Calamity at Chancellorsville Read online

  Ambrose Powell “A. P.” Hill

  Surviving his wound at the battle of Chancellorsville, Hill was promoted to corps command following Jackson’s death. He would be killed in action at the age of 39 during the battle of Petersburg in April 1865.

  Little Sorrel

  Immediately after Jackson’s wounding, his favorite war horse was caught by two men from Capt. Marcellus Moorman’s artillery battery. Not realizing at the time the horse was Jackson’s, one of the soldiers rode him for several days until someone recognized Little Sorrel. The horse was turned in to Moorman, who subsequently turned the animal over to Gen. Jeb Stuart. Little Sorrel was then given to Anna Jackson, who took the horse with her to live at her father’s house near Charlotte, North Carolina, where “he was treated to the greenest of pastures and the best of care.”17

  Little Sorrel on the parade grounds at VMI.

  Courtesy of the Virginia Military Institute Archives

  * * *

  While in North Carolina, Little Sorrel developed the unique ability to lift latches with his mouth, and routinely used the skill to let himself out of his stall. The “old rascal,” Anna recalled, would then “go deliberately to the doors of all the other horses and mules, liberate each one, and then march off with them all behind him, like a soldier leading his command, to the green fields of grain around the farm.”18

  In 1883, her father having advanced in age and finding it more difficult to care for the animal, Anna donated Little Sorrel to the Virginia Military Institute, where the horse leisurely grazed the parade grounds for the next two years. Following a brief stint in an exhibition at the 1885 World’s Fair in New Orleans, Little Sorrel was relocated to the Confederate Soldiers’ Home in Richmond, Virginia, where he died in 1886 at the age of 36.19

  Little Sorrel’s preserved hide at the VMI Museum.

  VMI Museum, Lexington, Virginia

  * * *

  The Soldiers’ Home had previously arranged for Washington, D.C. taxidermist Frederic S. Webster to preserve Little Sorrel’s hide upon the animal’s death. Webster traveled to Richmond and removed the horse’s hide from its skeleton, explaining that “the skin of any large animal is likely to deteriorate, if the bones and ligaments are used when mounting the specimen.” He then mounted the hide over a framework of plaster. Webster kept the skeletal remains “as part payment for my service.”20

  Little Sorrel’s mounted hide found its way back to Lexington, Virginia, in 1949 where it remains on display in the VMI Museum. Frederic Webster kept the skeleton and took it with him to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when he became chief curator of the institution in 1897. The museum donated the skeleton to VMI in 1949, where it remained in storage until 1997. The bones were then cremated and buried on the VMI parade grounds at the foot of the statue of Stonewall Jackson.

  Jackson’s Raincoat

  The oil-cloth raincoat Stonewall Jackson was wearing at the time of his wounding was cut open along the front of the left sleeve and across the chest before being removed and left on the battlefield. The coat was found a few days later by a hungry scavenger who sold the coat for a gallon of meal to the overseer of the nearby Ellwood estate. The overseer’s wife repaired the coat several months later by sewing up the split left sleeve and patching the bullet holes. The coat was sold, reportedly for $125, in November 1864 to Joseph Bryan, a wounded soldier on furlough.21

  Bryan discovered “T. J. Jackson” written in the back of the coat and instantly realized its significance. He wore the coat only sparingly until 1867, when his father forwarded it to Robert E. Lee, then president of Washington College, asking him to determine who should rightfully possess it. In a letter to the elder Bryan acknowledging receipt, Lee thanked him for sending “me so interesting a relic of one whose memory is so dear to me.” He thought it was best to first consult with Anna Jackson, “whose wishes on the subject are entitled to consideration.”22

  Raincoat Jackson was wearing when wounded.

  VMI Museum, Lexington, Virginia

  Side view of raincoat with bullet hole visible in left shoulder.

