Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

by S. C. Gwynne

  (34) Moss Neck Manor, one of Virginia’s great estates, on the grounds of which Jackson and his staff spent the winter of 1862–63. It was a time of religious revivals and snowball fights and band concerts and social visits and book reading and the sort of leisure soldiers rarely got. Here Jackson befriended a golden-haired five-year-old named Janie Corbin, who would die tragically of scarlet fever.

  (35) Union general John Pope: As Lincoln’s carefully chosen spearhead of the new campaign to toughen the war, Pope was full of bluster and big talk. But Jackson’s spectacular flank march and the Battle of Second Manassas drove Pope’s army back into Washington, DC.

  (36) The last photograph: Taken less than two weeks before his mortal wounding at Chancellorsville, it shows a man physically transformed from his years in Lexington. His wife thought he was “much more handsome.”

  (37) The house at Guiney’s Station where Stonewall Jackson died. He was taken here after being accidentally shot by his own men. Though his arm was amputated, he seemed to be recovering but contracted pneumonia and died a few days later. His last words were “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

  (38) Jackson’s death mask: It was made on May 11, 1863, after Jackson’s body had been taken by train to Richmond. His gaunt, emaciated face shows the effects of the pneumonia.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for the help given me on this manuscript by Peter Cozzens, John Hennessy, and Robert K. Krick. I admire them greatly as historians and writers and they have been more than generous in helping me avoid many of the pitfalls and traps that await novice Civil War historians. The book is much better for their help. I would also like to thank H. W. Brands for his advice on researching the Civil War era. It was invaluable and saved me much time. Drury Wellford, former photo archivist for the Museum of the Confederacy—and an old Time magazine colleague—brought wonderful expertise to the task of finding photographs and images for the book. Finally, I would like to thank battlefield scout Peter Maratta, who helped me understand the terrain and troop movements at the battles of First and Second Manassas and Antietam.

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  S. C. GWYNNE is the author of the New York Times bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor and with Texas Monthly as executive editor. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Katie, and daughter, Maisie.

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  Empire of the Summer Moon:

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  APPENDIX

  OTHER LIVES, OTHER DESTINIES

  Jackson touched many lives during the war, from his immediate family to his students at VMI, the residents of Lexington, and friends and colleagues in the army. Many of these people never lived to see the end of the war; some lived well into the twentieth century. Here is what became of them.

  FAMILY AND FRIENDS

  ANNA AND JULIA JACKSON

  Following her husband’s death Anna lived in Lincoln County, North Carolina, northwest of Charlotte, with her parents. She later moved to Charlotte and Baltimore, where her daughter, Julia, received formal schooling. Anna lived in Richmond and spent summers in Lexington (though not in the Washington Street house) and eventually settled in Charlotte, where she lived out her life as the Widow of the Confederacy, a highly visible and beloved figure in the South who attended many Confederate reunions and dedications of monuments, including several to her husband. She was awarded a pension by the North Carolina legislature in 1907, which she used to start a school for wayward boys. In response to a request from her daughter, Julia, she wrote a comprehensive biography of her husband (with help from friends), which stands today as one of the best sources on the subject. Anna died in Charlotte in 1915 at age eighty-three. Julia—who changed her middle name from “Laura” to “Thomas”—married William Christian in 1885 and had two children, a daughter and a son. She died tragically of typhoid fever at age twenty-six in 1889. Her daughter—Stonewall Jackson’s granddaughter—Julia Jackson Christian Preston, died in 1991 at age 104.

  LAURA JACKSON ARNOLD

  Laura remained a strong Unionist and kept her distance from the Jackson family for the rest of her life. She was one of two women awarded membership in a Union veterans association known as the Grand Army of the Republic. Anna wrote to her after her brother Thomas’s death, but we know nothing of any other contact. She divorced her Confederate-leaning husband in 1870. Because of poor health she spent nearly thirty years in a private sanatorium near Columbus, Ohio. She died at age eighty-five at the home of her daughter-in-law in Buckhannon, West Virginia, in 1911.

  MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON

  Maggie had a happy marriage to John T. L. Preston and went on to become one of the most prominent poets in the South, male or female. She maintained friendships and literary correspondence with Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Christina Rossetti, among others. She published prose and poetry mostly in magazines, including Harper’s and the Southern Literary Messenger. She wrote both prose and poetry about her beloved friend Thomas Jackson. She became blind in her old age and died in Baltimore in 1897 at seventy-six.

  GEORGE JUNKIN

  The father of Ellie and Maggie Junkin had been the first president of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and president of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, before assuming the post of president of Washington College in 1848. He left that job in May 1861 at age seventy-one amid controversy over his pro-Union and anti-secession views. He moved to Philadelphia and wrote several tracts attacking secession. He was heartbroken over the death of his former son-in-law Thomas, who was also his close friend. He died in Philadelphia in 1868.

  JIM LEWIS

  Devastated by Jackson’s death, Lewis went to work for Sandie Pendleton and served him until Pendleton’s death in 1864. He returned to his hometown of Lexington—where he was believed to have attended Jackson’s Sunday school—and died there.

