Calamity at Chancellorsville Read online

  With the Federals safely removed from Richmond, the Confederate army moved north toward Washington, where it met another Union force near the previous battleground around Manassas junction. The battle of Second Manassas on August 29–30, 1862, was another decisive southern victory, emboldening Lee to carry the war into northern territory.

  In early September, the Rebel army crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and advanced into the western half of the state beyond the city of Frederick. The battle of Antietam was triggered when the pursuing Union army caught up with the Confederates near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. After a 12-hour fight that produced 23,000 casualties, the single bloodiest day in American history ended with a Confederate withdrawal to Virginia. This long-awaited Union victory in the east prompted Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation five days later on September 22, 1862. The proclamation only freed the slaves of the Confederate states, and left those in states loyal to the Union in bondage. However, the act did effectively transform the Civil War into an epic struggle to end slavery.

  The warring armies moved south following Antietam, meeting again on December 13, 1862, in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. After repeated Federal assaults against a strongly fortified Confederate position failed, the battle ended in yet another defeat for the Union army. With the subsequent arrival of cold weather, the two armies ceased fighting and went into winter quarters.

  5 Drew G. Faust, “Numbers on Top of Numbers: Counting the Civil War Dead,” in Journal of Military History (October 2006), issue 4, 997. Historians for decades have accepted the oft-cited death toll of 620,000 as the best estimate of Civil War mortality, a calculation Faust maintains is “a product of extensive post-war reconstruction—a combination of retrospective investigation and speculation that yielded totals that posterity has embraced as iconic.” More recent and extensive research places the actual number of deaths closer to 750,000. See J. David Hacker, “A Census-based Count of Civil War Dead,” in Civil War History (December 2011), issue 4, 307-348.

  6 Abraham Lincoln Papers, April 15, 1861, Series 1, General Correspondence, Library of Congress.

  Chapter One

  A Little Gem

  The winter of 1862–1863 passed with the two greatest armies of the Civil War camped within sight of each other across the Rappahannock River around the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Occupying the city on the south side of the river were 60,000 men in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Confederate States of America under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The opposite river bank was held by soldiers belonging to the Army of the Potomac from the United States of America, 130,000 strong and under the new command of Maj. Gen. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker.

  A revolving door of Union generals in the previous 18 months had produced three prior leaders of the Army of the Potomac; with Hooker obtaining command after his superior, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, was soundly defeated by Lee’s Confederates at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. Hooker, an aggressive and often boastful general who actually disliked his “Fighting Joe” nickname, was nonetheless confident in his ability to succeed where his predecessors had failed. As winter turned to spring and Hooker prepared his men for a new offensive, he bragged of having “the finest army on the planet,” and announced, “may God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”1

  Five miles south of Fredericksburg near the station of Hamilton’s Crossing on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson anxiously awaited the arrival of his family. Jackson, the 39-year-old commander of Lee’s Second Corps, stood nearly six feet tall, with an angular body attached to unusually large feet. He had a sharp nose and brown hair with a full beard that took on a more rusty color in sunlight. Most strikingly, he had piercing, deep-blue eyes that one staff officer described as looking “straight at you and through you almost as he talked.” Those close to Jackson often remarked how the color of his eyes seemed to intensify with the passion of battle. He was an intensely religious individual whom author Douglas Southall Freeman portrayed as being “of contrasts so complete that he appears one day a Presbyterian deacon who delights in theological discussion and, the next, a reincarnated Joshua.” Not one to waste words, Jackson tended to speak in short, terse sentences that were always to the point, and his customary affirmative response was a simple, “very good.”2

  Jackson bordered on hypochondria. He suffered from various medical ailments, both real and imagined, the treatment of which rendered the impression of a somewhat eccentric personality. As a teenager, he had been diagnosed as having dyspepsia, a condition that caused him to suffer from intermittent stomach pains throughout his life. To control the symptoms, Jackson often followed a strict diet of simple foods that focused on cornbread, butter, and milk. Years of service in the artillery had affected his hearing and he was nearly deaf in one ear. He tried to read only during the day, as poor light caused him to complain of eye strain. When sitting, he maintained a rigid posture with a ramrod-straight spine so his internal organs would stay in their proper alignment. He also had the strange belief that one arm was heavier than the other, which he periodically corrected by raising the extremity into the air to allow the blood to flow back into the body, so as to lighten it. Prior to the Civil War, Jackson served as an instructor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, and his oddities of character prompted some cadets at the school to call him “Tom Fool.”3

  But now in the spring of 1863, as the war entered its third year of brutal fighting, he was known throughout both the North and South as “Stonewall” Jackson. He had earned the nickname two years earlier as a brigadier general at the first battle of Manassas (or Bull Run, as it was called in the North) when he and his brigade stood their ground against a Union counterattack while other Confederate units retreated. Called “Old Jack” by the soldiers of his army, Jackson had developed a reputation—in contrast to his “Stonewall” nickname—for the ability to rapidly move his forces over long distances. “He was more like a thunderbolt of war than a stonewall,” remarked Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early, one of Jackson’s divisional commanders.4

  The warm spring weather signaled that renewed fighting was imminent and Jackson had been eagerly expecting his wife’s brief visit before the start of the campaign. Mary Anna Morrison—known to her family and friends as Anna—had married Jackson in 1857 while he was an instructor at VMI. Described as “fair in person and beautiful in character,” Anna had dark hair with matching eyes and was seven years younger than Jackson. It was his second marriage, his first wife having died after the birth of a stillborn son in 1854.5

  Belvoir Mansion. Home of the Thomas Yerby Family.

  Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

  * * *

  On April 20, 1863, Anna arrived at Guiney Station, a railroad stop ten miles south of Hamilton’s Crossing, after traveling from her father’s home in North Carolina where she had been living since the start of the war. Accompanying Anna was the Jacksons’ five-month-old daughter, Julia, whom her father was about to meet for the first time. She was the couple’s second but only surviving child, their first daughter died of jaundice 25 days after being born in 1858.6

  Jackson was patiently waiting at the station as the train carrying his family pulled in at noon under a steady spring rain. Julia had just awakened from a nap, and she “never looked more bright and charming,” according to Anna. As Jackson entered the coach and eagerly walked back to greet his family, the first sight of his child caused a broad smile to spread across the features of the otherwise serious-minded general. “His face was all sunshine and gladness,” Anna recalled. “It was a picture, indeed, to see his look of perfect delight and admiration as his eyes fell upon that baby.” Catching “his eager look of supreme interest in her,” the infant “beamed her brightest and sweetest smile upon him in return, so it seemed to be a mutual fascination.” The proud father wanted desperately to hold the smiling infant, but the oilc
loth overcoat he wore was still dripping wet, so he refused to take the baby in his arms. Not until they arrived at the house and he had tossed the coat aside did he hold his daughter for the first time.7

  At Hamilton’s Crossing, Jackson had arranged for his family to stay at Belvoir, the Georgian-style home of plantation owner Thomas Yerby. The stately brick mansion rested on a hill only a mile from the tent Jackson had established as his corps headquarters. Despite the presence of his wife and daughter, the duty-bound Jackson “did not permit the presence of his family to interfere in any way with his military duties,” Anna wrote. “The greater part of each day he spent at his headquarters, but returned as early as he could get off from his labors, and devoted all of his leisure time to his visitors.”8

  At Belvoir, the proud father was enthralled with his blue-eyed infant daughter, seldom letting her out of his sight. Carrying her in his arms, he would occasionally stop at a mirror so he could hold her up and say, “Now, Miss Jackson, look at yourself,” or he would show her to members of the Yerby family and ask, “Isn’t she a little gem?” When the child was asleep, he was often found kneeling over her cradle, silently staring at her small, angelic face. To the frequent remark that she resembled him, he would always reply, “No, she is too pretty to look like me.” The child’s presence caused such a stir among the men, who were eager to see “little Miss Stonewall,” that Jackson allowed them to be marched on parade past the house while Julia was held in a spot where the troops could see her.9

  On Thursday, April 23, Julia was baptized in the parlor of the Belvoir mansion while another spring rain steadily poured outside. The ceremony was performed by the Reverend Beverly Tucker Lacy, or Tucker Lacy as he was known, a Presbyterian minister and friend of Jackson who had recently started service as the unofficial chaplain of the Second Corps. Described by a fellow minister as “a genial gentleman, an indefatigable worker, and a powerful and effective preacher,” Lacy’s association with Jackson “gave him special influence and a wide range of usefulness.”

  Originally planned as a small, private ceremony among just the Jacksons and Yerbys, the baptism quickly became a much larger affair after Jackson allowed several of his staff members to attend the service at their request. One of those present fondly recalled how the start of the ceremony was delayed for some unexplained reason, prompting the impatient Jackson to leave the room in a “decided way” and return moments later with the child in his arms, ready to be baptized.10

  The weather was pleasant the following Sunday morning when Anna attended a church service with her husband. Reverend Lacy preached “a solemn and powerful sermon” on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to a crowd of over 1,500 soldiers, including General Lee and several staff officers. Anna was impressed by Lee’s appearance, remarking “how handsome he looked, with his splendid figure and faultless military attire.” After the service, Jackson spent the remainder of the afternoon with his wife discussing spiritual matters. “He seemed to be giving utterance to those religious meditations in which he so much delighted,” she recalled.11

  These days at Belvoir with his wife and only child nearby were happy times for Jackson, and Anna had never seen him in better health. At her request, he agreed to sit for a photograph while wearing a “handsome” new military dress coat given to him by his friend and colleague, Maj. Gen. James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, the dashing cavalry officer of the Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart had commissioned one of Richmond’s best tailors to make Jackson a gray coat out of fine wool, complete with brass buttons, gold arm bands, and white cuffs and collar. Uncomfortable wearing such ornate attire, Jackson had rarely donned the coat in public. Reflective of his Spartan nature, he had recently cut the gold braid off a new cap Anna had sent him so he could tie it in the hair of an admiring five-year-old girl, telling her, “It suits a little girl like you better than it does an old soldier like me.” He then wrote to his wife, saying he was ashamed of wearing a hat with gilt braid, reminding her that “I like simplicity.”12

  Last photograph of Stonewall Jackson.

