The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  18. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 682.

  19. Ibid., p. 683.

  20. Casier, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 145.

  21. Robert E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, 19 February 1873, in Jubal A. Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted—An Eyewitness Describes How He Was Wounded,” SHSP 6 (1878), p. 266.

  22. I.C. Haas, “Stonewall Jackson’s Death,” SHSP 32 (1904), pp. 94–95; Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 115.

  23. The scene-setting is from Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 685–86.

  24. The account of Jackson’s wounding and what immediately transpired is largely from Wilbourn, who was at his side. It is in Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” pp. 266–69, p. 271. Other sources are cited as they are used.

  25. Hunter McGuire describes Jackson’s wounds in some detail in “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” SHSP 14 (1886), p. 157. This article, originally published in the Richmond Medical Journal in May 1866, has been reprinted many times and in many other places under the title, “Account of the Wounding and Death of Stonewall Jackson.” When citing it in this story and the next, I will use SHSP, perhaps the most readily accessible of the reprinted versions.

  26. Joseph Graham Morrison, “Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville,” Confederate Veteran 13 (May 1905), pp. 230–31.

  27. Although this mystery rider was never seen again, he has caused great controversy ever since. Joseph W. Revere, a Union officer, claimed it was he. Revere’s story is fantastic. He wrote that he met Jackson on a Mississippi River boat trip in 1852 and that after consulting the stars, something nobody had ever known him to do, Jackson predicted that in the first days of May 1863 his life would be in mortal danger. The stars, presumably, had not lied. They had also put Revere in the thicket at the very moment Jackson fell, to witness the culmination of this startling prediction. After the war Jubal Early went to great pains to prove that the entire astrological story was claptrap. He produced letters from those who should know, that Jackson had not been anywhere near the Mississippi River in 1852. Early also refuted the whole idea that the mystery rider could have been Revere. For Revere’s account see his book, Keel and Saddle: A Retrospect of Forty Years of Military and Naval Service (Boston; J. R. Osgood, 1872), pp. 254–57; pp. 275–78. For Early’s refutation see “Stonewall Jackson—The Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” pp. 261–82.

  28. The Hill-Jackson-Lee correspondence is in O.R., ser. 1, vol. 19, pt. 2, pp. 729–33. Hill’s letter to Stuart is in William W. Hassler, “A. P. Hill Rings Down the Curtain on Act III, Scene 3, at Antietam,” Virginia Country 10 (Summer 1987), p. 99.

  29. Leigh, “The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 232. For the series of events that follows, to the moment Dr. McGuire finds Jackson at the Chancellor house, I have drawn primarily from the first-person accounts of the four staff officers attending him: Leigh’s letter to his wife and the SHSP version cited above, pp. 232–34; Wilbourn to Early, in “Stonewall Jackson—The Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” pp. 269–73; Smith, “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle,” pp. 209–13; and Morrison, “Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville,” pp. 229–32. All bits of dialogue will be specifically attributed, and the use of any other sources than these four will be appropriately cited.

  30. Taylor, “Stonewall Jackson’s Death,” p. 493.

  31. Leigh to his wife, 12 May 1863, Hotchkiss Papers.

  32. Wilbourn to Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” p. 269.

  33. Morrison, “Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville,” p. 230; Wilbourn to Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” p. 270.

  34. Smith, “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle,” pp. 209–10.

  35. Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 116.

  36. Wilbourn to Early, “Stonewall Jackson—The Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted, p. 270.

  37. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 219, p. 223, pp. 225–26.

  38. Taylor, “Stonewall Jackson’s Death,” p. 493.

  39. Leigh to his wife, 12 May 1863, Hotchkiss Papers.

  40. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 689–90.

  41. Wilbourn to Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” p. 270.

  42. The Pender incident is an amalgam from Smith, “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle,” p. 212; and McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 155.

  43. Smith, “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle,” p. 212; Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 691; McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 155. The details and timing of many of the events of that night differ from account to account. It often becomes a matter of reconciling them or picking the most logical sequence.

