A Brotherhood Of Valor

The Common Soldiers Of The Stonewall Brigade C S A And The Iron Brigade U S A

Jeffry D. Wert

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780684862446
• eBook ISBN: 9781501128301
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This unusual and moving chronicle covers some of the most important battles of the Civil War—Sharpsburg (Antietam), Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville—through the stories of the two brigades who confronted each other on the bloody fields of battle. Drawing on original source material, Jeffry Wert reconstructs the drama and terrors of war through the eyes of the ordinary men who became members of two of the most respected fighting units of their respective armies, the Stonewall Brigade of the Confederacy and the Iron Brigade of the Union. There are tales of grueling marches and almost unbearable deprivations; eyewitness accounts of ferocious fighting and devastating losses on both sides; and portraits of acts of courage and valor performed by soldiers and officers who, despite the difficulties they faced, remained dedicated to the cause for which they were fighting.

1

GATHERINGS

CHURCH bells rang in Winchester, Virginia, on Thursday, April 18, 1861. More than ninety miles farther south, up the Shenandoah Valley, in Staunton, “a great state of excitement” prevailed as townsfolk jammed the streets. What had been speculated about for weeks and anticipated for days in both towns had become a reality. Telegrams had arrived from Richmond, announcing the secession of Virginia from the Union. The bells of Winchester tolled for a revolution.¹

A second telegram followed from Governor John Letcher, ordering militia companies in the Valley, as the region was familiarly known, to seize the United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry and its valuable cache of weapons and arms-making machinery. Letcher’s directive brought an immediate response, and by midnight of the 19th, units from Winchester and Charlestown entered Harper’s Ferry, located at the northern end of the Valley at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. The arsenal’s contingent of troops had torched many buildings before it departed, but the militiamen and local residents saved the machinery and thousands of finished rifles and parts.²

In the days that ensued additional companies of Valley men arrived at Harper’s Ferry. The units bore names such as the West Augusta Guards, Augusta Rifles, Rockbridge Rifles, Staunton Artillery, Southern Guards, and Mountain Guards. Each company had its own “uniform”—the Mountain Guards wore red flannel shirts and gray trousers; the West Augusta Guards and Augusta Rifles, gray woolen jackets and trousers; and the Southern Guards, blue flannel shirts, gray trousers, and United States Navy caps. One company carried a flag given to it while en route from women in Harrisonburg.³

The colorful attire could not hide the rawness of the militiamen. Before these days, the companies had “played military,” in the words of one member. But the seizure of the arsenal heralded a reckoning, an act of war against their national government. The novice soldiers, however, embraced the future. The men “are ready for a fight,” a militia captain assured friends and relatives at home, adding that “if a fight occurs, we will be the first in it, and the last out of it.” Another officer in a letter to a newspaper asserted that “we are in the midst of a great revolution; our people are united as one man, and are determined to maintain their rights at every sacrifice.”⁴

During their trip northward, down the Valley, the militiamen had witnessed a flood of enthusiasm and support by neighbors and strangers. “I have never seen such an outpouring of popular feelings in behalf of the South,” recounted an officer. “We were as well treated as if we were paying 3/per day,” claimed a private. The civilians cheered and hugged the volunteers, shared food with them, and pledged devotion to the cause.⁵

This response to recent events had followed a winter of doubt and apprehension. Like their fellow Americans, Valley residents had watched closely the quickening of time since the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860. Many citizens in the region had voted for John Bell, the compromise candidate in the election. The secession of Lower South states and the formation of the Confederate States of America “weighed heavily on spirits” of those in the Valley. They opposed unsuccessfully a secessionist convention for Virginia, and when the time came to select delegates, they chose “conservative Union men” in many of the counties.⁶

In the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, roots went deep into the rich soil. Pioneer settlers had entered the region between the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the Allegheny Mountains on the west decades before the American Revolution. They were Scotch-Irish, who wrenched it from the natives, whose name for the region meant “Daughter of the Stars,” and built homes and mills and platted towns. Germans followed and made the fertile earth blossom and nourish. Craftsmen offered various products, and amid the natural beauty, the inhabitants prospered. The region sent forth its own as riflemen under Daniel Morgan to fight the British, and gave again during the War of 1812 and the conflict with Mexico. By the 1850s, a macadamized turnpike linked villages, and railroads breached the Blue Ridge. Within the valley’s confines, night often settled in easily.⁷

