jackson statue, Manassas Battlefield Park
Jackson is considered one of the great characters of the
Civil War. He was profoundly religious, a deacon in the
Presbyterian Church. He disliked fighting on Sunday,
though that did not stop him from doing so. He loved his
wife very much and sent her tender letters.
Jackson often wore old, worn-out clothes rather than a fancy uniform, and often looked
more like a moth-eaten private than a corps commander. In direct contrast to Lee,
Jackson was not a striking figure, particularly since he was not a good horseman and,
therefore, rode a staid, dependable horse, rather than a spirited stallion.
A recurring story concerns his love of lemons, which he allegedly gnawed whole to
alleviate symptoms of dyspepsia. However, recent research[23] has found that none of his
contemporaries recorded any unusual lemon habits and Jackson thought of a lemon as a
"rare treat ... enjoyed greatly whenever it could obtained from the enemy's camp". He was
fond of all fruits, particularly peaches. He held a lifelong belief that one of his arms was
longer than the other, and thus usually held the "longer" arm up to equalize his
circulation. He was described as a "champion sleeper", even falling asleep with food in
his mouth occasionally. He also became noted throughout the Confederate Army for
leading his troops in complete circles. It has often been hypothesized that Jackson had
Asperger syndrome, for which he is a prime example.[24]
In command, Jackson was extremely secretive about his plans and extremely punctilious
about military discipline. This secretive nature did not stand him in good stead with his
subordinates, who were often not aware of his overall operational intentions and
complained of being left out of key decisions.[25]
The South mourned his death; he was greatly admired there. A poem penned by one of
his soldiers soon became a very popular song, "Stonewall Jackson's Way." Many
theorists through the years have postulated that if Jackson had lived, Lee might have
prevailed at Gettysburg.[26] Certainly Jackson's iron discipline and brilliant tactical sense
were sorely missed, and might well have carried an extremely close-fought battle. He is
buried at Lexington, Virginia, near VMI, in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery.
He is memorialized on Georgia's Stone Mountain, in Richmond on historic Monument
Avenue, and in many other places.
Lee could trust Jackson with deliberately non-detailed orders that conveyed Lee's overall
objectives, what modern doctrine calls the "end state." This was because Jackson had a
talent for understanding Lee's sometimes unstated goals and Lee trusted Jackson with the
ability to take whatever actions were necessary to implement his end state requirements.
Many of Lee's subsequent corps commanders did not have this disposition. At
Gettysburg, this resulted in lost opportunities. Thus, after the Federals retreated to the
heights south of town, Lee sent one of his new corps commanders, Richard S. Ewell,
discretionary orders that the heights (Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill) be taken "if
practicable." Without Jackson's intuitive grasp of Lee's orders and the intuition to take
advantage of sudden tactical opportunities, Ewell chose not to attempt the assault, and
this failure is considered by historians to be the greatest missed opportunity of the
battle.[27]
After the war, Jackson's wife and young daughter Julia moved from Lexington to North
Carolina. Mary Anna Jackson wrote two books about her husband's life, including some
of his letters. She never remarried, and was known as the "Widow of the Confederacy",
living until 1915. His daughter Julia married, and bore children, but she died of typhoid
fever at the age of 26 years.
A former Confederate soldier who admired Jackson, Captain Thomas R. Ranson of
Staunton, Virginia, also remembered the tragic life of Jackson's mother. Years after the
War, he went to the tiny mountain hamlet of Ansted in Fayette County, West Virginia,
and had a marble marker placed over the unmarked grave of Julia Neale Jackson in
Westlake Cemetery, to make sure that the site was not lost forever.
West Virginia's Stonewall Jackson State Park is named in his honor. Nearby, at Stonewall
Jackson's historical childhood home, his Uncle's grist mill is the centerpiece of a
historical site at the Jackson's Mill Center for Lifelong Learning and State 4-H Camp.
The facility, located near Weston, serves as a special campus for West Virginia
University and the WVU Extension Service.
The United States Navy submarine U.S.S. Stonewall Jackson (SSBN 634), commissioned
in 1964, was named for him. The words "Strength—Mobility" are emblazoned on the
ship's banner, words taken from letters written by General Jackson. It was the third U.S.
