Pope began to pull his troops away from the field on the night of August 30, but he was soon urged by Washington to renew the attack within the next few days. He didn’t want to, but he did begin preparations for a direct assault. The Confederates acted first. On August 31, Lee had sent Jackson and Longstreet on a circular route to prevent Pope from reaching Washington. At sunset, still in the pouring rain, Jackson’s wing reached Ox Run in Fairfax County, near a plantation named Chantilly, where they settled in for blocking action. But the Union army attacked on September 1, initiating the brief and bloody Battle of Chantilly. What horse Jackson used that day is unreported.
Jackson failed in his attempt to stop Pope from reaching Washington, but the battle is considered a Confederate victory since the Army of Northern Virginia was left in control of the field. It was enough of a victory that Lee was emboldened to do what Jackson had been urging him to do for months: invade the North.
The army left Chantilly for its northern adventure with Little Sorrel in an unaccustomed position. He was out of contact with Stonewall Jackson, apparently trailing behind with the supply wagons. Jackson would soon realize how much he had come to rely on his little horse.
Chapter 9
Invasion
Stonewall Jackson rode to battle in the North aboard borrowed horses. Two members of the Black Horse Troop loaned him fine black mounts and somebody gave him a cream-colored horse to ride across the Potomac River on September 5. Several observers noted the different horses but didn’t consider it curious that he wasn’t riding his now-famous sorrel. It may have been common knowledge where the little sorrel was, or perhaps everyone thought there was nothing significant in the general giving a heavily used horse a rest.
Jackson crossed the Potomac aboard a borrowed horse with Little Sorrel somewhere to the rear.
Alfred Waud drawing, Library of Congress
But the absence of Little Sorrel, whether mysterious or not, led to a potentially serious problem for Jackson. After crossing the Potomac, the column marched ten miles north, stopping for the night of September 5 at a place the memoir writers identified as Three Springs, a few miles south of Frederick, Maryland. This was probably the Three Springs Farm of Thomas N. Harwood, a wealthy landowner whose son William Thomas Harwood served in the Thirty-Fifth Virginia Cavalry, a partisan unit that included men from Maryland. They had seen heavy service in the Shenandoah Valley campaign.
During the afternoon or evening of September 5, a wealthy local man presented Jackson with a magnificent gray mare. The Confederate sympathizer may have been Thomas Harwood, the owner of the farm where Jackson set up headquarters. The general was pleased to receive the handsome horse. Whether it was because, as Henry Kyd Douglas claimed, Little Sorrel was missing or, as Anna Jackson later wrote, he was happy to have a good-looking mount, Jackson gratefully accepted the gift. There are differing stories of what happened next.
Douglas’s version is most often repeated. He doesn’t mention Jackson trying out the mare on the night of September 5 but believed she was saddled the following morning as the troops were ready to continue their march. “The next morning,” Douglas wrote in Century Magazine in 1886, “he mounted his new steed, but when he touched her with his spur the loyal and undisciplined beast reared straight into the air and, standing erect for a moment, threw herself backward, horse and rider rolling on the ground.” Douglas says Jackson lay still for several minutes before he could be carried to an ambulance for the day’s march. He remained in his tent for a full day after camp was set up just south of Frederick.
Samuel Bassett “Chester” French was a military advisor to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and an occasional volunteer aide to Stonewall Jackson. He was fond of horses and his gossipy memoirs give a lengthy version of what happened to Jackson and the gift mare. French’s version is similar to Douglas’s, except French gave no reason for Little Sorrel’s absence. French wrote that after the accident Jackson immediately gave the gray mare away to a cousin from his mother’s side of the family recently arrived from western Virginia. Jed Hotchkiss said he gave the gift horse away after the Maryland campaign when the young cousin left to join a newly formed mounted infantry unit.