The Valley seeped into bones, touched souls, and when the national crisis climaxed in April 1861, the Valley residents looked to their own. The bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, harbor on April 12–14 caused Lincoln to call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. With the proclamation, allegiance to the Union ended in much of the Shenandoah Valley. In Staunton, a newspaper publisher spoke for his readers, writing that the people “were united with a firm and universal determination to resist the scheme set on foot by Lincoln to subjugate the South.”⁸

And so the Valley gave once again of its fathers, sons, and husbands. The response of the militia companies to Governor Letcher’s summons was but small eddies that during April, May, and June turned into a river of volunteers. On April 20, the governor asked for recruits to “repel invasion and protect the citizens of the state in the present emergency.” From the length and breadth of the Valley, men enlisted for twelve months. Farmers in Grayson County along the North Carolina border, mountain men from Highland and Allegheny counties, students from Washington College and cadets from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, merchants and clerks from Staunton, and Irish railroad workers from Shenandoah County enrolled. They walked, crowded into wagons, or boarded trains, with some detoured to Richmond before being ordered to their common destination at Harper’s Ferry. Watching the passage from her home in Winchester, a woman likened it to a “gathering of the clans.”⁹

At Harper’s Ferry, the companies with such names as the Montgomery Highlanders, Tenth Legion Minute Men, Emerald Guard, Liberty Hall Volunteers, Virginia Hibernians, and Berkeley Border Guards would be organized in the weeks ahead into regiments. Companies of Valley men filled entirely, except for a handful of units from the western mountains, the ranks of the five infantry regiments and artillery battery that would become the Stonewall Brigade. The command “comprised the very pride and flower of the upper counties of Virginia,” boasted a Winchester woman.¹⁰

Few, if any, Confederate brigades reflected such commonality of place, heritage, and kinship. “I never saw so many persons I knew in my life,” remarked a member, “every third person speaks to me.” Every company of the command contained descendants of the Scotch-Irish pioneers. Those of German, English, Irish, and Swedish ancestry stood beside the Scotch-Irish in the ranks. A surgeon of the brigade estimated later that only one man in thirty belonged to a slaveholding family. Little class distinction separated enlisted men from officers. Strong-armed farmers stood beside eloquent lawyers; unshaven college students beside bearded mountaineers.¹¹

Blood ties bound many to each other. One volunteer thought that the brigade appeared to be a “cousinwealth.” One regiment counted eighteen members of the Bell family of Augusta County, eleven of whom were destined to be either killed or mortally wounded in battle or to die of disease. Pairs of brothers, fathers and sons, uncles and nephews shared mess fires in the regiments.¹²

“America was young, and filled with younger sons,” recalled a member. Approximately sixty percent of the volunteers were those “younger sons” between eighteen and twenty-five years old. The most common age was nineteen, with the majority of men in this age group in their early twenties. A few members had lived for sixty years, while a handful at fourteen and fifteen had barely passed childhood. Private David Scanlon was an unusual recruit, a fifty-one-year-old drummer boy.¹³

Characteristic of the Valley and of much of America, farmers and farm laborers comprised the largest segment of the command. There were dozens of professional men, clerks, and merchants, and scores of artisans, craftsmen, and mechanics that reflected the vibrancy and diversity of the economy in the region. Other occupations listed on enrollment papers included undertaker, jeweler, nailcutter, druggist, artist, distiller, confectioner, hatter, toymaker, and gentleman. One private listed himself as a “comedian,” and another as a “Yankee school master.” One company of roughly one hundred men had twenty-six different occupations noted on the rolls.¹⁴

“Probably no brigade in the Civil War contained more educated men,” a historian of the command has asserted. Current students and alumni of Washington College and the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville were among the rank and file in each regiment. One company, the Liberty Hall Volunteers, was recruited on the campus of Washington College and included fifty-seven members of the seventy-three-man student body, with a quarter of the volunteers studying for the ministry. VMI cadets and graduates provided a core of drillmasters and officers for the brigade.¹⁵

The organization of the companies into regiments occurred throughout April, May, and June. Most of the volunteers entered the service under the authority of Virginia, but on June 8, Governor Letcher transferred the state units into the armies of the Confederacy, with the men’s original twelve-month term of enlistment remaining in effect.¹⁶