Navy ship named for him. The submarine was decommissioned in 1995. During World
War II, the Navy named a Liberty ship the SS T.J. Jackson in his honor.
The state of Virginia honors Jackson's birthday on Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday
observed as such since 1904. It is currently observed on the Friday preceding the third
Monday in January.
Davis, Lee, and Jackson on Stone Mountain.
Jackson also appears prominently in the enormous basrelief carving on the face of Stone Mountain riding with
Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. The carving depicts the
three on horseback, appearing to ride in a group from right
to left across the mountainside. The lower parts of the
horses' bodies merge into the mountainside at the foot of the carving. The three riders are
shown bare-headed and holding their hats to their chests. It is the largest such carving in
the world.
Stonewall Jackson appeared on the CSA $500 bill (7th Issue, February 17, 1864).
Popularity with Christian fundamentalists
Author Jeff Sharlet asserts that Jackson is the "pantheon of fundamentalist (American)
history" and that Christian fundamentalists see Jackson as an early civil rights activist
because he dedicated himself to teaching slaves to read in order to learn the Bible.
Although a military commander in the Confederate army, Christian fundamentalists
believe he did not fight to defend slavery, "but for religious freedom; he believed the
North had unsurped the moral jurisdiction of God."[28]
Sharlet claims that Christian fundamentalists see Jackson as a vessel for God's work to
defend Christianity and even Jackson's military acts are explained as the work of God.
“Many of the poor Mexicans Jackson slaughtered were civilians. After his small
victory had helped clear the way for the American advance, Jackson received orders to
turn his guns on Mexico City residents attempting to flee the oncoming U.S. army. He
did so without hesitation—mowing them down as they sought to surrender.”
What are we to make of this murder? Secular historians attribute this atrocity to Jackson's
military discipline—he simply obeyed orders. But fundamentalists see in that discipline,
that willingness to kill innocents, confirmation of Romans 13:1: "For there is no power
but God: the powers that be are ordained of God." Obeying one's superiors, according to
logic, is an act of devotion to the God above them.[28]
Although some may view this interpretation of Jackson's military atrocity as hypocritical
in relation to the teaching of Jesus Christ, Sharlet argues that Christian fundamentalists
see it as "evidence that God was with him." "Stonewall Jackson—rebellion and
reverence, rage and order—results in the synthesis of self-destructive patriotism
embraced by contemporary fundamentalists."[28]
In popular media
Jackson is featured prominently in the novel and film Gods and Generals. In the film, he
is portrayed by Stephen Lang.
Jackson is a character in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series of alternate history
novels.
Quotations
Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome
him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if
hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other
rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own
force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win
every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will
make it invincible.[29]
—Jackson to General Imboden
To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory, is the secret of successful
war.[30]
—Jackson, 1863
The only true rule for cavalry is to follow the enemy as long as he retreats.[31]
—Jackson to Colonel Munford on June 13, 1862
War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig
trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to
invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve
great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief
continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end.[32]
—Jackson
John M. Corse
John M. Corse
John Murray Corse (April 27, 1835 – April 27, 1893) was an
American politician and soldier who served as a general in the
Union Army in the American Civil War (1861-65).
Early life and career
John M. Corse was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but moved
with his family at the age of seven to Burlington in the Iowa
Territory. His father. John Lockwood Corse, served six terms of
the mayor of that town and established a prosperous book and
stationery business. Young Corse became a partner in the family business.
He was appointed to the United States Military Academy and studied there for two years.
Leaving West Point in 1855, Corse chose not to stay in the military, but instead attended
a law school in Albany, New York, and passed his bar exam. He later returned to Iowa
and was nominated for as the new state's lieutenant governor by the local Democratic
Party. In 1860, he unsuccessfully ran for secretary of state.
Civil War
Corse joined the 6th Iowa Infantry as its major in 1861 and initially served under Maj.
