Rebel Yell
Page 73
30. Letter from Thomas B. Webber to his mother, June 15, 1861; also cited by Shelby Foote in The Civil War, p. 65, and by James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 311.
31. William Thomas Poague, Gunner with Stonewall, p. 4.
CHAPTER THREE: FATE INTERVENES
1. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, p. 105; for a good general description of the early recruits at Richmond, see also Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb, pp. 110–111.
2. Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 179.
3. Colonel William Couper, One Hundred Years at V.M.I., vol. 2, p. 101.
4. Ibid., p. 105.
5. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, p. 104.
6. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 183–184.
7. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, p. 218.
8. Couper, One Hundred Years at V.M.I., vol. 2, p. 101.
9. Charles W. Turner, A Reminiscence of John Newton Lyle of the Liberty Hall Volunteers, Roanoke, Virginia, Lithograph and Graphics, 1987 (in VMI archives).
10. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 21.
11. Letter to Mary Anna Jackson, April 25, 1861, in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 149.
12. Ibid., p. 150.
13. Ibid.
14. Mrs. Jackson’s comment was that he was upset “because he felt that he could not render as much service in it [the engineers] as by more active service in the field,” ibid.
15. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 784–785.
16. Jackson’s comment in a letter he wrote to Anna after reaching Harpers Ferry was: “I am very gratified with my command, and would rather have this post than any other in the state.” Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 151.
17. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 784–785.
CHAPTER FOUR: DISCIPLINE AND OTHER NOVEL IDEAS
1. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 6.
2. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 222. Robertson also cites Charles Grattan’s excellent account of the state of affairs at Harpers Ferry when Jackson arrived.
3. William C. Chase, Story of Stonewall Jackson, p. 222.
4. John D. Imboden, “Jackson at Harper’s Ferry in 1861,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders, vol. 1, pp. 111–125.
5. Ibid.
6. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, p. xxiii.
7. Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 189.
8. John G. Gittings, Personal Recollections of Stonewall Jackson, p. 22.
9. Robertson, p. 222, citing Charles Grattan’s account.
10. Imboden, “Jackson at Harper’s Ferry in 1861.”
11. Dennis Frye, “Stonewall Jackson at Harper’s Ferry.”
12. Ibid.
13. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, vol. 1, p. 122.
14. Reference to “elegant mansion” in letter to Anna dated May 8, 1861; Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 151.
15. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 822.
16. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 861, report of Inspector Lieutenant Colonel General George Deas, dated May 21, 1861, and May 23, 1861.
17. Kirby Smith Papers, University of North Carolina.
18. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 976–977.
19. Deas’s report dated May 21, 1861.
20. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 158.
21. Letter to Anna dated May 8, 1861; Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 152.
22. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 809.
23. Lee’s letter to Jackson dated May 9, 1861, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 822.
24. Frye, “Stonewall Jackson at Harper’s Ferry,” p. 3.
25. Letter to Lee dated May 7, 1861, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 814.
26. Ibid., p. 825.
27. The Daily South Carolinian, February 6, 1864. Letcher remembered that Jackson “had urged on him the policy of flying the black flag, proposing to set the example himself.”
28. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 192.
29. For an excellent, book-length treatment of these ideas, see Charles Royster’s The Destructive War.
CHAPTER FIVE: A BRILLIANT RETREAT
1. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 907.
2. Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, p. 41.
3. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 185.
4. Ibid., p. 186.
5. Ibid.
6. Byron Farwell, Stonewall: A Biography of Thomas J. Jackson, p. 169.
7. Letter to Anna dated July 4, 1861; Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 166.
8. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 186.
9. Ibid.
10. Letter to Anna; Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 167.
11. William C. Oates, War Between the Union and the Confederacy, pp. 186–187.
CHAPTER SIX: MANEUVERS, LARGE AND SMALL
1. William W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, p. 15.
2. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, p. 122.
3. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, p. 130.
4. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, p. 4.
5. The 10 percent number comes from Chimborazo Hospital, the largest in the city.
6. Cited in James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 247. The soldier is Captain James J. White.
7. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 170.
8. Ibid., p. 168.
9. Alfred Roman, The Military Operations of General Beauregard, vol. 1, pp. 52ff.
10. John Esten Cooke, The Wearing of the Gray, pp. 83ff.
11. James Barnet Fry, McDowell and Tyler in the Campaign of Bull Run, 1861, p. 62.
12. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, vol. 1, p. 66.
13. Jackson, who knew Scott in Mexico, found that he was engaging when it came to talking strictly military affairs, but that in casual conversation he was vain and conceited.
