Calamity at Chancellorsville

by Mathew W Lively

  After sending a barrage of more than a dozen rounds down the road, the Union battery elevated its guns and resumed firing. With the shells now sailing slightly overhead, the road became less hazardous, and Jackson rose to his feet. Leaning on Smith for support, he walked into the thicket, with Leigh behind him carrying the litter. Making their way through woods that Morrison said were “filled with whistling canister and shrieking shell,” the group encountered Gen. Dorsey Pender. “General, I am sorry to see you have been wounded,” Pender said to Jackson. “The lines are so much broken that I fear we will have to fall back.”

  “You must hold your ground, General Pender,” Jackson ordered in a weak but authoritative tone. “You must hold your ground, sir.”14

  The arduous walk through the woods began to take a toll on Jackson; he soon became fatigued and lightheaded. After placing him back on the stretcher, Leigh tried to solicit nearby soldiers to help in bearing the litter. None were willing to do so for a “Confederate officer,” so Leigh had to tell them it was Jackson who was wounded. In an instant, men sprang forward to help. Lifting the stretcher to their shoulders, four soldiers carried the litter with great difficulty through the thick undergrowth of the Wilderness.

  Then, “[a]s we were going through the woods,” Leigh wrote, “one of the litter bearers got his foot tangled in a grapevine and fell,” dropping his corner of the litter. With no one close enough to catch the handle this time, the stretcher tilted and Jackson rolled off, falling several feet before landing hard on his wounded arm. For the first time, he let out an expression of pain and exhaustion. “He must have suffered excruciating agonies,” Leigh commented. More troubling, the sharp edge of a broken bone damaged the brachial artery in the upper arm and fresh blood flowed from the wound.15

  Kneeling on the ground, Smith gently lifted the general’s head. In the filtered moonlight, he could see that Jackson’s eyes were closed and his face pale. Fearful he was “breathing his life away,” Smith said to him, “General, are you hurt much?”

  “No, my friend,” Jackson replied, opening his eyes. “Don’t trouble yourself about me.”16

  Placing Jackson back on the litter, the group continued its journey to the rear, this time back along the road in order to avoid a repeat mishap of someone tripping in the brush. Growing weaker as he lost blood, Jackson asked for more alcohol as a stimulant. As none of those present had any whiskey, Wilbourn galloped off toward the nearest field hospital, hoping to find some medicinal spirits.

  Shell jacket worn by James P. Smith during Jackson’s removal from the field. Blood stains on the front are from Jackson.

  The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia Photography by Katherine Wetzel

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  * * *

  To the west near the old schoolhouse, Surgeon William R. Whitehead of the 44th Virginia was assisting wounded men when one of Jackson’s staff recognized him. Informing Whitehead that the general was wounded, he asked the surgeon whether he could procure an ambulance and have it brought forward along the road. Whitehead immediately rode west to an open field where he had previously seen an ambulance stationed. Finding the driver, Pvt. Thomas J. Capps of the 3rd North Carolina, Whitehead asked him to take the ambulance down the Plank Road to remove a wounded officer. Capps refused to budge, saying he had explicit orders from his own regimental surgeon to remain where he was until he received further instructions. Whitehead then disclosed that the wounded officer was General Jackson. “That’s enough,” Capps responded, “I’ll go, sir.”17

  Capps drove his two-horse team down the Plank Road through air that was “filled with shells and small shot” until he came upon a group of men crouching beside the road. “They were evidently on the look for an ambulance,” Capps remembered, “and raised up and motioned to me when I drew near.” But instead of finding Jackson’s group, Capps had been stopped by artillery captain Marcellus Moorman as he was helping Col. Stapleton Crutchfield, Jackson’s chief of artillery, who had been wounded in the left thigh. Also present was Maj. Arthur L. Rogers, an artillery officer wounded in the arm. They had just finished placing Crutchfield in the ambulance and Rogers was climbing in when Jimmy Smith ran up the road shouting for them to wait.18

