Your search returned 2,086 results in 650 document sections:

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Introduction. (search)
m and features of his sitter with the brush. Such personal details of the characters of these eminent men will not be uninteresting to the lovers of noble natures of whatever faction; nor is the fondness for such particulars either trivial or ignoble. They elucidate biography and history-which are the same — for they present the likeness of the actor in the drama, his character and endowments; and to know what great men are, is better than to know what they perform. What Lee, Jackson, Johnston, Stuart, and their associates accomplished, history will record; how they looked, and moved, and spoke, will attract much less attention from the historian of the future. The august muse of history will make her partial and passionate, or fair and dignified, summary of the events of the late war; will discuss the causas resum with learned philosophy; and mete out in rounded periods what she thinks the due amount of glory or shame to the actors, in gray or in blue. But meanwhile the real p
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Stuart. (search)
sisted in regarding this boyish cavalier as their right-hand man — the eye and ear of their armies. These men were Lee, Johnston, and Jackson. Ii. Stuart's great career can be alluded to but briefly here. Years crammed with incident and advent-colonel, and placed in command of the cavalry on the Upper Potomac, where he proved himself so vigilant a soldier that Johnston called him the indefatigable Stuart, and compared him to a yellow jacket, which was no sooner brushed off than it lit back. He had command of the whole front until Johnston left the valley, when he moved with the column to Manassas, and charged and broke the New York Zouaves; afterwards held the front toward Alexandria, under Beauregard; then came the hard falling bauart cared little for the grave people. He fought harder than they did, and chose to amuse himself in his own way. Lee, Johnston, and Jackson, had listened to that banjo without regarding it as frivolous; and more than once it had proved a relaxatio
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Jackson. (search)
e ought to recall his resignation. No, sir, exclaimed Jackson, striding fiercely up and down, I will not hold a command upon terms of that sort. I will not have those people at Richmond interfering in my plans, and sending orders to an officer under me, without even informing me. No soldier can endure it. I care not for myself. If I know myself I do not act from anger-but if I yield now they will treat better men in the same way! I am nobody-but the protest must be made here, or Lee and Johnston will be meddled with as I am. It was only after the resignation had been withdrawn by the Governor of Virginia without his authority, and explanations, apologies, protestations, came from the head of the War Office, that the design was given up. Such is a little morceau of private history, showing how Jackson came near not commanding in the Valley in 1862. With the exception of these rare occasions when his great passions were aroused, Jackson was an apparently commonplace person, and
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Hampton. (search)
of six hundred infantry. This body of men, it was said, he had equipped from his own purse; as he had sent to England and purchased the artillery with which he was going to fight. The Legion was composed of brave stuff, and officered by hard-fighting gentlemen — the flower indeed of the great South Carolina race; a good stock. It first took the field in earnest at the first battle of Manassas--as an independent organization, belonging neither to Beauregard's Army of the Potomac nor to Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah. But there it was, as though dropped from the clouds, on the morning of that fiery twenty-first of July, 1861, amid the corn-fields of Manassas. It made its mark without loss of time-stretching out to Virginia that firm, brave hand of South Carolina. At ten o'clock in the morning, on this eventful day, the battle seemed lost to the Southerners. Evans was cut to pieces; Bee shattered and driven back in utter defeat to the Henry-House hill; between the victorious
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Beauregard. (search)
few companies of Bee, was interposed between the Southern troops and destruction. About thirty thousand men under General Hunter were advancing upon about three thousand-and to this critical point Beauregard now went at a swift gallop, with General Johnston. The scene which followed was a splendid exhibition of personal magnetism. Bee's men were routed; his ranks broken to pieces; the battalions which had breasted the torrent had been shattered by the weight of the huge wave, and were now scarcely more than a crowd of fugitives. Johnston, with the fiery dash which lay perdu under his grave exterior, caught the colours of an Alabama regiment, calling on the men to follow him; and Beauregard passed along the lines at full gallop, rallying the men amid the terrific fire. If he is ever painted, it should be as he appeared that day; eyes flaming, the sallow face in a blaze of enthusiasm, the drawn sword pointing to the enemy, as with a sonorous voice which rang above the firing, he sum