Civil War infantry regiments consisted, as a rule, of ten companies, designated by the letters A–K, except for the letter J. United States Army regulations prescribed a company size of 3 officers and 98 enlisted men. With 15 field and staff officers, a regiment numbered 1,025 officers and men at authorized strength. Although the Confederacy would adopt a slightly higher figure for a regiment—1,389 officers and men—few regiments on either side ever had a full complement during the war. The recruitment of new volunteers and the infusion of conscripted or drafted men never restored a regiment to the numbers it possessed at its original mustering in. Both governments chose to create new units instead of filling old regiments to authorized strength.¹⁷

In turn, usually three or four regiments were organized into a brigade, which was, according to a historian, “the fundamental fighting unit of the army.” Once again, Confederate brigades consisted generally of more regiments—five or six—than their Union counterparts. Because of the importance of localism in the South, most Confederate brigades contained regiments from the same state. Regulations in both armies designated a brigadier general as commander of a brigade. Casualties among officers of that rank resulted often, however, in the temporary appointment of a senior colonel to the command. Finally, three or four brigades comprised a division under a major general. In time, both governments created corps of three or four divisions within an army or department.¹⁸

Consequently, as the companies of Valley men gathered at Harper’s Ferry, officers organized them into regiments. The effort consumed weeks, but eventually forty-eight companies were assigned to the five regiments—the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Twenty-seventh, and Thirty-third Virginia—that would constitute the future Stonewall Brigade. Each regiment had at its core companies from a particular section of the region—the Second Virginia consisted entirely of companies from four counties in the northern end or Lower Valley; the Fourth was formed with a majority of its companies from the Upper Valley; the Fifth originated from the militia companies of Staunton and Augusta County; the Twenty-seventh counted most of its members from the mountainous counties of southwestern Virginia, beyond the Valley proper; and, the Thirty-third contained volunteers from six counties, with Shenandoah County contributing one half of the number.¹⁹

The regimental field officers—colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major for each unit—were men who possessed either prior military education, militia training, or Mexican War experience, or had been leaders within their communities. Of the thirteen field officers—the Thirty-third had only a colonel initially—five were graduates of VMI, two had attended West Point, four had fought in the Mexican War, and/or four had served as militia officers. One of them, Lawson Botts, an attorney, had been a “decided and uncompromising opponent of secession doctrines” and had defended abolitionist John Brown, whose raid on Harper’s Ferry, in October 1859, hastened the destruction of the Union. Like Botts, four others practiced law, while Kenton Harper, a native Pennsylvanian, was a distinguished newspaper publisher, politician, and farmer.²⁰

The company commanders or captains in the five regiments reflected the diverse origins and composition of their units. Like the field officers, at least one third of them had either prior military training or experience. The remaining captains were usually men of local stature—mayors, attorneys, state legislators, businessmen, and well-to-do farmers. Among the group several were destined to attain higher rank and to play prominent roles in the brigade’s history, including John Quincy Adams Nadenbousch, James A. Walker, Charles A. Ronald, John Henry Stover Funk, Hazael J. Williams, Frederick W. M. Holliday, and Abraham Spengler.²¹

Among the regimental captains none perhaps had sacrificed more for his loyalty to Virginia than Thompson McAllister. Born in Juniata County, Pennsylvania, in 1811, McAllister had prospered in his native state and had served in the legislature. In 1849, he moved with his family to Covington, Virginia, bought 2,200 acres of land, built a large brick home, Rose Dale, and made money in the milling business and in promoting railroads. McAllister remained in touch with his family, particularly his brother Robert. In January 1860, he returned to Pennsylvania for a family reunion during which he and Robert engaged in a heated argument over politics. The brothers departed enemies, and when the nation divided, Thompson joined the Twenty-seventh and Robert became lieutenant colonel of the First New Jersey. The wound between the brothers never healed.²²

In May, an artillery battery from Lexington arrived in Harper’s Ferry, and in time would be attached to the brigade of Shenandoah Valley regiments. Within a week of Virginia’s secession, seventy recruits had enrolled, voted to be an artillery company, and adopted the name Rockbridge Artillery. On May 1, William Nelso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Preface
• Author’s Note
• 1. Gatherings
• 2. Fury on a Hill
• 3. Virginia Autumn
• 4. “Damd Hard Business”
• 5. “If This Valley Is Lost”
• 6. War in the “Daughter of the Stars”
• 7. Virginia Summer
• 8. Into the Brotherhood
• 9. “Corn Acres of Hell”
• 10. “This War It Seems Cannot End”
• 11. River Crossings
• 12. “This Cursed War”
• 13. Gettysburg
• 14. Two Rivers
• 15. “Played Out”
• 16. A Brotherhood of Valor
• Photographs
• Appendix
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright