Rebel Yell

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Rebel Yell Page 79

by S. C. Gwynne


  12. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 554.

  13. Richard Wheeler, ed., Lee’s Terrible Swift Sword: From Antietam to Chancellorsville, pp. 54–55.

  14. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, p. 118.

  15. Keith S. Bohannon, “Confederate Logistical Problems,” in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Antietam Campaign, p. 102.

  16. Ibid., p. 103.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Gary W. Gallagher, Antietam: Essays on the 1862 Maryland Campaign, p. 10.

  19. Ibid., p. 11.

  20. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 605 (footnote).

  21. Cited in Jack Coggins, Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, p. 10.

  22. John Worsham, One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry, p. 82.

  23. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 2, p. 154.

  24. William A. Blair, “Maryland Our Maryland: Or How Lincoln and His Army Helped to Define the Confederacy,” essay in Gallagher, The Antietam Campaign, pp. 74–75.

  25. James Longstreet, “The Invasion of Maryland,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, vol. 2, p. 606.

  26. John Gibbon, Recollections of the Civil War, p. 73.

  27. Jeffry D. Wert, Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J. E. B. Stuart, pp. 146–148.

  28. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 606.

  29. D. H. Hill, “The Battle of South Mountain,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, vol. 2, p. 560.

  30. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 19, pt. 2, pp. 289 and 294–295.

  31. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 609.

  32. Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 144.

  33. Walker, “Jackson’s Capture of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 611.

  34. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, p. 951.

  35. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 606.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 166.

  38. Von Borcke, Memoirs of the Confederate War, p. 221.

  39. Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 2, p. 200.

  40. William W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, p. 144.

  41. Ibid., p. 145.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: THE BLOOD-WASHED GROUND

  1. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 146.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Stephen T. Whitman, Antietam 1862, p. 101.

  5. Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 173.

  6. Richard Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution, p. 226.

  7. William Thomas Poague, Gunner with Stonewall, p. 44.

  8. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, pp. 146–147. Douglas’s comment was that on several occasions “Hill had exhibited a provoking want of promptness in spite of orders and it became necessary for the General to teach him one lesson at least.”

  9. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 167.

  10. Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam, p. 225.

  11. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 141.

  12. This involved knocking the powder cartridge off against the hub of a wheel, and placing that cylinder in the barrel after the charged one. The effect was like discharging both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun. John Gibbon, Recollections of the Civil War, p. 83.

  13. Ibid., p. 81.

  14. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 200.

  15. Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam, p. 266. Here I have followed Richard Slotkin’s excellent analysis of this phenomenon, which was not limited to the Battle of Antietam.

  16. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 202.

  17. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, p. 218.

  18. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 213; Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam, p. 277; movement of Stuart’s artillery from Jackson’s official report of the battle.

  19. Early was his other reserve, but was occupied in the early morning in support of Stuart’s artillery on Nicodemus Hill; Jackson later moved him into the West Woods.

  20. This offers a classic example of the value of “interior lines.” Sedgwick’s division had to take “the long way around” from its position behind Antietam Creek. Lee’s troops could move in straight lines, over shorter distances.

  21. In his 2002 book Disaster in the West Woods, Marion Armstrong argues that Sumner’s decision to march for the Confederate flank was supported by his own reconnaissance, and not necessarily the foolish decision it is often portrayed to be. He thought he knew where Jackson’s men were; he did not. His choice of marching order is less defensible, as was his decision to have a single untested regiment protect his left.

  22. Francis Winthrop Palfrey, The Antietam and Fredericksburg, p. 83.

  23. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 224.

  24. Gibbon, Recollections of the Civil War, p. 88.

  25. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, pp. 230, 248–249.

  26. Jackson’s official report of the battles of Harpers Ferry and Antietam.

  27. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 616.

  28. Ibid., p. 614.

  29. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, p. 202; Freeman’s assessment of Jackson’s performance was “shrewd, vigorous and free of mistakes,” p. 240.

  30. “Jackson and Ewell: The Latter’s Opinion of His Chief—Interview with Col. Benjamin Ewell,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 20, p. 30.

  31. Hunter McGuire to Jedediah Hotchkiss, March 30, 1896; cited in Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 617.

  32. George F. Noyes, Bivouac and the Battlefield, p. 196.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 326.

  35. Slotkin, The Long Road to Antietam, p. 310.

  36. Ibid., pp. 319–320.

  37. Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, p. 221.

  38. Sears, Landscape Turned Red, p. 292.

  39. James I. Robertson Jr., Stonewall Jackson, pp. 290–291.

  40. Ibid., p. 155.

  41. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 179.

  42. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, pp. 32, 65.

  43. McClellan to his wife, September 20, 1862; Stephen W. Sears, The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, p. 473.

  44. Report of Lieutenant General Jackson of operations September 5–27, 1862, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 9, p. 580.