Gen. John C. Fremont. He then served on the staff of Maj. Gen. John Pope early the
following year during the Battle of Island Number Ten and associated engagements. He
returned to field duty with his regiment and fought in the Siege of Corinth, being
promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers on
August 11, 1863, in recognition of his service at the Battle of Vicksburg. Assigned
command of the 4th Brigade/4th Division/XV Corps in the Federal Army of the
Tennessee, Corse participated in the Chattanooga Campaign. After recuperating from an
injury suffered at Missionary Ridge, Corse returned to active duty as the inspector
general on Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's staff. In July 1864, he returned to
field duty in command of a division in XVI Corps.
General Corse is perhaps best renowned for his role in the Battle of Allatoona in October
1864. On Sherman's orders, Corse went with 2,100 men to secure Allatoona Pass to
prevent Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood in his attempt to sever Union communications.
The small band of Union soldiers fought determinedly against the 7,000 troops under
Hood's command. During the bloody battle, Corse "lost one third of his men and one
third of his ear" but secured the pass on October 5, on which date he was brevetted a
major general. In the midst of the fighting, General Corse received the famous message
from General Sherman, "Hold the Fort, for I am coming!" Corse was badly wounded
during the stubborn defense, losing a cheekbone and one ear, but recovered to resume his
front-line combat duties.
Corse later participated in Sherman's March to the Sea and took part in the Siege of
Savannah. In the final months of the Civil War, he led his division during the Carolinas
Campaign. He was later brevetted as a major general dating from March 1865.
Postbellum career
Following the Civil War, Corse served in a variety of posts. He refused the offer of a
commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army and instead mustered out of the
volunteer army in April 1866. He soon returned to Iowa, where he built railroads and
bridges. With the political patronage system of the period, he was named the regional
Collector of Internal Revenue, with his office in Chicago. Corse later moved to
Massachusetts and was chairman of the state's Democratic committee. He was then
appointed Postmaster of Boston. He was married to the grand-niece of former U.S.
President Franklin Pierce.
Corse died on his 58th birthday in Winchester, Massachusetts. His body was transported
to Burlington, Iowa, and interred in Aspen Grove Cemetery.
A bronze equestrian statue of General Corse stands in Crapo Park in Burlington.
References
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This article incorporates text from the public domain Appleton's Cyclopedia of
American Biography.
Iowa State Historical Society. "The Annals of Iowa." (1964), Series 3, volume 2.
pp 105-145 (1897). (Available on-line at Library of Congress)
Salter, William, Major-General John M. Corse, Des Moines, Iowa: 1895.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders, Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964, ISBN 0-8071-0822-7.
External links
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Equestrian statue of General Corse
Biography
Photo gallery of General Corse
Appleton's Cyclopedia entry for Corse
Corse's grave
Battle of Allatoona Pass
Lewis Addison Armistead
Lewis Addison Armistead (February 18, 1817 – July 5,
1863) was a Confederate brigadier general in the
American Civil War, mortally wounded in Pickett's
Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Early life
Lewis A. Armistead, known to friends as "Lo" (for
Lothario, which was an ironic joke because he was a shy
man and a widower, not a ladies' man), was born in New
Bern, North Carolina, son of Walker Keith Armistead
and Elizabeth Armistead. Walker Armistead and his five
brothers served during the War of 1812 and one of them,
Major George Armistead, was the commander of Fort
McHenry during the British attack that inspired the
words to the Star Spangled Banner. Lewis attended the
United States Military Academy, but was expelled
following an incident in which he broke a plate over the head of fellow cadet Jubal Early.
He was also having academic difficulties, however, particularly in French (a subject of
difficulty for many West Point cadets of that era), and some historians cite academic
failure as his true reason for leaving the academy.[1] His influential father managed to
obtain for his son a second lieutenant's commission in the infantry in 1839, at roughly the
time his classmates graduated. He served in the Mexican-American War, was wounded at
Chapultepec, and was breveted two times for bravery.
Armistead was friends with Winfield Scott Hancock, serving with him as a quartermaster
in Los Angeles, California, before the Civil War. Accounts say that in a farewell party
before leaving to join the Confederate army, Armistead told Hancock that if he should
ever lift a hand against Hancock in battle, "May God strike me dead."