  VMI Museum, Lexington, Virginia

  Anna answered an inquiry from Lee in January 1868, writing: “Such a relic of my precious martyred husband would be extremely painful to me, and yet I cannot reconcile myself to think of its being in any other possession than my own.” Forwarding the coat to Anna, Lee responded, “It has appeared to me most proper that this relic of your husband, though painfully recalling his death, should be possessed by you. It is a familiar object to my sight, and must recall sad reminiscences to the mind of every soldier of the Army of N.Va.”23

  Anna kept the coat until later that year, when she gave it to the Reverend David Macrae, a visiting minister from Scotland. Admiring the coat after seeing it at her house, Macrae asked Mrs. Jackson whether he could take it home with him for others to view. She would later recall in a letter to Hunter McGuire how the minister “begged me very hard for it,” and since it was “such a painful relic” for her, she did not desire to keep it. Returning to Dundee, Scotland, Macrae had the coat placed on display in a museum, where it quietly remained for the next 30 years.24

  Macrae returned to the United States in 1899, during which time Hunter McGuire and his wife urged Anna Jackson to ask the minister to return the coat so it could be displayed in the Confederate Museum in Richmond. Macrae did visit with Anna, but refused her request to return the coat on the grounds that the Confederate Museum already had “numberless and valuable relics” pertaining to Jackson, and hoped that she would “not grudge that one relic to the land that Jackson himself loved so well, and where perhaps as many even of the Americans can see it as they would in Richmond, for numberless Americans visit Scotland every year.”25

  For some unknown reason, Macrae had a change of heart upon returning to Scotland; he finally sent the coat back to Anna Jackson. This time she refused to entrust the coat to anyone, including the museum, and it remained in her possession until she passed away in 1915. After her death, the raincoat was passed down to her granddaughter, Julia Jackson Christian Preston, who donated it to the Virginia Military Institute. The coat, with a bullet hole still visible in the upper left sleeve, remains on display in the VMI museum a few steps away from Little Sorrel.26

  1 Lucy Chandler Pendleton to Edward T. Stuart, May 30, 1930; Herald-Progress (Ashland, VA), November 25, 1925.

  2 Jackson, Life and Letters, 472.

  3 Ibid., 471-472.

  4 OR 25, pt. 2, 791, 793.

  5 Ibid., 792.

  6 Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee (New York, NY, 1904), 94; Susan Lee, Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, 274.

  7 Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, 228.

  8 “Arrival of the Remains of Gen. Thomas J. Jackson,” Richmond (VA) Enquirer, May 12, 1863.

  9 Jackson, Life and Letters, 305.

  10 “Stonewall Jackson!” Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA), October 26, 1875; Jackson, Life and Letters, 474.

  11 “Funeral Procession in Honor of Lieut. Gen. Thos. J. Jackson,” Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA), May 13, 1863; John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA, 1866), vol.1, 321; Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, 229.

  12 Ibid.; Jackson, Life and Letters, 475.

  13 Ibid., 477.

  14 Samuel B. Hannah to unknown correspondent, May 17, 1863, VMI Archives.

  15 Lenoir Chambers, Stonewall Jackson (New York, NY, 1959), vol. 2, 457.

  16 Jackson, Life and Letters, 477-478; “Funeral of Lieut. General T. J. Jackson,” Lexington (VA) Gazette, May 20, 1863; McLaughlin, Ceremonies Connected with the Unveiling of the Bronze Statue.

  17 Marcellus Moorman to Thomas J. Jackson, May 10, 1863, Dabney-Jackson Collection, box 1, LVA; Newspaper clippings, February 2, 1885 and February 16, 1885, Hotchkiss Collection, reel 58, LC; Jackson, Life and Letters, 171-172.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Newspaper clippings, February 2, 1885 and February 16, 1885
, Hotchkiss Collection, reel 58, LC; “Stonewall Jackson’s War Horse,” New York Times, November 27, 1887; Boston Daily Globe, January 29, 1885.

  20 Frederic S. Webster, letter excerpts, July 15, 1939, VMI Museum.

  21 “Sold for a Gallon of Meal,” The Free-Lance (Fredericksburg, VA), July 28, 1891; Anonymous, “Oil-Cloth Coat in which Jackson Received His Mortal Wound,” in SHSP (January 1891), vol. 19, 324-326.

  22 R. E. Lee to J. R. Bryan, December 13, 1867, VHS.

  23 R. E. Lee to J. R. Bryan, January 18, 1868, VHS; R. E. Lee to M. A. Jackson, January 18, 1868, Lee Family Papers, VHS.

  24 M. A. Jackson to Dr. McGuire, February 7, 1899, VHS.

  25 M. A. Jackson to Dr. McGuire, February 7, 1899, VHS; Hunter McGuire to Mrs. Joseph Bryan, February 8, 1899, VHS; David Macrae to Mrs. McGuire, February 2, 1899, VHS.