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Pelham the gallant (search)
ad made for himself a celebrated name, and he was only twenty-four when he died! A son of the great State of Alabama, and descended from an old and honourable family there, he had the courage of his race and clime. He chose arms as his profession, and entered West Point, where he graduated just as the war commenced; lost no time in offering his services to the South, and received the appointment of First-Lieutenant in the Confederate States army. Proceeding to Harper's Ferry, when General Johnston was in command there, he was assigned to duty as drill-officer of artillery, and in the battle of Manassas commanded a battery, which he fought with that daring courage which afterwards rendered him so famous. He speedily attracted the attention of the higher Generals of the army, and General J. E. B. Stuart entrusted him with the organization of the battalion of Horse Artillery which he subsequently commanded in nearly every battle of the war upon Virginia soil. Here I knew him first
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Stuart's ride around McClellan in June, 1862. (search)
hickahominy, and pushing across, had fought on the last day of May the bloody but indecisive battle of the Seven Pines. On the right it was a Confederate, on the left a Federal success; and General McClellan drew back, marshalled his great lines, darkening both the northern and southern banks of the Chickahominy, and prepared for a more decisive blow at the Confederate capital, whose spires were in sight. Before him, however, lay the Southern army, commanded now by Lee, who had succeeded Johnston, wounded in the fight of Seven pines. The moment was favourable for a heavy attack by Lee. Jackson had just driven before him the combined forces of Shields and Fremont, and on the bloody field of Port Republic ended the great campaign of the Valley at one blow. The veterans of his command could now be concentrated on the banks of the Chickahominy against McClellan; a combined advance of the forces under Lee and Jackson might save the capital. But how should the attack be made? In counc
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Stuart on the outpost: a scene at camp Qui Vive (search)
t, some of my readers would be interested. It took place in autumn of the gay years 1861, when Johnston and Beauregard were holding the lines of Centreville against McClellan; and when Stuart, that ping in his pickets, getting in rear of his camps, and cutting off his foraging parties — that Johnston said of him: He is worse than a yellow-jacket-they no sooner brush him off than he lights back the evil genius of the invading column; and long afterwards, when transferred to the West, General Johnston wrote to him: How can I eat, sleep, or rest in peace, without you upon the outpost! From td. Stuart could not release them; he must send them to Centreville, by standing order from General Johnston, and thither they were accordingly dispatched on the next morning after breakfast. The Genailed as a driver, and the general requested me to accompany the ladies and conduct them to General Johnston. Then he exhibited his gallantry after the military fashion. The ladies had entered th
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., How I was arrested (search)
Edelin was no bad representative of Captain D'Artagnan, the hero of Dumas' Three Guardsmen. When the Captain fixed his eyes upon me, he seemed to aim at reading me through. When he questioned me he evidently scrutinized my words carefully, and weighed each one. Such a precaution was not unreasonable. The period was critical, the time dangerous. Our generals entertained well grounded fears that the enemy designed a flank movement on Centreville, up this very road, either to attack Johnston and Beauregard's left, or to cut off Evans at Leesburg, and destroy him before succour could reach him. I was personally cognizant of the fact that General Evans suspected such an attack, from conversation with him in Leesburg, and was not surprised to find, as I soon did, that the road over which the enemy must advance to assail him was heavily picketed all along its extent in the direction of Fairfax. If this situation be comprehended by the reader, he will not fail to understand why
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., chapter 3.32 (search)
f Louis, and the Old Guard of Napoleon. This is the Old Stonewall Brigade of Jackson. The Old Stonewall Brigade! What a host of thoughts, memories, and emotions, do those simple words incite! The very mention of the famous band is like the bugle note that sounds to arms! These veterans have fought and bled and conquered on so many battle-fields that memory grows weary almost of recalling their achievements. Gathering around Jackson in the old days of 186 , when Patterson confronted Johnston in the Valley of the Shenandoah-when Stuart was a simple Colonel, and Ashby only a Captain — they held in check an enemy twenty times their number, and were moulded by their great commander into that Spartan phalanx which no Federal bayonet could break. They were boys and old men; the heirs of ancient names, who had lived in luxury from childhood, and the humblest of the unlettered sons of toil; students and ploughmen, rosycheeked urchins and grizzled seniors, old and young, rich and poor;
1 2 3 4 5 6 ...