Civil War
When the war started, Armistead traveled east and received a commission as a major, but
was quickly promoted to colonel of the 57th Virginia Infantry regiment. He served in the
western part of Virginia, but soon returned to the east and General Robert E. Lee's Army
of Northern Virginia. He fought as a brigade commander under Lee at Seven Pines, the
Seven Days Battles (where he was chosen to spearhead the bloody, senseless assault on
Malvern Hill), and Second Bull Run. At Antietam, he served as Lee's provost marshal, a
frustrating job due to the high levels of desertion that plagued the army in that campaign.
Then he was under command in the division of Maj. Gen. George Pickett at
Fredericksburg. He was with James Longstreet's corps near Norfolk, Virginia, in the
spring of 1863, so missed the Battle of Chancellorsville.
This monument on the Gettysburg Battlefield marks the
approximate place where Armistead fell.
In the Battle of Gettysburg, Armistead's brigade arrived the
evening of July 2, 1863, once again in Pickett's division. He
was mortally wounded the next day while leading his
brigade towards the center of the Union line in Pickett's
Charge. His brigade, led from the front by Armistead, waving his hat from the tip of his
sword, reached the stone wall at the "Angle", which served as the charge's objective. The
brigade got farther in the charge than any other, an event sometimes known as the High
Tide of the Confederacy, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a Union counterattack.
Armistead was shot three times just after crossing the wall. He was informed by Union
Captain Henry H. Bingham that his old friend, Hancock, had been commanding this part
of the defensive line, but that he, too, had just been wounded. This poignant scene has
been immortalized in Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels, in which Armistead is a
principal character. Armistead died two days later in a Union field hospital.
Lewis Armistead is buried next to his uncle, Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead,
commander of the garrison of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, at the Old
Saint Paul's Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.
In popular media
In Gettysburg, the film version of Shaara's novel, Armistead was portrayed by actor
Richard Jordan who, like Armistead, died shortly thereafter. In the film, the meeting
between Armistead and Bingham at the High Water Mark was altered with Lt. Thomas
Chamberlain (portrayed by C. Thomas Howell), brother of Col. Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain, taking Bingham's place.
Armistead made a special appearance, played by John Prosky in Gods and Generals,
being accompanied by Pickett, at Fredericksburg. In Gettysburg, he mentioned that he
and Hancock were both there in opposite sides of the battle.
Armistead is a character in the alternate history novel Gettysburg by Newt Gingrich and
William Forstchen.
References

Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
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
Johnson, Charles Thomas, "Lewis Addison Armistead", Encyclopedia of the
American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Heidler, David S.,
and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-39304758-X.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood
John Bell Hood (June 1[1] or June 29[2], 1831 – August 30,
1879) was a Confederate general during the American Civil
War. Hood had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness
that sometimes bordered on recklessness. Arguably one of
the best brigade and division commanders in the
Confederate States Army, Hood became increasingly
ineffective as he was promoted to lead larger, independent
commands, and his career was marred by his decisive
defeats leading an army in the Atlanta Campaign and the
Franklin-Nashville Campaign.
Early life
Hood was born in Owingsville, Kentucky, and was the son of John W. Hood, a doctor,
and Theodosia French Hood. He was the cousin of future Confederate general Gustavus
W. Smith and the nephew of U.S. Representative Richard French. French obtained an
appointment for Hood at the U.S. Military Academy, despite his father's reluctance to
support a military career for his son. Hood graduated in 1853, ranked 44th in a class of
52, after a tenure marred by disciplinary problems and near-expulsion in his final year. At
West Point and in later Army years, he was known to friends as "Sam". His classmates
included James B. McPherson and John M. Schofield; he received instruction in artillery
from George H. Thomas. All three of these men would become Union Army generals
who would oppose Hood in battle.
Hood was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry, served in
California, and later transferred to the 2nd U.S. Cavalry in Texas, where he was
commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee. While commanding a reconnaissance patrol from
Fort Mason, Hood sustained one of the many wounds that marked his lifetime in military
service—an arrow through his left hand in action against the Comanches at Devil's River,
Texas.
Civil War
Brigade and division command
Hood resigned from the U.S. Army immediately after Fort Sumter and, dissatisfied with
the neutrality of his native Kentucky, decided to serve his adopted state of Texas. He
joined the Confederate army as a cavalry captain, but by September 30, 1861, was
promoted to be colonel in command of the 4th Texas Infantry.