  45. James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, pp. 136–137.

  46. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The President’s Proclamation,” Atlantic, November 1862.

  47. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 24, pt. 3, p. 157.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: STONEWALL JACKSON’S WAY

  1. Lenoir Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 2, p. 314; in camp, Jackson was generally in the habit of “receiving, each morning, for reports and plans, his quartermaster, commissary, ordnance, and medical officers.”

  2. Colonel Garnet Wolseley, “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, January 1863.

  3. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, p. 338.

  4. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 633.

  5. Wolseley, “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters.”

  6. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 358.

  7. Ibid., p. 411.

  8. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, p. 311. Chambers states that the only other known illness during the war was an ear problem of some sort in December 1862 after the battle at Fredericksburg; he mentions his eyes once and his ears once in letters to Anna but these did not seem to be significant problems and in any case nothing like what he experienced before the war.

  9. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 628, citing David Ballenger letter, October 24, 1862.

  10. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, pp. 197–198.

  11. Ibid.
/>   12. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 349.

  13. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 629.

  14. Ibid., p. 635.

  15. Susan Leigh Blackford and Charles Minor Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, pp. 130–131.

  16. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 196.

  17. Heros Von Borcke, Memoirs of the Confederate War, vol. 1, pp. 295–296; G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, vol. 2, pp. 282–283.

  18. Von Borcke, Memoirs of the Confederate War, vol. 1, pp. 295–296; Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 630, citing September 30, 1862, Jackson letter to Stuart, J. E. B. Stuart Papers, Huntington; Jeffry Wert, Cavalryman of the Lost Cause, p. 165.

  19. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 186.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 19, pt. 1, Report of Major General Henry W. Halleck of operations September 3–October 24, 1862.

  22. Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, p. 500.

  23. John Hay and John G. Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, vol. 7, p. 363.

  24. Sears, The Civil War Papers, pp. 481, 514, 515.

  25. Ibid., p. 521, McClellan to Mary B. Burnside, November 8, 1862.

  26. George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, p. 90.

  27. Letter from Sandie Pendleton to “Mary,” November 9, 1862; Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

  28. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 352.

  29. Wolseley, “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters.”

  30. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 360–361.

  31. Ibid., p. 361.

  32. Ibid., pp. 361–362.

  33. Ibid., p. 377.

  34. Blackford and Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, p. 146.

  35. Alan T. Nolan, “Confederate Leadership,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock, pp. 37–38.

  36. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, 162.

  37. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 170.

  38. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, p. 164.

  39. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 171.

  40. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 205.

  41. Von Borcke, Memoirs of the Confederate War, vol. 2, p. 213.

  42. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, vol. 2, p. 313.

  43. Jackson made it clear in his battle report that the gap, a small piece of his two-mile front that he likely was not aware of, was Hill’s responsibility. Jackson refers to “the interval which he [Hill] had left between Archer and Lane.” Nolan, “Confederate Leadership,” p. 40.

  44. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, p. 206.

  45. Ibid., p. 253.

  46. Eric J. Wittenberg, David J. Petruzzi, and Michael F. Nugent, One Continuous Fight.

  47. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 185.

  48. Nolan, “Confederate Leadership,” p. 42.

  49. William Marvel, “The Making of a Myth,” essay in Gallagher, The Fredericksburg Campaign, p. 23.

  50. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, p. 324.

  51. Ibid., p. 387.

  52. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 158.

  53. Alexander Robinson Boteler, “At Fredericksburg With Stonewall,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, August 6, 1881.

  54. There are several different accounts of this nighttime visit to Gregg, including two versions by McGuire himself. Boteler also has an account from his perspective, as a guest in Jackson’s tent that night. Boteler, “At Fredericksburg With Stonewall”; for a listing of the other accounts, see Robertson’s note 148 on p. 906 of Stonewall Jackson.

  55. Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 24.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: WINTER OF DREAMS

  1. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, pp. 23ff.

  2. Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 36.

  3. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 638.

  4. Ibid., p. 617.

  5. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 188.

  6. Robert K. Krick, “Janie Corbin, Stonewall Jackson, and the Famous Gold Braid,” privately published booklet, 2007.

  7. Lenoir Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, p. 334.

  8. James Power Smith, “Stonewall Jackson in Winter Quarters at Moss Neck,” speech given at Winchester, VA, January 19, 1898, manuscript, in Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress; Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 638.

  9. Sears, Chancellorsville, pp. 47–48.

  10. Krick, “Janie Corbin, Stonewall Jackson, and the Famous Gold Braid.”

  11. Mrs. Roberta Cary Corbin Kinsolving, “Stonewall Jackson in Winter Quarters: Memories of Moss Neck in the Winter of 1862-3,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 20, January 1912.

  12. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 76.

  13. James Power Smith, “The Religious Character of Stonewall Jackson: Delivered at the Inauguration of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Building, VMI, June 23, 1897.”