William E. Caffey, who wrote about his Confederate artillery service under the pseudonym “An English Combatant,” claimed that Little Sorrel was available for use at the time of the accident and Jackson learned a lesson with the gray mare. “The old sorrel was again brought forward and the General ambled off,” Caffey wrote, “never essaying to mount ‘fine’ horses again.” Caffey was with the Army of Northern Virginia during the Maryland campaign, but it’s unclear whether he saw the accident or just heard about it. Most versions put Jackson in an ambulance after the event, not on horseback, but Caffey’s story suggests that Little Sorrel was at least present and available by the morning of September 6.
Jackson spent the night of September 6 and three days and nights thereafter in a beautiful grove of oak trees, known as Best’s Grove, three miles south of Frederick. Jackson and Little Sorrel were certainly reunited, if not on September 6, then at some point during the encampment near Frederick, which ended on September 10. William Caffey wrote of the intense interest in Jackson aroused among Marylanders: “Hundreds traveled many miles to see the great original Stonewall . . . and imagined that angelic spirits were his companions and counsellors.” But then the visitors got a closer look. “It was not until the great man had mounted his old horse and frequently aired himself in the streets, that many began to think him less than supernatural,” Caffey wrote. “His shabby attire and unpretending deportment quite disappointed the many who had expected to see a great display of gold lace and feathers.”
By “old horse” Caffey may have meant a horse Jackson had used previously or a horse that was presumed to be old, but there’s little doubt that he was referring to Little Sorrel. Caffey’s reference to having “frequently aired himself in the street” suggests that Little Sorrel was carrying Jackson through the streets of Frederick throughout the period of encampment.
While in Frederick, Jackson and Robert E. Lee worked out plans to capture Harpers Ferry. The primary goal was to protect the Confederate supply line from the Shenandoah Valley, with the added benefit of preventing the huge Federal garrison there from being sent north and east to reinforce the main Union army in Maryland. John Pope’s failure at Manassas was more recent than George McClellan’s at the Seven Days, so McClellan had been restored to the command of the Army of the Potomac. Pope’s Army of Virginia was no more.
Lee gave Jackson three of four Confederate columns of the Army of Northern Virginia. His columns were to march on Harpers Ferry from three directions, with Jackson’s personally led column of fourteen thousand men to approach from the west. Harpers Ferry would be surrounded and choked.
On September 10, Jackson’s column moved out of the Frederick camp. He rode at the front of his marching soldiers, presumably on the trustworthy and comfortable Little Sorrel. Jackson intended to make a loop to the northwest to disguise his intentions to any Union sympathizers and spies who might be watching.
He stopped fifteen miles short of his destination. As the column made camp at the farm of southern sympathizer John Murdock, a mile southeast of Boonsboro, Maryland, Jackson ordered Douglas and part of his escort from the Black Horse Troop into the mostly Union-favoring village to see what was going on. There are several versions of what happened next, including those of Douglas and members of the cavalry troop.
According to survivors of the Black Horse Troop, twenty of the cavalrymen went into Boonsboro to picket the village and provide early warning of any Union approach. According to Douglas, he rode into town with a single cavalryman, while Chester French said he was the companion. The two were attacked by a strong contingent of Union cavalry that had ridden through the pickets, if indeed there were any pickets. Douglas, according to him, and Alexander D. Payne of the Black Horse
, according to his colleagues, tried to stand their ground against the Federals, then turned to hurry back to camp.
According to both accounts, they saw Stonewall Jackson himself on foot, heading out of the Confederate camp toward Boonsboro, leading his horse. Douglas gave himself credit for holding off the cavalry while the Black Horse troopers said the key figure was Payne. It was probably both. Jackson was able to mount the horse, most likely Little Sorrel, and gallop back to the safety of the Confederate camp. The Union cavalry turned off. It was a near miss, but Jackson and Little Sorrel were saved from capture.
“The only allusion he [Jackson] made to the incident,” Douglas wrote later, “was to express the opinion that I had a very fast horse.”