  THE REVEREND DR. WILLIAM S. WHITE

  White continued as pastor of the Presbyterian church in Lexington until his retirement in 1866. Upon his death at seventy-three in 1873, Maggie Preston wrote a memorial poem for him.

  STAFF

  SANDIE PENDLETON AND KATE CORBIN

  After Jackson’s death, Pendleton served under Richard Ewell and eventually as chief of staff to Jubal Early. In December 1863 he married Kate Corbin at Moss Neck Manor. He was with Early when the latter was defeated by Union general Phil Sheridan at the Third Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1864, in the Shenandoah Valley. In a follow-up battle, Pendleton was fatally wounded in the abdomen. He died on September 23, 1864. A month later, Kate gave birth to a son, who died of diphtheria in 1865. Kate later remarried. Kate, Sandie, and their child are buried in the cemetery at Lexington near Jackson.

  HUNTER MCGUIRE

  McGuire rose to become the most prominent physician in Virginia, where he founded a number of hospitals, including what would become the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He was president of the American Medical Association. After the war he wrote articles and gave speeches abo
ut Jackson, for whom he was a staunch advocate. There is a statue of McGuire on the grounds of the Virginia state capitol. He died in 1900.

  ALEXANDER ROBINSON BOTELER

  Boteler returned to his farm near Shepherdstown, now West Virginia, and combined a life of farming with public service, which included appointments to the 1876 Centennial Commission, the Tariff Commission, and to a post as assistant attorney in the Justice Department. He was a beloved and colorful figure in his hometown. He died in 1892.

  HENRY KYD DOUGLAS

  Douglas later served as chief of staff and assistant adjutant general to Generals Edward Johnson, John B. Gordon, Jubal Early, J. H. Pegram, and John A. Walker. As a colonel with the 13th and 49th Virginia Regiments, he was wounded six times. After being severely wounded at Gettysburg, he was captured and imprisoned until March 18, 1864, when he was paroled. He was treasurer of a committee of the Stonewall Brigade that raised more than $6,000 to erect a monument to Stonewall Jackson. After the war he practiced law in Winchester, Virginia, and later in Hagerstown, Maryland. He died in 1903 at sixty-five years of age. Douglas noted in his memoir that Jackson “while living, never had a staff member killed or wounded until Chancellorsville, where he fell, and as he had never spared them or himself it was often remarked upon.” But when the “protection of his presence” was removed, all that changed. Douglas listed the following present or former staff subsequently killed or wounded: J. K. Boswell, Stapleton Crutchfield, E. F. Paxton, W. S. H. Baylor, Edward Willis, J. R. Jones, A. J. Jackson, Sandie Pendleton, Joseph G. Morrison, and Charles Marshall.

  JAMES POWER SMITH

  Jackson’s young aide returned to the Union Theological Seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He served as pastor at the Presbyterian church in Fredericksburg for twenty-three years. He later shared in the dedication of the large Jackson Monument in Richmond. He also dedicated a site on the Lacy farm near Chancellorsville, where the resourceful Tucker Lacy had buried Jackson’s arm after it was amputated. (The “grave” can be visited today.) Smith died in 1923 at eighty-six, the last surviving member of Jackson’s staff.

  ROBERT L. DABNEY

  Dabney’s first project after the war was a biography of Stonewall Jackson, which he published in 1865. Though he was deeply biased in favor of his beloved general, the book is full of useful material and is still in print today. After the war Dabney remained one of the most prominent intellectuals in Southern Presbyterianism. He taught at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and later at the University of Texas. He continued to hold pro-slavery opinions, and spoke widely on Jackson and the Confederacy. He died in 1898 at age seventy-seven.

  JOSEPH GRAHAM MORRISON

  Anna Jackson’s brother served in the 57th North Carolina Infantry and was promoted to captain. He was wounded and lost a foot after the Battle of Petersburg. He contracted tuberculosis and after the war spent four years recuperating in California. He returned to build a successful career as a planter in North Carolina, where he also ran the Mariposa Cotton Mills. He eventually reclaimed the family home where he and his sister Anna had grown up. He died in 1906 at age sixty-three.

  CONFEDERATE GENERALS

  ROBERT E. LEE

  Lee became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee) in Lexington in October 1865 and held that position until his death from pneumonia, following a stroke, in 1870, at age sixty-three. His famous name helped him raise funds and transform Washington into one of the South’s leading colleges. As president he lived in the same magnificent Greek Revival mansion where Jackson and his first wife, Ellie—the daughter of the college’s then president George Junkin—resided during their marriage. It is now known as the Lee-Jackson House. Lee, like Jackson, is buried in Lexington. Though he had applied for a pardon and restoration of his citizenship after the war, it was never granted to him. William Seward, who had no intention of approving Lee’s request, had given Lee’s application to a friend as a souvenir, and thus it disappeared for more than a hundred years. In 1970 Lee’s “Amnesty Oath” was discovered and in 1975 President Gerald Ford finally restored Lee’s full status as an American citizen.