  14. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 639.

  15. Krick, “Janie Corbin, Stonewall Jackson, and the Famous Gold Braid,” citing Hunter McGuire letter to Lieutenant William McWillie.

  16. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 396.

  17. Smith, 1897 address.

  18. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 401.

  19. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 209.

  20. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 682, citing Hotchkiss letter to Sara Hotchkiss, January 23, 1863.

  21. Smith, 1898 address.

  22. John Overton Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, pp. 202ff.

  23. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, p. 60.

  24. Ibid., p. 53, citing letter from W. C. McClellan to his sister, March 1863.

  25. Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, pp. 202ff; see also Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, p. 333.

  26. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 39.

  27. Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, pp. 181–182.

  28. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 395.

  29. Jackson to White, March 9, 1863, in Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, pp. 645–646.

  30. “Beverly Tucker Lacy’s Narrative of His War Experiences,” Dabney Collection, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, p. 353.

  33. Ibid., p. 352.

  34. Lacy narrative.

  35. Jedediah Hotchkiss, Make Me a Map of the Valley, p. 123.

  36. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 649.

  37. Ibid., p. 644.

  38. Hotchkiss, Make Me a Map of the Valley, p. 124; Douglas goes into some detail about the poor quality of the battle reports, and resentment that Sandie Pendleton was both passed over for chief of staff and not allowed to write the reports. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 210.

  39. Hotchkiss, Make Me a Map of the Valley, p. 126.

  40. Jackson’s Charges and Specifications against A. P. Hill, Thomas J. Jackson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.

  41. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 2, p. 514.

  42. Hotchkiss memo on A. P. Hill in Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress, Reel 49.

  43. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 397.

  44. Ibid., pp. 397–398.

  45. Jackson letters to Anna of February 7 and 14, 1863, Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 26–28.

  46. Jackson letter to Anna, February 7, 1863, Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 402.

  47.
Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 409.

  48. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 218.

  49. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 411.

  50. Ibid., p. 413.

  51. Ibid., p. 416.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE MAN

  1. Soon to be known as “Lee’s Hill.” But in 1862 it was known by its original name. Park Service notes, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

  2. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 302.

  3. Fitzhugh Lee, “Address at the 9th Annual Reunion of the Virginia Division of the Army of Virginia Association” (1879), in T.M.R. Talcott, “General Lee’s Strategy at Chancellorsville,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 34, 1906, p. 13.

  4. John Hennessy, “We Shall Make Richmond Howl,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, p. 7.

  5. Ibid., pp. 10–11.

  6. Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville, pp. 132, 151.

  7. Ibid., p. 168.

  8. Ibid., p. 189.

  9. W. G. Bean, Stonewall’s Man: Sandie Pendleton, p. 109.

  10. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 192.

  11. Posey would be promoted to brigadier general that spring, with date of rank November 1, 1862.

  12. James Power Smith, “Stonewall’s Last Battle,” Century Magazine 32, no. 6 (1886).

  13. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 210.

  14. Ibid., p. 212.

  15. Ibid., p. 211.

  16. Edward Longacre, The Commanders of Chancellorsville, p. 173.

  17. R. T. Bennett, “With Glowing Apostrophe to General T. J. Jackson,” An Address Before the Ladies Memorial Association, Charlotte, North Carolina, May 10, 1906, in Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 34, p. 55.

  18. John Esten Cooke, The Life of Stonewall Jackson, p. 7.

  19. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 196.

  20. Lee, “Address at the 9th Annual Reunion of the Virginia Division of the Army of Virginia Association.”

  21. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 233.

  22. Much has been written of this conference, specifically focusing on whose idea the flanking march was. Lee and Jackson were always intensely collaborative, and this meeting was no exception. By his own later description, Lee had first proposed this movement to Jackson, and Jackson had heartily agreed. What remained was to work out the details of the march, the Union position, and so forth, and this was presumably what they spent so much time doing that evening and then later the following morning. Lee gave a good accounting in a January 25, 1866, letter to Anna Jackson after he had read a draft of Dabney’s biography giving credit to Jackson for the idea. “I am misrepresented at the Battle of Chancellorsville in proposing an attack in front,” Lee wrote. “. . . On the contrary, I decided against it, and stated to General Jackson, we must attack on our left as soon as practicable; and the necessary movement of the troops began immediately. In consequence of a report received about that time from General Fitzhugh Lee describing the position of the federal army, and the roads which he held with his army leading to its rear, General Jackson, after some inquiry concerning the roads leading to the furnace, undertook to throw his command entirely in Hooker’s rear, which he accomplished with equal skill and boldness.” The usually reliable Jed Hotchkiss concluded that the marching orders had not been given until near dawn on May 2, when in fact Lee gave them the preceding evening. See the account of this historical dispute in T.M.R. Talcott, “General Lee’s Strategy at Chancellorsville,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 34, 1906.

 

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