  Spotting the ambulance in the road, Smith had run ahead of the litter team in order to secure the use of the wagon. The standard four-wheeled ambulance in use at the time had a spring-loaded suspension and a canvas cover stretched over a wood frame. As the wagon could carry only two recumbent men comfortably, Major Rogers agreed to forgo its use to accommodate Jackson. Within moments, the litter bearers arrived with the wounded general. Dr. Whitehead, who had followed the ambulance forward, quickly felt Jackson’s pulse and asked for spirits; again none were available. Jackson was placed in the ambulance next to Crutchfield, with Morrison jumping in the back between the two men and Leigh climbing on next to the driver. With Smith and Whitehead traveling alongside, the ambulance set out for the hospital. A bullet passed through the wagon’s canvas top as it raced to the rear.19

  Sketches of the type of stretcher and ambulance commonly used by the Confederate Army.

  A Manual of Military Surgery for the Use of Surgeons in the Confederate States Army with Explanatory Plates of all Useful Operations

  The Melzi Chancellor homestead, also known as Dowdall’s Tavern, was being used as a field hospital. It contained both Union and Confederate soldiers who had been wounded during the day’s battle. Capps brought the ambulance to a halt in front of the tavern while Whitehead went in to obtain spirits and water for Jackson and Crutchfield.

  Farther up the road near another hospital, Maj. Hunter H. McGuire was talking to Sandie Pendleton when a courier was heard shouting, “Does anyone know where Doctor McGuire is?” After McGuire called the man over, the soldier informed him and Pendleton that Jackson had been wounded and the doctor’s presence was urgently needed. They were just about to head forward when Wilbourn rode up and provided the two with further details of the tragic event. Overcome by the news, Pendleton fainted. After ensuring that the young adjutant was unharmed, McGuire and Wilbourn quickly rode east to find Jackson.20

  The two arrived at Dowdall’s Tavern shortly after the ambulance. Climbing into the back of the wagon, McGuire addressed Jackson: “I hope you are not much hurt, General.”

  “I am badly injured Doctor,” he responded. “I fear I am dying.”21

  1 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863.

  2 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863.

  3 Jackson’s blood-stained gloves with a bullet hole in the right palm and another at the top of the left glove were found on the battlefield by a soldier, who had them sent to Anna Jackson. See William D. Covington to Anna Jackson, June 26, 1863, Roy Bird Cook Collection, West Virginia University, and The Sentinel (Richmond, VA), June 27, 1863. The air temperature at the time of the wounding was likely warm. The recorded temperature 60 miles north in Washington, D.C., at 9:00 pm was 63°F. See “Record of Events Database, Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War,” Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia. The fact that Jackson was wearing four layers of clothing in such warm weather could be related to the illness he had contracted the night before his wounding.

  4 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863.

  5 Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863.

  6 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; James P. Smith to Jedediah Hotchkiss, (n.d.), Miscellaneous Manuscripts, New York Historical Society (NYHS). Benjamin Wright, surgeon with the 55th Virginia, wrote an account stating that Hill brought him to the area and he was the first physician to examine Jackson. Wright, however, is not mentioned in any of the first-person accounts. See Benjam
in P. Wright, “Recollections of the Battle of Chancellorsville and the Wounding of General Jackson,” bound volume 176, FSNMP.

  7 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873; Murray F. Taylor to the CV, January 13, 1904; “Stonewall Jackson and the Henderson Hydropath,” Samaritan Health Newsletter (September 2008), issue 42.

  8 Joseph G. Morrison to Robert Dabney, October 29, 1863, Charles William Dabney Papers, SHC, University of North Carolina; Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863.

  9 Joseph G. Morrison to Robert Dabney, October 29, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873.

  10 Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873; Albert Rennolds, “Virginia Reminiscences,” in CV (February 1897), 51-52.

  11 Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863.

  12 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863; James P. Smith to Jedediah Hotchkiss, n.d.; James P. Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative,” Dabney-Jackson Collection, box 2, LVA. Since the event, there has been debate as to whether Jackson fell off the litter when Johnson was wounded. See Appendix I for a discussion of the topic.