Hood became the brigade commander of the unit that was henceforth known as Hood's
Texas Brigade on February 20, 1862, part of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, and
was promoted to brigadier general on March 3, 1862. Leading the Texas brigade as part
of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Peninsula Campaign, he established his
reputation as an aggressive commander, eager to lead his troops personally into battle
from the front. At the Battle of Gaines' Mill on June 27, he distinguished himself by
leading a brigade charge that broke the Union line, the most successful Confederate
performance in the Seven Days Battles. While Hood escaped the battle with no injuries,
every other officer in his brigade was killed or wounded.
Because of his success on the Peninsula, Hood was given command of a division in
James Longstreet's First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. He led the division in
the Northern Virginia Campaign and continued his reputation as the premier leader of
shock troops during Longstreet's massive assault on John Pope's left flank at the Second
Battle of Bull Run, which nearly destroyed the Union army. In the pursuit of Union
forces, Hood was involved in a dispute over captured ambulances with a superior officer.
Longstreet had Hood arrested over the dispute and ordered him to leave the army, but
Robert E. Lee intervened and retained him in service. During the Maryland Campaign,
just before the Battle of South Mountain, Hood was in the rear, still in virtual arrest. His
Texas troopers shouted to General Lee as he rode by, "Give us Hood!" Lee restored Hood
to command, despite Hood's refusal to apologize for his conduct. During the Battle of
Antietam, Hood's division came to the relief of Stonewall Jackson's corps on the
Confederate left flank. Jackson was impressed with Hood's performance and
recommended his promotion to major general, which occurred on October 10, 1862.
In the Battle of Fredericksburg in December, Hood's division saw little action. And in the
spring of 1863, he missed the great victory of the Battle of Chancellorsville because most
of Longstreet's Corps was on detached duty in Suffolk, Virginia.
Gettysburg
At the Battle of Gettysburg, Longstreet's Corps arrived late on the first day, July 1, 1863.
General Lee planned an assault for the second day that would feature Longstreet's Corps
attacking northeast up the Emmitsburg Road into the Union left flank. Hood was
dissatisfied with his assignment in the assault because it would face difficult terrain in the
boulder-strewn area known as the Devil's Den. He requested permission from Longstreet
to move around the left flank of the Union army, beyond the mountain known as [Big]
Round Top, to strike the Union in their rear area. Longstreet refused permission, citing
Lee's orders, despite repeated protests from Hood. Yielding to the inevitable, Hood's
division stepped off around 4 p.m. on July 2, but a variety of factors caused it to veer to
the east, away from its intended direction, where it would eventually meet with Union
forces at Little Round Top. Just as the attack was starting, however, Hood was the victim
of an artillery shell exploding over his head, severely damaging his left arm, which
incapacitated him. (Although the arm was not amputated, he was unable to make use of it
for the rest of his life.) His ranking brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law,
assumed command of the division, but confusion as to orders and command status
dissipated the direction and strength of the Confederate attack, significantly affecting the
outcome of the battle.
Hood recuperated in Richmond, Virginia, where he made a social impression on the
ladies of the Confederacy. In August 1863, famous diarist Mary Chesnut wrote of Hood:
When Hood came with his sad Quixote face, the face of an old Crusader, who
believed in his cause, his cross, and his crown, we were not prepared for such a
man as a beau-ideal of the wild Texans. He is tall, thin, and shy; has blue eyes
and light hair; a tawny beard, and a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of
his face, the whole appearance that of awkward strength. Some one said that his
great reserve of manner he carried only into the society of ladies. Major [Charles
S.] Venable added that he had often heard of the light of battle shining in a man's
eyes. He had seen it once—when he carried to Hood orders from Lee, and found
in the hottest of the fight that the man was transfigured. The fierce light of Hood's
eyes I can never forget.
(In the 1993 movie Gettysburg, Hood was portrayed by actor Patrick Gorman, a man
considerably older looking than Hood, who was only 32 years old at the time.)