  National Archives

  After arranging his hair, which Anna said was “unusually long for him, and curled in large ringlets,” Jackson posed for the three-quarter-length photograph while sitting in a chair placed in the hallway of the Yerby house. While the picture was being taken, a stiff breeze blew through an open door and into Jackson’s face, causing him to frown slightly. The resulting photograph portrayed him with a stern expression that Anna felt did not reflect his natural appearance. His soldiers disagreed, believing it an accurate representation of Old Jack, and the image would become a favorite among the men. Taken less than two weeks before his death, it would be Stonewall Jackson’s last picture.13

  In the dawn hours of April 29, while the couple still slept, an officer arrived at the Yerby house with an urgent message for the general. “That sounds as though something stirring were a foot,” Jackson said to Anna as he quickly dressed and headed downstairs. Major General Jubal A. Early had sent an adjutant to notify the general that Hooker’s army was crossing the Rappahannock. The messenger reported that elements of the Union army were using the cover of a heavy morning fog to advance across the river at Franklin’s Crossing, two miles south of Fredericksburg.14

  Returning upstairs, Jackson reluctantly informed Anna that he must leave immediately for the front. He sensed the start of a major battle, so, out of concern for the safety of his family, he advised her to take the baby and leave for Richmond by train. After what Anna described as a “tender and hasty good-bye” to her and Julia, he put on the new dress coat she preferred and left the Yerby house without eating breakfast.15

  Jackson rode from Belvoir to an area of high ground south of Fredericksburg overlooking the Rappahannock River. Sitting erect on his horse as artillery shells burst around him and bullets from enemy pickets whistled past his head, Jackson calmly took out a pair of binoculars and surveyed the Federal movement below. His men on the bluff watched the spectacle nervously, expecting at any moment to see their beloved general take a bullet and fall to the ground. It was not unusual, however, for Old Jack to expose himself to such danger. Earlier in the war when asked by a subordinate officer how he remained so calm when under fire, Jackson replied: “My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.”16

  Finished with his observations, Jackson leisurely placed his field glasses in their case and rode back to the main line. William J. Seymour of the 1st Louisiana brigade remarked how the men were surprised to see Jackson no longer wearing the “old rusty, sunburnt gray coat and faded blue cap” they were accustomed to seeing, but instead his “unusually spruce appearance” in the new coat “excited much attention and remark” among his admiring soldiers.17

  Although Jackson would have preferred to return to Belvoir and personally see his family off to Richmond, the start of battle did not afford him the luxury of time. He scribbled a quick note to his wife and handed it to Lt. Joseph G. Morrison, brother of Anna Jackson and aide-de-camp on his staff. He instructed Morrison to return to the Yerby house and escort Anna and Julia back to Guiney Station, where he wanted them to board the morning train. Morrison, however, wished to remain close to the action and suggested that Tucker Lacy go instead. Sending the chaplain was better, Morrison argued, since Jackson would most likely need his staff around during the battle. Jackson agreed and handed the note to Lacy, who quickly left for Belvoir.

  Back at the Yerby house, Anna had just finished packing when Reverend Lacy arrived in an ambulance wagon to carry the family to the train station. She read her husband’s note explaining why he could not be there to say good-bye and telling her that he had asked for God’s blessing upon them in their speedy journey.

  Anna’s visit had lasted a mere nine days, but it was filled with loving memories of spending time with her husband and watching him do
te on their infant daughter. Now, with cannon booming in the distance and wounded soldiers beginning to arrive at the Yerby house, Anna headed south—unaware that the next time she would see her husband, he too would be a casualty of the battle she was leaving behind.

  1 John Bigelow, Chancellorsville (New York, NY, 1995), 108; Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville (Boston, MA, 1996), 120.

  2 Hunter H. McGuire, “Reminiscences of the Famous Leader by Dr. Hunter McGuire, Chief Surgeon of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia,” in Southern Historical Society Papers (SHSP) (1891), vol. 19, 304; Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, xlii; James Power Smith, Stonewall Jackson and Chancellorsville. A Paper Read Before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, on the First of March, 1904 (Richmond, VA, 1904), 7.

  3 Clement D. Fishburne, Special Collections, University of Virginia (UVA); Dabney H. Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars (New York, NY, 1894), 71. Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born in Clarksburg, (West) Virginia, on January 21, 1824, and was raised by his uncle Cummins Jackson near Weston, (West) Virginia. In 1846, Jackson graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served with distinction in the Mexican War. He resigned his commission in 1852 to become Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Artillery Tactics at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia. Jackson remained at VMI until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he received a commission as colonel in the Virginia volunteers in April 1861.