  13 [Morrison], “Wounding of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson,” 182; Smith to Hotchkiss, n.d.; Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative.”

  14 [Morrison], “Wounding of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson,” 182; Smith to Hotchkiss, n.d.; Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative.”

  15 Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863. A brief item in the Southern Historical Society Papers claims a soldier named D. W. Busick was the litter bearer who tripped, not on a vine but on the leg of another soldier. See SHSP (1882), vol. 10, 143.

  16 Smith to Hotchkiss, n.d.; Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative.”

  17 William R. Whitehead, “Adventures of an American Surgeon” (1902), Denver Medical Library, Denver, Colorado; Andrew J. Howell, “The Ambulance Driver who Carried Stonewall Jackson Off the Field,” Thomas J. Jackson Collection, MOC.

  18 Howell, “Ambulance Driver”; Donald B. Koonce, ed., Doctor to the Front: The Recollections of Confederate Surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood (Knoxville, TN, 2000), 78; Moorman, “Narrative of Events,” 114-115; Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative.”

  19 Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative”; Whitehead, “Adventures of an American Surgeon”; Howell, “Ambulance Driver.”

  20 Hunter H. McGuire to Jubal A. Early, March 2, 1873, Jubal Anderson Early Papers, vol. 6. LC; Hunter H. McGuire, “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson,” Miscellaneous Manuscripts, NYHS; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873. In the “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson,” McGuire states that the name of the courier who found him was “Sherrer.” In the letter to his wife, Leigh also mentions a courier named “Shearer” as being present at Dowdall’s Tavern. The exact identity of this soldier, however, is unknown.

  21 McGuire, “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson.”

  Chapter Seven

  I Thought You Were Killed

  Hunter Holmes McGuire was the 27-year-old medical director of Stonewall Jackson’s Second Corps. Born in Winchester, Virginia, the tall, slender McGuire sported a black mustache and was known to be an accomplished surgeon. With medical degrees from the Winchester College of Medicine and the Medical College of Virginia, McGuire was first commissioned as a surgeon in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States of America in May 1861 and was ordered to report to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), as medical director of the Army of the Shenandoah. The unit was under the command of then-Col. Thomas J. Jackson.

  McGuire reported for duty to Jackson after he arrived at Harper’s Ferry and the two men had a brief conversation, which McGuire described as “pleasant.” Jackson then directed the physician to return to quarters and await further orders. It took a week for Jackson to officially announce at a dress parade that McGuire had been appointed medical director of the army. Months later, after the two had developed a close friendship, McGuire inquired about the reason for the initial delay. “You looked so young,” Jackson answered, “I sent to Richmond to see if there wasn’t some mistake.”1

  Jackson developed complete confidence in McGuire’s medical skills, beginning at the first battle of Manassas. During the engagement that inspired his famous nickname, Jackson also took a bullet in the base of his middle finger when he raised his arm in the air during the fight. “The ball,” McGuire described, “struck the finger a little to one side, broke it, and carried off a small piece of the bone.” Undeterred, Jackson wrapped a handkerchief around the finger and continued leading his troops until the battle was over. He then rode to the nearest field hospital, where a surgeon quickly decided that amputating the finger was necessary. But as the doctor left to prepare for surgery, Jackson quietly got back on his horse and trotted off to find McGuire.2

  The young surgeon was busy treating the wounded at a nearby hospital when he noticed Jackson approaching. Noting the bandaged hand, McGuire walked over and asked the general whether he was seriously injured. “No,” Jackson answered, “not half as badly as many here, and I will wait.” He then walked over to a nearby stream, sat on the bank, and refused assistance until “his turn came.” Only after McGuire had completed his immediate tasks could he persuade Jackson to allow him to examine the hand. As the surgeon looked at the finger, Jackson asked whether the injury would require an amputation. “General,” McGuire replied, “if it was mine, I would try to save it.”3

  After dressing the wound with a lint bandage, McGuire placed a splint on the finger to immobilize the fracture and instructed Jackson to keep the dressing wet with cold water—a treatment embraced by the hydropathy-loving general. McGuire later observed Jackson frequently “occupied for several hours pouring cup after cup of water over his hand with the patience and perseverance for which he was so remarkable.” The wound healed without complications, and “in the end, the deformity was very trifling.”4

  As McGuire approached a wounded Jackson at the battle of Chancellorsville two years later, the situation was far more serious.