Chickamauga
Meanwhile, in the Western Theater, the Confederate army under General Braxton Bragg
was faring poorly. Lee dispatched Longstreet's Corps to Tennessee and Hood was able to
rejoin his men on September 18. At the Battle of Chickamauga, Hood's division broke the
Federal line at the Brotherton Cabin, which led to the defeat of General William
Rosecrans's Union army. However, Hood was once again wounded severely, and his right
leg was amputated four inches below the hip. His condition was so grave that the surgeon
sent his severed leg along with Hood in the ambulance, assuming that they would be
buried together. Because of Hood's bravery at Chickamauga, Longstreet recommended
that he be promoted to lieutenant general as of that date, September 20, 1863.
During Hood's second recuperation in Richmond that fall, he befriended Confederate
President Jefferson Davis, who would subsequently promote him to a more important
role.
Commander, Army of Tennessee
In the spring of 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under Joseph E. Johnston,
was engaged in a campaign of maneuver against William T. Sherman, who was driving
from Chattanooga toward Atlanta. During the campaign, Hood sent the government in
Richmond letters very critical of Johnston's conduct (actions that were considered highly
improper for a man in his position). On July 17, 1864, just before the Battle of Peachtree
Creek, Jefferson Davis lost patience with Johnston's strategy of withdrawals and relieved
him. Hood, commanding a corps under Johnston, was promoted to the temporary rank of
full general on July 18 and given command of the army just outside the gates of Atlanta.
At 33, Hood was the youngest man on either side of the war to be given command of an
army. Robert E. Lee counseled Davis against this choice, supposedly saying that Hood
was "all lion, no fox".
Hood conducted the remainder of the Atlanta Campaign with the strong aggressive
actions for which he was famous. He launched four major offensives that summer in an
attempt to break Sherman's siege of Atlanta, starting almost immediately with Peachtree
Creek. All of the offensives failed, with significant Confederate casualties. Finally, on
September 2, 1864, Hood evacuated the city of Atlanta, burning as many military
supplies and installations as possible.
As Sherman regrouped in Atlanta, preparing for his March to the Sea, Hood and Jefferson
Davis attempted to devise a strategy to defeat him. Their plan was to attack Sherman's
lines of communications from Chattanooga and to move north through Alabama and into
central Tennessee, assuming that Sherman would be threatened and follow. Hood's hope
was that he could maneuver Sherman into a decisive battle, defeat him, recruit additional
forces in Tennessee and Kentucky, and pass through the Cumberland Gap to come to the
aid of Robert E. Lee, who was besieged at Petersburg. Sherman did not cooperate,
however. Instead, he sent Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas to take control of the Union
forces in Tennessee and coordinate the defense against Hood, while the bulk of
Sherman's forces prepared to march toward Savannah.
Hood's Tennessee Campaign lasted from September to December, 1864, comprising
seven battles and hundreds of miles of marching. After failing to defeat a large part of the
Union Army of the Ohio under Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield at Spring Hill, Tennessee,
on November 29, the next day at the Battle of Franklin his troops were unsuccessful in
their attempt to breach the Union breastworks and they allowed the Union force to
withdraw unimpeded toward Nashville. Two weeks later George Thomas defeated him
again at the Battle of Nashville, in which most of his army was wiped out, one of the
most significant Confederate battle losses in the Civil War. After the catastrophe of
Nashville, the remnants of the Army of Tennessee retreated to Mississippi and Hood
resigned his temporary commission as a full general as of January 23, 1865, reverting
back to lieutenant general.
Near the end of the war, Jefferson Davis ordered Hood to travel to Texas to raise another
army. Before he could arrive, however, General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered his
Texas forces to the Union and Hood surrendered himself in Natchez, Mississippi, where
he was paroled on May 31, 1865.
Post-bellum career
After the war, Hood moved to Louisiana and became a cotton broker and worked as a
President of the Life Association of America, an insurance business. In 1868, he married
New Orleans native Anna Marie Hennen, with whom he would father eleven children,
including three pairs of twins, over ten years. He also served the community in numerous
philanthropic endeavors, as he assisted in fund raising for orphans, widows and wounded
soldiers left behind from the ravages of war. His insurance business was ruined by a
yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans during the winter of 1878–79 and he succumbed
to the disease himself, dying just days after his wife and oldest child, leaving ten destitute
orphans, who were adopted by families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky,
and New York.