14. Edward Porter Alexander, July 5, 1861, letter to his wife, Bessie, E. P. Alexander Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
15. William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run, p. 41.
16. Commissioner of Public Buildings in Interior Department Report, November 30, 1861.
17. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, p. 81.
18. Ibid., p. 82.
19. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, pp. 168–169.
20. Ibid., p. 172.
21. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 254.
22. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 2, p. 172.
23. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 175.
24. John Overton Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 22.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ALL GREEN ALIKE
1. Daniel Burr Conrad, History of the First Fight and Organization of the Stonewall Brigade, p. 471.
2. When Union brigadier general Samuel Heintzelman first saw the 33rd Virginia, on Jackson’s left on the top of Henry Hill during the battle of First Manassas, he described them as dressed entirely in civilian clothes. That was his impression, which suggests at least a large component of civilian dress in that regiment.
3. John Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence, p. 3.
4. Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, p. 38.
5. Jubal Anderson Early, War Memoirs: Autobiographical Sketches and Narrative of the War Between the States,
pp. 10–11.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 11.
8. The plan is nicely summarized in a letter from Beauregard’s aide-de-camp James Chestnut to Beauregard, dated July 16, 1861, and reprinted in Alfred Roman, The Military Operations of General Beauregard, pp. 85–87.
9. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, McDowell’s testimony, p. 38.
10. Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas, p. 7.
11. McDowell gives an interesting account of these problems in testimony before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, p. 39.
12. Martin D. Hayes, History of the Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion, p. 21; cited in Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas, p. 8.
13. William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run, pp. 157–158.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BULLET’S SONG
1. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, p. 124.
2. Alfred Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, p. 98. Beauregard had based this partly on Union troop movements, partly on the Blackburn’s Ford fight. Roman wrote, “As General Beauregard believed that the repulse of the 18th would deter the Federal general from another attack on the centre, these facts, in his opinion, pointed to a movement against the left flank.”
3. Ibid. Though the words are technically Roman’s, the book amounts to a personal memoir by Beauregard himself. It was closely edited and supervised by the Creole, who approved every word written.
4. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, p. 50. Freeman’s account of Beauregard’s problematic orders is the best I have read.
5. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, vol. 1, appendix, pp. 447–448.
6. Jackson letter to Colonel J. M. Bennett, July 28, 1861, in John Esten Cook, Stonewall Jackson: A Military Biography, p. 30; in it, he summarized the confusing orders. See also Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 260.
7. Through most of the war, the wigwag system used a binary code, forming letters by using combinations of the numerals 1 and 2 (2122 might be “B,” 2211 “D,” and so on). The number 1 was made by moving the flag from the vertical to the sender’s left, for example.
8. John Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas, p. 40.
9. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 50.
10. Ibid. Alexander’s comment was: “I had heard stories about reconnoitering officers seeing a little & reporting a great deal so I determined to be very exact in my reports.”
11. Edward Porter Alexander, “The Battle of Bull Run,” Scribner’s Magazine 41 (1907), pp. 87–88.
12. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 166–167.
13. This idea of a struggle within Jackson was first articulated by his brother-in-law D. H. Hill, whose analysis of Jackson was always perceptive. Jackson was a profoundly ambitious man, and it collided with his ideas of humility.
14. To those readers for whom the notion that “God is on our side” has a hollow or self-serving ring, I would point out how common this belief has been in American history. It is fair to say that in World War II, to take one recent example, most Americans believed that God was on their side against the Germans, Italians, and Japanese and therefore that He looked favorably on the killing or wounding of millions of American enemies. Many Christian sermons and prayers petitioned God for help in gaining victory. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the country, routinely invoked God in his public speeches on the war. In a lengthy prayer written by Roosevelt and read to the nation on radio on the evening of D-Day, June 6, 1944, he affirmed his belief that God favored the American side: “We know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.” Leaders on both sides of the American Civil War, including, most famously, Lincoln, firmly believed that God was on their side. This may seem obvious enough, but much has been made of Jackson’s belief that God was on the side of the Confederacy, and it has been suggested that this was part of his religious “fanaticism.” There is nothing necessarily fanatical about such a belief.
15. The Bible, English Standard Version, Psalm 118, verses 6 and 7.
16. Charles W. Squires, The Last of Lee’s Battle Line: The Autobiography of Charles W. Squires of the Confederate States Army and of the National Guard of Missouri, Manuscript in Library of Congress.