  26 David F. Riggs, “Stonewall Jackson’s Raincoat,” in Civil War Times Illustrated (July 1977), vol. 16, 37-41.

  Appendix I

  Controversies Surrounding the Event

  The he story of Stonewall Jackson’s wounding and death involves several elements that have been the focus of discussion and controversy from 1863 through the present day. While the definitive answer to many of these questions may never be determined, the following interpretations are based on the currently available historical evidence.

  Plank Road or Mountain Road

  Recent interpretations of the circumstances surrounding Stonewall Jackson’s wounding have maintained that Jackson and his staff reconnoitered down the small, isolated Mountain Road running parallel to the Plank Road and that he received his wounds while on this path. This interpretation is supported by one eyewitness account, that of Pvt. David Kyle, who claimed to have been guiding Jackson at the time. Kyle’s account, which contradicts all other eyewitness accounts, has been given credence on the basis that he was a local youth who would be more knowledgeable of the surrounding geography. To accept this interpretation, one must also accept that all of the other individuals involved in the event had—in the bright moonlight—mistaken the isolated, narrow, dirt pathway of the Mountain Road to be the wide, wood-planked, main Orange Plank Road they believed they were on.1

  For 30 years following the wounding, no open controversy existed as to which road Jackson had taken on the night of May 2, 1863. Then in the early 1890s, Augustus Choate Hamlin began research for his book The Battle of Chancellorsville: The Attack of Stonewall Jackson and his Army, Upon the Right Flank of the Army of the Potomac, 1863. Hamlin interviewed and corresponded with numerous Union and Confederate veterans in addition to visiting the battlefield. On one of those visits, Hamlin was introduced to James Talley and J. Horace Lacy, two local landowners who insisted well after the war that Jackson had ridden down the Mountain Road, where he was actually shot by Union soldiers. Since neither Talley nor Lacy were present at the time of the wounding, they backed their story up by introducing Hamlin to Kyle, the local boy who claimed to have led Jackson down the Mountain Road.

  Hamlin attempted to confirm Kyle’s story by corresponding with several Confederate officers present at Chancellorsville. Both William Palmer, of A. P. Hill’s staff, and Joseph Morrison disputed the Mountain Road location. In a letter to Hamlin in 1894, Palmer wrote: “You will see that Capt. Leigh and Capt. Wilbourn exactly agree, as to where we were when first fired on, from the right or south side of the Pike. There are three witnesses to this point and the location of the dismantled house on the right, or south side makes it very certain to me that we are correct and Kyle 9th Virginia Cavalry, wrong, as to this point.”2

  Brigadier General James H. Lane, whose North Carolina regiment accidentally shot Jackson, sent at least three letters to Hamlin rejecting the claim that Jackson was on the Mountain Road, vehemently writing in 1892, “As I have said in my last, I have never since that night seen nor heard anything to change my opinion as to when, how, and where Jackson was wounded.” Nevertheless, when Hamlin published his book in 1896, he described Kyle leading Jackson and his staff down the Mountain Road.3

  Detail of Hotchkiss map indicating location of Jackson’s wounding.

  Library of Congress

  * * *

  Kyle then sent a manuscript describing details of the event to the Confederate Veteran magazine. His edited account was published in 1896 and an unedited version of the letter exists at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.4

  Publication of both Kyle’s account and Hamlin’s book sparked another round of rebuttal among Jackson’s staff. In letters between Jedediah Hotchkiss and James P. Smith, both rejected the Mountain Road as the location of the reconnaissance and the wounding. When G. F. R. Henderson contacted Hotchkiss for help with his book Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, published in 1898, the cartographer commented on the recent controversy. “The whole matter was talked over among the staff and no one ever spoke of Jackson’s having been on any road but the direct one to Chancellorsville until recently.” He went on to warn Henderson: “If you follow Hamlin’s statements you will make great mistakes. He is laboring to establish a theory and to twist everything to agree with that theory.”5