In memoriam
John Bell Hood is buried in the Hennen family tomb at Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans.
He is memorialized by Hood County, Texas, and the U.S. Army installation, Fort Hood
Texas.
Steven Vincent Benet's poem Army of Northern Virginia included a poignant passage
about Hood:
Yellow-haired Hood with his wounds and his empty sleeve,
Leading his Texans, a Viking shape of a man,
With the thrust and lack of craft of a berserk sword,
All lion, none of the fox.
When he supersedes
Joe Johnston, he is lost, and his army with him,
But he could lead forlorn hopes with the ghost of Ney.
His bigboned Texans follow him into the mist.
Who follows them?
There's another poem about him as part of the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" his
troops sang with wry humor after the defeats in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign:
My feet are torn and bloody,
my heart is full of woe,
I'm going back to Georgia
to find my uncle Joe.
You may talk about your Beauregard,
you may sing of Bobby Lee,
but the gallant Hood of Texas
he played hell in Tennessee.
References
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Chesnut, Mary, Diary of Mary Chesnut, D. Appleton and Company, 1905.
Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
McMurry, Richard M., John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence,
University of Nebraska Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8032-8191-9.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders,
Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
Hood's biography in About North Georgia
Hood's biography in Handbook of Texas Online at the University of Texas
JohnBellHood.org website
Notes
1. ^ Eicher, p. 302; Warner, p. 142; Handbook of Texas Online.
2. ^ About North Georgia website; JohnBellHood.org website.
External links
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
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John Bell Hood posts on The Battle of Franklin blog
Entry for General John B. Hood from the Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas
published 1880, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
Charging into Battle with Hood's Texas Brigade a Primary Source Adventure, a
lesson plan hosted by The Portal to Texas History
General Isaac R. Trimble
Isaac R. Trimble
Isaac Ridgeway Trimble (May 15, 1802 – January 2,
1888) was a U.S. Army officer, a civil engineer, a
prominent railroad construction superintendent and
executive, and a Confederate general in the American Civil
War, most famous for his leadership role in the assault
known as Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Youth, education, building railroads
Trimble was born in Culpeper County, Virginia. He moved to Kentucky and was
nominated by that state to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York,
from which he graduated in 1822, commissioned as a second lieutenant of artillery. He
served in the 3rd and 1st U.S. Artillery regiments, but left the U.S. Army in 1832 to
pursue the emerging business of railroad construction.
Trimble helped survey the route of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He was a
construction engineer for the Boston and Providence Railroad, and Pennsylvania Railroad
predecessors Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and
Baltimore Railroad, and Baltimore and Potomac Railroads. In his final job, as a
superintendent, he relocated permanently to Maryland.
Civil War
When Trimble realized that Maryland would not secede from the Union, he returned to
his Virginia home and joined the Confederate army as a colonel of engineers in 1861. He
was promoted to brigadier general on August 9, 1861, and by November 16 was in
command of a brigade in the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac.
Trimble first saw combat as part of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's campaign in the
Shenandoah Valley and he distinguished himself in the Battle of Cross Keys by ordering
a dangerous close-in musket volley that routed Union troops under John C. Frémont.
During the Seven Days Battles under Jackson, his brigade fought hard at Gaines' Mill and
he sought to follow up the unsuccessful assault on Malvern Hill by making a night attack,
but his foolish request was refused.
In the Second Battle of Bull Run, Trimble's brigade defeated a Union brigade at
Freeman's Ford. He then marched with Jackson around Maj. Gen. John Pope's main force
and captured a supply depot in their rear, along with two artillery batteries, which
eventually compelled Pope to attack Jackson's strong defensive positions and suffer a
severe defeat. Trimble was wounded in the leg with an explosive bullet and he had to
deal with poor health (due in part to his advanced age) for many months in his recovery.
Although he was promoted to major general in January 1863, he was unable to command
a division due to his health, and he was assigned to light duty as commander of the
Valley District in the Shenandoah Valley.