Two days later, the column arrived in Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), the second-largest town of the Shenandoah Valley. The twenty-five-hundred-man Federal garrison had just abandoned the town, heading east to Harpers Ferry and the protection of a much larger Union contingent there. With the Confederate line of supply from the valley now protected as far as Martinsburg, Jackson could turn his attention to planning the assault on Harpers Ferry, but planning took a while to get to.
Jackson and his horse suffered from the burdens of hero worship as soon as they arrived in Martinsburg. The general lost most of the buttons from his coat to keepsake-hunters and his horse lost chunks of hair.
“As a penalty of sharing his master’s fame, poor Little Sorrel lost many locks from his mane and tail,” Anna Jackson wrote years later in her biography of her husband. Henry Kyd Douglas wrote that the horse who lost his hair wasn’t Little Sorrel, who was, Douglas claimed, still missing.
Anna Jackson wasn’t there and Douglas may have been, but Anna has come down with a better record of accuracy than Douglas has. The visit to Martinsburg came well after other people reported seeing Jackson back aboard Little Sorrel. Douglas, like many other Civil War veterans, wrote much of his work well after the war and his inaccuracies may have resulted as much from foggy memory as from his love of a good story.
Jackson began his final eighteen-mile march to Harpers Ferry early on September 13, as the two other columns also moved to encircle the Federal garrison. The one arriving from the northeast under General Lafayette McLaws had to fight its way into possession of Maryland Heights, one of the three prominences overlooking the town. General John Walker’s column had an easier time securing Loudon Heights to the south.
Jackson approached Bolivar Heights on the western edge of the town and spent September 14 planning an assault on the Federal garrison, expecting to have to send substantial infantry to subdue the town. On September 15, the infantry advanced, but a massive artillery attack from Maryland and Loudon Heights subdued the Federal garrison quickly. Within ninety minutes, a white flag of surrender waved in the village. The commanding officer of the Union garrison was brought to Jackson’s position on Bolivar Heights.
Henry Kyd Douglas was struck by the difference in appearance between the generals and their mounts. He told his Century Magazine readers about the appearance of Union General Julius White. “General White, riding a handsome black horse, was carefully dressed and had on untarnished gloves, boots, and sword,” he wrote. “On the other hand, General Jackson was the dingiest, worst-dressed and worst-mounted general that a warrior who cared for good looks and style would wish to surrender to.”
Later in the morning, Jackson rode down into the center of Harpers Ferry to take a look at the site of his first command and the place where he and Little Sorrel had come together. Most of the once prosperous town lay in ruins. Many of the 12,500 Union troops captured in Harpers Ferry lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the Stonewall Jackson they had heard so much about. Some cheered, but others were unimpressed by horse and rider, including Lewis Hull of the Sixtieth Ohio Infantry, who referred to Jackson’s mount as being a dun.
He was apparently referring to Little Sorrel, the horse that Douglas criticized a few hours earlier, but there is a chance that Jackson changed horses to go down into the city. One observer claimed he was on a “cream-colored horse,” and yet another called his horse “dark brown.” At about this same time, Colonel William H. Trimble of the Sixtieth Ohio met Jackson to ask for protection for the regiment’s black servants. Trimble was the close associate of William O. Collins, brother to the man who supposedly bred Little Sorrel in Connecticut.
Jackson’s troops left Harpers Ferry within hours of their victory, rushing to meet up with Lee’s force sixteen miles north in Sharpsburg, Maryland. A night march was treacherous for man and horse alike, but the column safely reached Sharpsburg by late morning on September 16, 1862. Almost certainly, Jackson chose the sure-footed Little Sorrel for this trip.
Jackson rode Little Sorrel into the town of Sharpsburg on September 16, 1862, to meet Robert E. Lee and prepare for the Battle of Antietam.
Alexander Gardner Photograph, Library of Congress
Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee met on the main street of the little town. Before receiving word of Confederate success at Harpers Ferry, Lee had initiated plans to pull out of Maryland. A battle the day before at South Mountain, the northernmost remnant of the Blue Ridge Mountains, had been a costly failure for Lee’s invasion force. But Lee, buoyed by Jackson’s success, decided to make a stand at Sharpsburg. His South Mountain troops arrived first, and he was relieved to see Jackson show up a little later. If McClellan had attacked before Jackson’s arrival, the Army of Northern Virginia might have been doomed. Even so, the Confederates were outnumbered nearly three to one.