17. C. A. Fonderden, A Brief History of the Military Career of Carpenter’s Battery, p. 7.
18. John Lyle, Sketches Found in a Confederate’s Desk, p. 202.
19. DeWitt Boyd Stone, Wandering to Glory, p. 6.
20. Letter from an unknown member of the 4th Alabama to his brother, dated July 23; source: “Bullrunnings” website.
21. William C. Davis, Battle at Bull Run, p. 194. Davis has unusually good coverage of the actions of Hampton’s Legion.
CHAPTER NINE: SCREAM OF THE FURIES
1. John Lyle, Sketches from a Confederate’s Desk, p. 202.
2. Charles Copland Wight, The Recollections of Charles Copland White, 1841–1897, manuscript at the Virginia Historical Society, Wight Papers.
3. One of Wade Hampton’s men, arriving at the field near noon, said of the Federals on Matthews Hill, “Their bayonets flashed like silver in the bright sunshine.” John Coxe, “The Battle of First Manassas,” Confederate Veteran, cited in John Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas, p. 65.
4. John D. Imboden, “Incidents of the First Bull Run,” in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders, vol. 1, pp. 229–239. Imboden spoke of Union infantry “massing” near the Stone House.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Both Johnston and Beauregard would praise Jackson’s choice of terrain in their battle reports.
9. Lyle, Sketches from a Confederate’s Desk.
10. Wight, The Recollections of Charles Copland Wight.
11. Pierre Beauregard, “The First Battle of Bull Run,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, vol. 1, p. 210.
12. Tedford Barclay, letter to his mother dated July 27, 1861, Barclay papers, Library of Virginia.
13. Captain Randolph C. Barton, “Stonewall Jackson,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 38, p. 280.
14. Imboden, “Incidents of the First Bull Run,” p. 236.
15. William W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, p. 30.
16. There are four and only four eyewitness accounts to Bee’s use of the term “stone wall” to describe Jackson, and they all corroborate the fact that it happened later in the afternoon and not, as most historical accounts have it, around the time of Bee’s retreat in the late morning. The usual description situates Bee’s “They are driving us” comment close to his “stone wall” comment and thus close to his own death. Based on the course of the battle, such a sequence makes no sense at all. His first comment came just as the two-hour “lull” went into effect. The correct sequence of events disproves once and for all the theory that Bee had used the term “stone wall” to criticize Jackson for not coming to his aid on Matthews Hill. That could not possibly have happened. At the time Bee said it, Jackson was wounded and at the very center of the white-hot fight on Henry Hill. For by far the best analysis of what happened and the sequence of events, see John Hennessy’s excellent and definitive “Stonewall Jackson’s Nickname” in The Civil War: Magazine of the Civil War Society 7, no. 2 (April 1990). As Hennessy points out, all four eyewitnesses place the movement forward of Bee with his one hundred men at the same moment that Jackson is moving his artillery back, an event that happened quite late in the battle.
17. Jack Coggins, Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, p. 62.
18. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 345.
19. For many decades, historians considered that the rebel yell, one of the most important sounds of the war, was lost forever. R
eenactors and other enthusiasts invariably tried it, but the sound they produced never equaled the blood-curdling qualities that Union soldiers ascribed to it. But recent research by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond has led to the rediscovery of the sound itself. Starting with the recording of a single member of the 37th North Carolina Infantry giving the yell, the museum then used a modern sound studio to replicate and layer the sound to create the effect of large numbers of men doing it simultaneously. The yell consists of a three-part cadence: a short, high-pitched yelp that sounds something like the bark of a fox; a short, lower-pitched yelp; and then a long, high-pitched yelp. The product of the sound-studio work is astounding. The noise produced is indeed feral, nightmarish, unearthly—everything the Yankee soldiers said it was. The museum confirmed its discovery by finding another recording of a single Confederate soldier from another state, recorded at a different time, giving a nearly identical yell. In 2009 a group of four hundred reenactors, trained to do the three-part yell, themselves reproduced a sound that was nearly identical to the studio version. This material is available from the Museum of the Confederacy on a CD entitled “The Rebel Yell Lives.”
20. William Thomas Poague, Gunner with Stonewall, p. 11.
21. John Overton Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 29.
22. Beauregard, “The First Battle of Bull Run,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, vol. 1, p. 212.
23. The observation is from Roman, but it comports with other accounts of the breadth of the Federal battle line. Alfred Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, p. 108.
24. Irvin McDowell, official report on the Battle of Bull Run, August 4, 1861.
25. Congressman Albert Riddle, quoted in Samuel S. Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation 1855–1885, p. 158.
26. Hunter McGuire,, “Address to the Robert E. Lee Camp Veterans,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 25, June 23, 1897.
CHAPTER TEN: GLORY AND DARKNESS
1. Both citations from Allan Nevins, War for the Union: 1861–1862, pp. 221–222.