  44. Leigh, “The Wounding of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 234.

  45. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, pp. 223–24.

  Death of the Enthusiastic Fanatic

  1. Hunter McGuire, “General Thomas J. Jackson,” SHSP 19 (1891), p. 301.

  2. Wilbourn to Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” pp. 272–73.

  3. McGuire’s initial measures to treat Jackson’s wounds, the trip to the field infirmary, and the amputation of his arm are from McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 155–57; with complementing material from Leigh to his wife, 12 May 1863, Hotchkiss Papers; and Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 695.

  4. For a profile of Crutchfield see Charles D. Walker, Memorial, Virginia Military Institute: Biographical Sketches of the Graduates and Eleves of the Virginia Military Institute Who Fell during the War Between the States (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1875), pp. 143–59.

  5. Morrison, “Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville,” p. 232.

  6. McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 157–58.

  7. Wilbourn’s account of his interview with Lee is in Early, “Stonewall Jackson—the Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted,” p. 273. Also see Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 701–2.

  8. Hill to his parents, 23 October 1847, Hill Family Papers.

  9. Jackson’s theological musings to Lacy are from Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 707–8.

  10. The events of Jackson’s post-operational Sunday are from McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 158–59; and Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 708–10. The text of Lee’s message is in Dabney, p. 702.

  11. The description of the trip and the conversation to this point are from McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 159–60.

  12. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 713.

  13. The description of the Chandlers, the frame house, and Jackson’s arrival at Guiney’s Station owes much to Ralph Happel’s excellent pamphlet, Jackson: Let Us Cross Over the River … (Richmond: Eastern National Park and Monument, in cooperation with Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park Association, 1971), pp. 33–37. For added first-hand detail see “ ‘Stonewall’ Jackson: Reminiscences of the Great Confederate Soldier as Related by Mrs. Lucy Chandler Pendleton to Edward T. Stuart at the Jackson Shrine at Guiney Station, Virginia, ‘Memorial Day’ May 30, 1930,” typescript copy, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

  14. McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 160. McGuire appeared to have his days confused. He placed the trip to Guiney’s Station on Tuesday and the sequence of events in the graph cited above on Wednesday. They occurred on Monday and Tuesday respectively.

  15. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 716.

  16. Happel, Jackson, pp. 39–40; McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 160.

  17. McGu
ire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 160–61; Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 716.

  18. Morrison, “Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville,” p. 232.

  19. Anna’s thoughts and her experiences getting to Jackson’s bedside are from Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 447–52. The background on Paxton is from the preface and introduction to Elisha Franklin Paxton, The Civil War Letters of General Frank “Bull” Paxton, CSA, a Lieutenant of Lee & Jackson, ed. John Gallatin Paxton (Hillsboro, TX: Hill Junior College Press, 1978), pp. vi-viii.

  20. Thursday afternoon, Friday, and Saturday in the sickroom are re-created from McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 161; Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 717–22; and Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 452–53. For the text of the psalm Anna sang, see Happel, Jackson, p. 42.

  21. In the account that follows of Jackson’s last day on earth, I have mainly used Anna Jackson’s Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 453–59. But there is considerable mortar added from McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” pp. 161–63; and Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 722–25. Anna and McGuire were present in the room, and Dabney was presumably well-informed. All of them differ in detail. Where something is added from elsewhere, it is specifically cited.

  22. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 227.

  23. Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 118.

  24. Happel, Jackson, p. 44.

  25. Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 118.

  26. Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, p. 91.

  27. Sallie A. Putnam, Richmond during the War: Four years of Personal Observation (New York: G. W. Carleton, 1867), p. 218.

  28. Putnam, Richmond during the War, p. 219.

  29. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 228.

  30. O. R., ser. 1, vol. 25, pt. 2, p. 793.

  31. Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, pp. 445–46.