  A. P. HILL

  Hill was promoted to lieutenant general after Jackson’s death and commanded the Army of Northern Virginia’s 3rd Corps in the Gettysburg campaign. He was killed during the Union offensive at the Third Battle of Petersburg in April 1865.

  D. H. HILL

  The prickly, hypercritical Hill was not given a corps command in the reorganization that followed Jackson’s death. In 1863 he played an important role in the Confederate triumph at Chickamauga, after which he was openly critical of General Braxton Bragg for failing to exploit the victory. His criticism landed him on the sidelines for the rest of the war. In postbellum years Jackson’s brother-in-law was quite successful. He edited the popular magazine The Land That We Love, and served as the first president of the University of Arkansas, from 1877 to 1884. He then became president of Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College (now called Georgia Military College), where he served for five years. He died in Charlotte in 1889 at age sixty-eight and was buried at Davidson College, where his father-in-law, Robert Hall Morrison—father of both Isabella Hill and Mary Anna Jackson—had been the institution’s first president.

  JEB STUART

  The magical early days of his dominance over the Union cavalry ended at the Battle of Brandy Station on June 9, 1863, when he was barely able to hold the field against the Union force under Alfred Pleasonton in what amounted to the largest mounted battle in American history. Less than a month later, Stuart fell out of touch with headquarters in the crucial days leading to the Battle of Gettysburg. He arrived late on that battle’s second day and was repulsed by Union cavalry on the third. He fought his final battle on May 11, 1864, successfully checking Union general Philip Sheridan’s advance toward the city of Richmond. Stuart was shot by a dismounted Michigan cavalryman with a pistol and died the day after the battle, May 12. He was thirty-one years old.

  RICHARD B. GARNETT

  Garnett served as a pallbearer in Jackson’s procession in Richmond. Two months later, he was killed commanding a brigade in George Pickett’s famous charge at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, at age forty-five.

  RICHARD S. EWELL

  Ewell did not fare nearly so well after he lost Jackson. In the wake of the latter’s death, he was promoted to lieutenant general in charge of most of Jackson’s old corps, making him the third-ranking officer in the army after Lee and Longstreet. Though Ewell performed well at the beginning of the Gettysburg campaign, winning the Second Battle of Winchester and capturing a garrison of four thousand men, he did poorly at Gettysburg. After a victory on the battle’s first day, he declined to press his advantage, which meant that the Union forces ended up holding the key high-ground positions south of town, which eventually included Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, and Big Round Top. Jackson, in a similar situation, likely would have taken that ground, which would have radically changed what happened on the battlefield the next day. Lee later said as much. Ewell led his corps in the Battle of the Wilderness and performed well, but lapsed again at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. Lee reassigned him to the garrison of Richmond. He surrendered that force a few days before Lee surrendered at Appomattox. After the war he turned to farming at his wife’s property near Spring Hill, Tennessee, and leased a successful cotton plantation in Mississippi. He was president of the board of trustees of the Columbia Female Academy. He doted on his grandchildren. He died of pneumonia at age fifty-four in 1872.

  JAMES LONGSTREET

  Though Longstreet strenuously objected to Lee’s tactics at Gettysburg, it was his men who mounted the unsuccessful attack on the Confederate left on day two (including Little Round Top) and his men who went forward in Pickett’s famous charge, the doomed offensive that resulted in a Confederate defeat. Longstreet later fought well in the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chickamauga, and was seriously wounded during
the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. After the war his criticism of Lee’s tactics and his support of the Republican Party—especially the 1868 presidential campaign of Ulysses S. Grant—led to attacks on his character in the South by such “Lost Cause” proponents as Jubal Early and W. N. Pendleton. Grant appointed him surveyor of customs for New Orleans. He wrote an eight-hundred-page memoir of the war, published in 1895. He later served as US ambassador to Turkey and railroad commissioner before his death in 1904. His second, much younger, wife, Helen, died in 1962.

  JUBAL EARLY

  Early fought at Gettysburg, the Shenandoah Valley, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Cold Harbor. He emerged as one of Lee’s better generals. When the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9, 1865, Early escaped to Texas, then proceeded to Mexico, Cuba, and eventually to Toronto, Canada, where he briefly settled and wrote a memoir of the war. Pardoned in 1868, he returned to Virginia to practice law and soon became the most vocal of the unreconstructed rebels. His writing helped launch the so-called Lost Cause movement, whose main tenets were that the North had beaten the South not by military skill but because it was able to field vastly more men and weaponry; that the war was about defending states’ rights against Northern aggression; that slavery was a benign institution; that Reconstruction was an attempt to destroy the Southern way of life; and that the leaders of the Confederate armies were principled, Christian men in contrast to Union leaders such as Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, who showed their low moral character in their brutally destructive marches through Georgia, South Carolina, and the Shenandoah Valley. The principal heroes of the Lost Cause were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; its principal villain was James Longstreet. Early died in 1894 at age seventy-seven after falling down a flight of stairs in Lynchburg, Virginia.