  A close examination of Kyle’s account raises questions as to its accuracy. Kyle states that while on the Mountain Road, Jackson started to leave the path and “turned his horse head toward the south . . . just as his horses front feet had cleared the edge of the road whilste his hind feet was still on the edge of the bank,” Jackson was shot. After the volley, Kyle states that Little Sorrel “wheeled to the right and started to run.” Kyle then goes on to describe in detail Jackson’s removal from the field—an ordeal during which Kyle curiously remains a detached bystander watching from horseback, never helping to remove Jackson from his horse, carry the litter, search for a surgeon, or lend aid in any way.6

  Kyle’s statement that Jackson was facing south at the time of the shooting would place the 18th North Carolina Regiment to Jackson’s right. It would be impossible in such a position for Jackson to be shot in the left arm, as his body would have shielded that extremity from the fire. In addition, if Little Sorrel “wheeled to the right” from that position, the horse would have turned into and run toward the musket fire, an unlikely reaction from a frightened animal. For the event to occur as Kyle describes, the volley that wounded Jackson would have had to come from the Union side—the story Talley and Lacy were trying to sell Hamlin.

  Using trajectory analysis, Jackson’s left side would have to be facing the 18th North Carolina in order for him to receive the wounds as detailed by McGuire. Jackson’s bridle hand was his left, and the wound in that forearm was described as follows: “a ball having entered the outside of the forearm, an inch below the elbow, came out upon the opposite side just above the wrist.” For Jackson to be wounded by the 18th North Carolina with a bullet taking that path through the arm, he could not have been directly facing the regiment, nor could he have been facing south.

  It is reasonable to assume that McGuire’s description of the bullet path was accurate, since it is unlikely that an experienced Civil War surgeon would have misidentified entrance and exit wounds, the appearances of which were well known and described by military surgery texts of the period. In A Manual of Military Surgery for use of Surgeons in the Confederate Army, J. Julian Chisolm writes: “Balls, whether round or elongated, usually make an irregularly rounded entrance, surrounded by discoloration, depressed, inverted tissues—these having been evidently mashed or crushed by the ball prior to its entrance, and the skin drawn in to a certain extent with it. The tissues around the orifice of exit are lacerated, usually more less protruding, and the orifice probably larger, and more irregular than where the ball entered.”7

  Independent plotting of locations for Jackson’s wounding as specified in primary accounts.

  * * *

  Bullet trajectory instead supports Richard E. Wilbourn’s account, in which he describes that the group, on returning from the front, left the Plank Road and entered t
he woods to the right, with Jackson “approaching our lines diagonally” when he was shot. This positioning would place Jackson’s left arm, and more importantly his left elbow, directly in the line of fire from the 18th North Carolina. Further accounts by Wilbourn, along with those by Smith, Morrison, and period newspaper articles, all place the location of Jackson’s wounding in the woods a short distance north of the Plank Road. For Jackson to receive his left arm wounds by the initial volley of the Confederate line, he had to be riding through the woods and toward—not on—the Mountain Road at the time.8

  The presence of all participants and witnesses to Jackson’s wounding can be confirmed in the narratives of others—except that of David Kyle. None of the surviving first-person accounts mention Kyle as being present. For Kyle to have played such an important role in the event and yet escape mention by others seems unlikely. As a result, both his presence and his story are unsupported by the surviving evidence. The staff members of Jackson and A. P. Hill who were present at Chancellorsville and who documented the reconnaissance as occurring down the Plank Road are substantial and convincing: Richard Wilbourn, James Smith, Joseph Morrison, William Palmer, William Randolph, Marcellus Moorman, Benjamin Leigh, James Lane, Hunter McGuire, and Jed Hotchkiss. Since acceptance of Kyle’s singular account requires rejection of all the others, the overwhelming evidence supports the theory that Jackson reconnoitered down the Plank Road, entered the woods north of the road while returning to his lines, and received his wounds in a location between the Plank and Mountain Roads.

  Number of Falls from the Litter

  Another controversy surrounding Jackson’s wounding concerns the number of times Jackson fell from the litter during his removal from the battlefield. Several modern accounts of the event relate two falls: one when a litter bearer was wounded, and a second when another bearer tripped on a vine while walking in the woods. However, every first-person account of the event—save one—describes only a single fall as having occurred. The lone exception came in a letter written by Joseph Morrison in 1879. The confusion seems to arise from the fact that some accounts document the fall as occurring after the bearer was wounded, while others mention it only when a bearer trips in the woods.