  32. McDonald, A Diary with Reminiscences of the War, pp. 161–63.

  33. Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 153.

  34. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 220.

  35. Ibid., p. 228.

  36. Ibid., p. 229.

  37. The account of the arrival of Jackson’s body in Richmond draws from the Richmond Daily Sentinel, 12 May 1863; Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 729; Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 459; Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 446; and Bean, Stonewalls Man: Sandie Pendleton, pp. 120–21.

  38. Bean, Stonewalls Man: Sandie Pendleton, pp. 119–20; Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 447; Varina H. Davis, Jefferson Davis, Ex-President of the Confederate States of America: A Memoir by His Wife, 2 vols. (New York: Belford Company, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 382–83.

  39. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 38.

  40. Hamlin, “Old Bald Head,” p. 135. Hamlin, The Making of a Soldier, p. 108.

  41. Putnam, Richmond during the War, p. 223; Richmond Daily Sentinel, 13 May 1863; Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 447.

  42. Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 447; Marietta Minnigerode Andrews, Scraps of Paper (New York: E. P. Dutton., 1929), p. 109.

  43. Richmond Daily Sentinel, 13 May 1863; Putnam, In Richmond during the Confederacy, p. 223; Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, p. 207; Thomas Cooper DeLeon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals: An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death (Mobile, AL: Gossip Printing Company, 1890), pp. 251–52.

  44. From an article by Bowering in the Baltimore Sun, resurrected by Bean in Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 122.

  45. Description from the Richmond Daily Sentinel, 13 May 1863; Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 730; Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 448; and Chesnut, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, p. 498.

  46. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, pp. 730–31.

  47. Putnam, Richmond during the War, p. 224.

  48. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, p. 731; “Stonewall Jackson’s Body Passes through Charlottesville,” The Magazine of Albemarle County History 22 (1963–1964), p. 22; Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 124.

  49. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 217.

  50. John S. Wise, The End of an Era (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), p. 270; Wise, “Stonewall Jackson as I knew Him,” p. 145; Cooke, Stonewall Jackson, p. 449.

  51. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 463–64.

  52. Preston, “Personal Reminiscences of Stonewall Jackson,” p. 932.

  53. Casier, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 161.

  54. Cooke, Stonewall Jackson and the Old Stonewall Brigade, p. 3.

  55. Gardner, “Memoirs,” pp. 8–9.

  56. Morrison, “Getting through West Point,” p. 316.

  The Dandy at the Foot of the Class

  1. B. L. Farinholt, “Battle of Gettysburg—Johnson’s Island,” Confederate Veteran 5 (September 1897), p. 468.

  2. James Longstreet, “Lee in Pennsylvania,” in The Annals of the War Written by Leading Participants North and South, p. 429.

  3. Walter Harrison, Pickett’s Men: A Fragment of War History (1870; reprint, Gaithersburg, MD: Butternut Press, 1984), pp. 91–93.

  4. James Longstreet; “Lee’s Right Wing at Gettysburg,” in Battles and Leaders, vol. 3, p. 343; Longstreet, “Lee in Pennsylvania,” p. 430.

  5. Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer, p. 54.

  6. Longstreet, “Lee’s Right Wing at Gettysburg,” p. 343; Edward Porter Alexander, “The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg,” Battles and Leaders, vol. 3, p. 363.

  7. A Soldier of the Civil War, by a member of the Virginia Historical Society (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Company, 1900), p. 33.

  8. Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer, p. 54.

  9. Francis W. Dawson, Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861–1865, ed. Bell Irvin Wiley (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), p. 91.

  10. Arthur James Lyon Freemantle, Three Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863 (1864; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 247.

  11. Sorrel, Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer, pp. 155–56.

  12. Wise, The End of an Era, p. 69, p. 338. Also see Jesse Bowman Young, The Battle of Gettysburg: A Comprehensive Narrative (1913; reprint, Dayton: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1976), p. 315.