  “I am glad you have come,” Jackson said to McGuire as he began examining the arm. “I think the wound in my shoulder is still bleeding.”

  Jackson’s clothes were already saturated with blood and McGuire could see more oozing from the wound. Quickly placing his finger above the bullet hole, the young surgeon compressed the artery in the arm to stop the hemorrhage; otherwise, he recounted later, Jackson “would probably have died in ten minutes.” Candles brought out from the tavern provided McGuire with enough light to readjust the handkerchief to help control the bleeding. Surgeon John A. Straith, in charge of the field hospital, also provided some whiskey and morphine which McGuire gave to both Jackson and Crutchfield.

  Despite these efforts, Jackson’s condition remained critical. “His extremities were cool, his skin clammy, his face pale, and his lips compressed and bloodless,” McGuire wrote. Jackson, however, was calm and “controlled by his iron will all evidence of emotion.”5

  McGuire instructed Smith to ride forward to the larger corps hospital three miles away and have Dr. Harvey Black prepare a tent for Jackson’s arrival. Ordering Capps to proceed to the hospital, McGuire sat near the front of the ambulance with his finger resting over the artery in Jackson’s upper arm in the event the bleeding should restart. Leigh and others rode ahead of the wagon with torches to light the way and clear the road.6

  After traveling a quarter of a mile, the ambulance passed Wilderness Church and arrived at the fork where the Old Turnpike and Orange Plank roads diverged on their way to the town of O
range Court House. Keeping to the right, Capps proceeded along the Old Turnpike en route to the Second Corps field hospital located at Wilderness Tavern.

  It was a rough-and-tumble journey over the Old Turnpike, rutted and pitted by troop movements and fighting. At one point the ambulance had tocross a stream where the small bridge over it had been burned. The wagon lurched and jolted as it went across the rocky bed, shooting pain through the broken bones of both wounded patients. “Driver,” Jackson called out, “[d]rive carefully, please.”

  Edwin Forbes sketch of a field hospital at Wilderness Tavern.

  Library of Congress

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  “General, I’ll do my best,” Capps replied, “but if I hold in my horses, they’ll be sure to balk.”7

  Along the way Jackson became more concerned about Crutchfield’s condition than his own. Reaching up with his broken right hand, Jackson pulled McGuire down and quietly asked whether his artillery chief was dangerously wounded. No, the surgeon informed him, only “painfully hurt.”

  “Thank you,” Jackson whispered, “I’m glad it is no worse.”

  A short distance later, Crutchfield mirrored the action, asking the same about Jackson. McGuire told him the general was “very seriously wounded.”

  “Oh, my God!” Crutchfield cried out in response. Misinterpreting the colonel’s exclamation as a cry of pain, Jackson promptly ordered McGuire to stop the ambulance and see about relieving the officer’s discomfort.8

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  Wilderness Tavern was actually a collection of structures along the Old Turnpike consisting of the tavern, a house, shops, and stables. A sprawling Confederate corps hospital had been established at the site using the buildings and a network of tents stretching across open fields on both sides of the road. The complex was under the immediate direction of Dr. Harvey Black, a native of Blacksburg, Virginia (his family had founded the town in 1798), and McGuire’s second in command with regard to corps medical duties. Having been informed by Smith of Jackson’s impending arrival, Black had readied a large bell tent complete with a bed, warm blankets, and a stove with a fire. The tent sat in a field on the north side of the Old Turnpike a little more than 100 yards from the main structures at Wilderness Tavern.9