By June 1863, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had crossed the Potomac River
on its second invasion of the north and Trimble was desperate to get back into action,
particularly because he was familiar with the area from his railroad days. He joined Lee's
headquarters unsolicited, but wore out his welcome hanging around without formal
assignment. Riding north, he caught up with Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell on the way to
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and joined his staff as a supernumerary, or senior officer in
command of nothing. He and Ewell quarreled frequently due to this clumsy arrangement
and Trimble's lack of tact.
On July 1, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg began and Ewell's Second Corps reached the
battlefield in early afternoon, smashing into the Union XI Corps and driving them south
through the town to Cemetery Hill. Trimble wrote the following about his encounter with
Ewell:[1]
The battle was over and we had won it handsomely. General Ewell moved about uneasily, a good
deal excited, and seemed to me to be undecided what to do next. I approached him and said:
"Well, General, we have had a grand success; are you not going to follow it up and push our
advantage?
He replied that "General Lee had instructed him not to bring on a general engagement without
orders, and that he would wait for them.
I said, that hardly applies to the present state of things, as we have fought a hard battle already,
and should secure the advantage gained. He made no rejoinder, but was far from composure. I
was deeply impressed with the conviction that it was a critical moment for us and made a remark
to that effect.
As no movement seemed immediate, I rode off to our left, north of the town, to reconnoitre, and
noticed conspicuously the wooded hill northeast of Gettysburg (Culp's), and a half mile distant,
and of an elevation to command the country for miles each way, and overlooking Cemetery Hill
above the town. Returning to see General Ewell, who was still under much embarrassment, I said:
"General, there," pointing to Culp's Hill, "is an eminence of commanding position, and not now
occupied, as it ought to be by us or the enemy soon. I advise you to send a brigade and hold it if
we are to remain here." He said: "Are you sure it commands the town?" "Certainly it does, as you
can see, and it ought to be held by us at once." General Ewell made some impatient reply, and the
conversation dropped.
– Isaac R. Trimble, Southern Historical Society Papers
Observers have reported that the "impatient reply" was, "When I need advice from a
junior officer I generally ask for it." And that Trimble threw down his sword in disgust
and stormed off. A more colorful version of this account has been immortalized in
Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels.
On July 3, 1863, Trimble was one of the three division commanders in Pickett's Charge.
He stepped in to replace W. Dorsey Pender, of A.P. Hill's Corps, who was mortally
wounded the previous day. Trimble was at a great disadvantage because he had never
worked with these troops before. His division participated in the left section of the
assault, advancing just behind the division led by J. Johnston Pettigrew (formerly by
Henry Heth). The slaughter of the assault is well known. Trimble rode his horse, Jinny,
and was wounded in the leg, the same left leg as at Second Bull Run. His leg was
amputated by Dr. Hunter McGuire and he could not be taken along with the retreating
Confederates, because of fear of infection that would result from a long ambulance ride
back to Virginia, so he was left to be captured by Union soldiers. Of the charge at
Gettysburg Trimble said: "If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take
that position, all hell couldn't take it."[2]
Gettysburg was the end of Trimble's military career. He spent the next year and a half in
Northern hands at Johnson's Island and Fort Warren. He was recommended for parole
soon after capture, but former U.S. Secretary of War Simon Cameron recommended
against it, citing Trimble's expert knowledge of northern railroads. He was finally paroled
in Lynchburg, Virginia, on April 16, 1865, just after Lee's surrender.
Post-war years, heritage
After the war, Trimble was equipped with an artificial leg and returned to Maryland to
resume his engineering work. Records of the Pennsylvania Railroad indicate that he
resigned as chief engineer of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in July 1867.
Isaac Trimble died in Baltimore, Maryland, and is buried there in Greenmount Cemetery,
arguably the most famous Maryland resident who fought for the Confederacy. In 1849,
Trimble built Baltimore's historic 1849 President Street Station. The oldest big city train
station in America, it was restored in 1997 to serve as the Baltimore Civil War Museum.
In popular media
Isaac Trimble was played by actor Morgan Sheppard in the movies Gettysburg and Gods
and Generals.
References
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
Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford
University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Tagg, Larry, The Generals of Gettysburg, Savas Publishing, 1998, ISBN 1882810-30-9.
Trimble, Isaac R., "The Battle and Campaign of Gettysburg", Southern Historical
Society Papers, vol. XXVI, 1898.