Lee and Jackson believed Sharpsburg to be acceptable if not ideal ground for a battle, protected by the Potomac River to the west and the steep-banked Antietam Creek to the east, with a ridge west of town allowing for effective placement of artillery. During the daytime hours of September 16 the united Confederate army set up for battle, knowing that McClellan and the Army of the Potomac were on their way.
Lee ordered Jackson to the left of a four-mile line that more or less paralleled the Hagerstown Pike, a north-south road that lay to the west of Antietam Creek. During the afternoon, Jackson deployed his troops, then he allowed himself and his men a little rest. They had had all been awake for the better part of two days and needed sleep desperately. Jackson had a headquarters tent erected behind his line but chose instead to sleep next to a tree, using its exposed roots as a pillow.
Little Sorrel most likely got a little sleep as well, almost certainly near the spot where Jackson slept. As much as the horse enjoyed stretching out on the ground whenever he was given the opportunity, he probably dozed standing up when surrounded by too much activity. He, like all horses, possessed an attribute called the “stay apparatus,” an arrangement of muscles, ligaments, and tendons that allows a horse to lock his front legs and hips so he can sleep upright. The mechanism can be disengaged instantly in the face of a threat, which is useful for a prey animal menaced by fast-moving predators, and equally useful for a horse about to be called to battle. Standing-up sleep isn’t as deep or restful as the lying down kind, but it’s a good second best for a horse who hadn’t had much rest for thirty-six hours or more.
Jackson soon resumed placing his regiments. He expected attack primarily from the north, but he had to be prepared for an advance from the east. By nightfall on September 16, he knew that Union troops were in place both north and east. Skirmishing and light artillery fire ensured that neither soldiers nor horses got much more sleep that night.
The always-aggressive Jackson preferred attacking at a moment of his choosing rather than waiting for the enemy to attack at an unknown time, but he was ready with a forceful response to any assault, whenever it came. The time came just before dawn, at five o’clock, on September 17. The attack came, as Lee and Jackson expected, on the Confederate left. Jackson and his men were already awake and ready to go.
A thunder of cannon fire broke the edgy silence as Union art
illery opened on Jackson’s line. The guns of General Joseph Hooker’s First Corps, along with long-range artillery from the east bank of Antietam Creek, struck first, but Jackson’s batteries answered quickly. Shortly thereafter, Hooker sent his three divisions, more than eight thousand men, marching toward Jackson’s line.
Four hours of desperate battle followed with charge and countercharge and devastating loss of life, human and equine, on both sides. Jackson and Little Sorrel spent the first part of the battle behind the lines, primarily on an elevation known as Hauser’s Ridge. They then became actively involved in the fighting. His first authorized biographer, his former chief of staff Robert Dabney, believed Jackson felt even more invulnerable than usual that day. “During this terrible conflict General Jackson exposed his life with his customary imperturbable bravery,” Dabney wrote, “riding among his batteries and directing their fire, and communicating his own indomitable spirit to his men.” He apparently also communicated his lack of fear to his horse, who was his usual composed self amid the most appalling loss of life of the war.
The outmanned Confederates were bolstered by the late arrival of Lafayette McLaws’s division from Harpers Ferry. McLaws was hurried north to reinforce Jackson’s beleaguered wing, meeting up with Jackson at Hauser’s Ridge three hours into the battle. The two generals sat on their horses within easy range of Union artillery, which hadn’t let up for more than a few minutes since the opening volley. As the two discussed deployment of McLaws’s division, a shell struck a nearby courier. Just seconds later another shell fell directly in front of the forelegs of their horses. The shell failed to explode, saving the two generals and their two horses from death.
Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel Page 15