  13. Quoted in Foote, The Civil War, vol. 3, p. 9.

  14. LaSalle Corbell Pickett, Pickett and His Men (Atlanta: Foote & Davis Company, 1899), pp. 97–98; LaSalle Corbell Pickett, ed., The Heart of a Soldier as Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett, C. S. A. (New York: Seth Moyle, 1913), pp. 4–5. It is not considered safe to believe Pickett’s wife, who wrote or edited the two works here cited. After Pickett’s death in 1875, LaSalle wrote extensively about her husband, his career, and their love. She wrote eloquently, and apparently with great poetic license. Her collection of lyric letters from her soldier is particularly suspect. Did Pickett write the letters, or did she? Most Civil War scholars believe she did, and are therefore loath to use them, as wonderful as they are. And so am I. It is a pity, for few letters from the Civil War are more quotable. If he didn’t write such eloquent letters, he should have. See Gary W. Gallagher, “A Widow and Her Soldier: LaSalle Corbell Pickett as Author of the George E. Pickett Letters,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 94 (July 1986), pp. 329–44.

  15. Pickett, Pickett and His Men, p. 126, p. 128.

  16. Levin Christopher Gayle, Diary, typescript portion, Gettysburg National Park Library. Also see Charles T. Loehr, War History of the Old First Virginia Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia (Richmond: Wm. Ellis Jones, 1884), p. 35. For an account of the division’s diluted strength and activity around Chambersburg see Harrison, Pickett’s Men, pp. 78–79; pp. 86–87.

  17. Gayle, Diary, typescript portion.


  18. Randolph A. Shotwell, “Virginia and North Carolina in the Battle of Gettysburg,” Our Living and Dead 4 (March 1876), p. 87.

  19. Harrison, Pickett’s Men, pp. 87–88.

  20. Shotwell, “Virginia and North Carolina in the Battle of Gettysburg,” p. 87; David E. Johnston, The Story of a Confederate Boy in the Civil War (Portland, OR: Glass & Prudhomme Company, 1914), p. 198.

  21. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 244.

  22. Shotwell, “Virginia and North Carolina in the Battle of Gettysburg,” p. 87.

  23. Sketch on Dearing in the John W. Daniel Papers, University of Virginia Library, copy in the Gettysburg National Park Library. Also see O.R., ser. 1, vol. 27, pt. 2, p. 388.

  24. S. A. Ashe, The Charge at Gettysburg, North Carolina Booklet, vol. 1, no. 11 (Raleigh, NC: Capital Printing Company, 1902), p. 5; Henry J. Hunt, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” Battles and Leaders, vol. 3, p. 372.

  25. Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, p. 390.

  26. Joseph Mayo, Jr., “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” SHSP 34 (1906), p. 328.

  27. John Dooley, John Dooley, Confederate Soldier: His War Journal, ed. Joseph T. Durkin (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), p. 102.

  28. Account by Erasmus Williams, Daniel Papers.

  29. Longstreet describes his preferred strategy in “Lee in Pennsylvania,” p. 414, p. 429.

  30. Longstreet, “Lee’s Right Wing at Gettysburg,” p. 343.

  31. Alexander, “The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg,” p. 362.

  32. The descriptions of the silence and its affect are from H. T. Owen, in Jacob Hoke, The Great Invasion of 1863; or General Lee in Pennsylvania (Dayton: W. J. Shuey, 1887), p. 367; M. Jacobs, Notes on the Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania and the Battle of Gettysburg.… (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1863), pp. 40–41; Richard S. Thompson, “A Scrap of Gettysburg,” in Military Essays and Recollections: Papers Read before the Commandery of the State of Illinois, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, vol. 3 (Chicago: Dial Press, 1899), p. 101; William Witherspoon, in As They Saw Forrest: Some Recollections and Comments of Contemporaries, ed. Robert Selph Henry (1956; reprint, Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1987), p. 115; and Harrison, Pickett’s Men, pp. 94–95.