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The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South (ed. Alexander Kelly McClure), Death of General John H. Morgan. (search)
of which was as loyal to the government as that of East Tennessee. Virginia proper, lying eastward and northward of this section, was so true to the Confederacy that the whole State did not furnish five hundred white men to the Union army. Of course, in this estimate, I do not include what is known as Western Virginia, or any part of it. For the year ending May 1st, 1866, the records show that nearly fifteen thousand white Tennesseeans were mustered out of the Union army and eighty-five Virginians! Why this vast difference in sentiment in communities of the same blood, institutions, habits, customs, and interests? A detail of the exploits of the Tennessee troops in the Union army would fill volumes; but so far from a single volume on the subject, there has never been anything like a connected narrative. The Tennessee troops were fighters, rather than writers, and they left little record of their transactions. It was Tennessee troops who finally routed the famous cavalry comma
The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South (ed. Alexander Kelly McClure), Stonewall Jackson and his men. (search)
der him. With the fury of despair he strode among his men, and tried to rally and to hold them against the torrent which beat upon them; and, finally, in a voice which rivaled the roar of battle, he cried out: Oh, men, there are Jackson and his Virginians standing behind you like a stone wall.1 Uttering these words of martial baptism, Bee fell dead upon the field, and left behind him a fame which will follow that of Jackson as a shadow. It would be but the repetition of history to mention, at length, the movements of Jackson's Brigade that day. It was Bee who gave him the name of Stonewall, but it was his own Virginians who made that name immortal. This brigade checked the victorious tide of battle, but to turn it back was no easy labor. Around the Henry House and its plateau the contest raged with renewed violence and vacillating success for an hour; and then Jackson led his men in their last bayonet charge, and pierced the enemy's centre. The timely arrival of Kirby Smith and
The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South (ed. Alexander Kelly McClure), Stonewall Jackson's Valley campaign. (search)
d the order, and at --once resigned, on the ground that such interference, by the department at Richmond, with the details of military affairs in the field, could only lead to disaster. After explanations, and upon the urgent request of Governor Letcher and General J. E. Johnston, he withdrew the resignation. Subsequently there was no desire on anybody's part to interfere with him. For the next month Jackson remained quietly at Winchester. General Loring and all his troops that were not Virginians were ordered elsewhere, and in order to induce reenlistments, furloughs were freely granted. The Confederate force was in this way reduced to about four-thousand men, exclusive of militia. With the 1st of March opened the great campaign of 1862, in Virginia, in which Jackson was to bear so prominent a part. In other sections of the Confederacy fortune favored the Federal cause, and the Union armies were on the full tide of success. On the 8th of February Roanoke Island fell, on the
Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Commands of Lieutenand- General Thomas J. Jackson, Chapter 1: parentage, and Early years. (search)
ia Neale. In the year 1830, Mrs. Jackson, whose youth and beauty still fitted her to please, married Mr. Woodson, a lawyer of Cumberland County, Virginia, whom the rising importance of the Northwest had attracted, along with many other Eastern Virginians, to that country. He was a sort of decayed gentleman, much Mrs. Jackson's senior,--a widower, without property, but of fair character, and of a popular, social turn. The marriage was distasteful to Mrs. Jackson's relatives. They threatened,We now see the manly youth, with his account-book and bag of bills and executions, traversing on horseback the hills of Lewis, a county then so large that the major parts of five counties have since been carved out of it. To readers who are not Virginians, a word of explanation may be needed concerning the office of Constable in our State. The Justices of the Peace, besides the County Courts which they hold jointly, are authorized to decide singly, in their own neighborhood, upon controversies
Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Commands of Lieutenand- General Thomas J. Jackson, Chapter 5: secession. (search)
lsehood; for the relations in the two cases have no ground in common, on which the pretended analogy can rest. What English county possessed sovereignty or independence, or in the exercise of such powers entered into any union or confederation? It is objected again, that the admission of the right to retire from the Union renders its authority a rope of sand, and its character as a government a mere simulacrum, which dissolves at the first touch of resistance. The triumphant reply of Virginians is, that our State has always had this right as a condition of her membership in the Union; and yet this Government was to her, for eighty years, anything else than a rope of sand. It was a bond which held her for that period in firm affection and loyalty, which nothing but the most ruthless despotism could relax, which retained its strength even when it was binding the State to her incipient dishonor and destruction. It is a strange and disgraceful proposition to be asserted by Republic
Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Commands of Lieutenand- General Thomas J. Jackson, Chapter 10: Kernstown. (search)
ieved that as many men were disabled by Jackson in the enemy's ranks as he had soldiers in his own. Their greater loss is to be accounted for by his skill in handling his forces, by the superior accuracy of the Virginians' aim, by their discipline and deliberate courage, and by the density of tile enemy's ranks, which hardly permitted a well-directed shot to miss its object. This was the first pitched battle in which General Jackson had supreme command, and it was fought exclusively by Virginians, except that a few Marylanders participated in its dangers. Its effect was to raise the estimate of the prowess both of soldiers and leader to an exalted height; and from this day, the great qualities of the Virginian soldiery, depreciated at first by their own Southern brethren, but illustrated and redeemed at Manassa's, have shone forth unquestioned by all. Kernstown has remained, among the many more bloody days, when greater hosts pursued the work of slaughter in this sanguinary war, a
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 11: on to Richmond! (search)
rom the river, but grimly dirty on close inspection. It is a plain, quadrangular construction, with Grecian pediment and columns on its south front and broad flights of steps leading to its side porticoes. Below were the halls of the legislature, now turned over to the Confederate States Congress; and in the small rotunda connecting them stood Houdon's celebrated statue of Washington-a simple but majestic figure in marble, ordered by Dr. Franklin from the French sculptor in 1785 of which Virginians are justly proud. In the cool, vaulted basement were the State officials; and above the halls the offices of the governor and the State library. That collection, while lacking many modern works, held some rare and valuable editions. It was presided over by the gentlest and most courteous litterateur of the South. Many a bedeviled and ambitious public man may still recall his quiet, modest aid, in strong contrast to the brusquerie and insolence of office, too much the general rule; and
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 18: society at the Capital. (search)
cup of tea handed round informally, Mr. Davis retired to his study and once more donned his armor for battle with the giants without and the dwarfs within his territory. These informal evenings began to grow popular with the better class of Virginians, and tended to a much more cordial tone between the citizens and their chief. They were broken by bimonthly levees, at which Mr. and Mrs. Davis received the world and his wife. But the formal levee was a Washington custom and smacked too muing, they were paying for it. The constant strain of excitement produced much dissipation certainly-but it seldom took the reprehensible form of rowdyism and debauch. Some men drank deeplyat dinners, at balls and at bar-rooms; some gambled, as Virginians always had gambled-gaily, recklessly and for ruinous stakes. But find them where you would, there was about the men a careless pervading bonhomie and a natural high tone resistlessly attractive, yet speaking them worthy descendants of the Gold
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 29: over again, to Gettysburg. (search)
to see again. The air was black with flying shot and shell, and their wild whoo! made one continuous song through the sultry noon. Forth from the canopy of smoke and their screen of trees, comes the chosen storming party-Pickett's division of Virginians; supported on the right by Wilcox and on the left by Heth's division under Pettigrew, its own general having been wounded in the head the day before. Unmindful of the fire-sheeted storm into which they march-down into the Valley of the Shadt of liberty — the crisis campaign of the war — to be undertaken without proper transportation and supplies of ammunition? And why, above all, had the general they still loved and trusted, spite of their doubts-why had he sent their beloved Virginians unsupported to the shambles? Why had he fought the whole Yankee army with one division? Such were the murmurs on every side. And though they gradually died away, after the first shock of surprise and grief had passed; still they left a va
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 32: press, literature and art. (search)
and better-paying class of patrons. But, when the tug came, not a few of these errant youths returned, to share it with their native states; and some of them found time, even in the stirring days of war, to transfer to canvas some of its most suggestive scenes. Of them, the majority were naturally about Richmond; not only as the great army center, but as the center of everything else. Among the latter were two favorite pupils of Leutze, William D. Washington and John A. Elder. Both Virginians, by birth and rearing, they had the great advantage of Dusseldorf training, while they were thoroughly acquainted and sympathetic with their subjects. Some of Washington's figure-pieces were very successful; finding ready sale at prices which, had they continued, might have made him a Meissonnier in pocket, as well as in local fame. His elaborate picture, illustrating the Burial of Latane --a subject which also afforded motif for Thompson's most classic poem-attracted wide attention and
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