Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel

by Sharon B. Smith

  There is a faint shadow of evidence that modern horses lived in close proximity to humans as early as 7000 BCE. Saudi archaeologists have discovered fractured statues of horses at al-Maqar in the center of the Arabian Peninsula and believe this discovery means that horses were first domesticated there nine thousand years ago. Other archaeologists point out that an artist might represent a wild animal as well as a domestic one, and they are not so sure about the al-Maqar date anyway.

  Most scientists credit the Botai tribe of the Eurasian steppe with leaving us the earliest significant evidence of regular horse usage. By 3600 BCE the Botai were living closely with horses in at least three villages in what is now northern Kazakhstan, south of Russia. The Botai, named by modern anthropologists for one of their villages, hunted wild horses, as did other tribes on the broad, grassy steppe.

  But they also learned how to use horses before eating them. Wear patterns on excavated horse jaws from Botai sites suggest the use of rawhide bits. The Botai horses were used in riding rather than driving. The wheel was in the process of being invented elsewhere as the Botai developed their horse culture, and they had no concept of wheeled transport.

  These were modern horses, not now-extinct wild equids, because there is plenty of evidence that the animals were bred and raised, kept in corrals, and milked. The thought of milking a wild horse fully supports the concept of Botai domestication. The Botai were not known to relish war, but they faced inevitable conflict with other tribes of the steppe and may have had neighbors who coveted their horses. If there were battles, and there almost certainly were, the Botai would have used their horses, whose existence formed the vital center of their world.

  The horses would not have provided platforms for fighting but rather quick transportation. The stone tools of five thousand six hundred years ago were simple and primitive and wouldn’t have been especially dangerous to horses used in dashes toward hand-to-hand, dismounted battle. But danger is relative. The Botai happily ate their surplus horses, even the ones they had raised themselves, according to archaeological evidence of butchering on the equine bones that have been discovered.

  Most horses used in war in ancient times went to battle hitched to vehicles. Excavated chariots and wagons as well as artistic depictions provide the next oldest evidence of horses used in war. Clay tablets from Iraq that date from three or four hundred years after the presumed date of Botai domestication portray animal-drawn vehicles. But horses aren’t included, so we know very little about who or what pulled the vehicles.

  Horses, or horselike animals, are clearly shown pulling war chariots in the Standard of Ur, an inlaid box discovered in a royal burial in northern Iraq that dates from about 2500 BCE. The Standard is the earliest surviving portrayal of horses in battle. But since it shows intricate trappings and an elaborate manner of deployment, the Standard depicts an already well-established practice. Somebody was using horses to pull war chariots in war well before 2500 BCE.

  After the time of Ur, horses and their use in war spread rapidly through the Middle East and on to Egypt. By 1355 BCE there was a guidebook for the selection, training, and management of warhorses, written for the use of Hittite charioteers. Most chariots of the ancient world were designed to carry at least two warriors, one to drive and the other to wield javelin or sword.

  In addition to the increased weaponry, the charioteers had another advantage over foot soldiers. A vehicle drawn by one or more horses, usually galloping, was far more intimidating than a warrior on foot. Unfortunately for the horses, being harnessed, whether singly, in tandem, or in fours, made them more vulnerable to accident and injury. It also turned them into large and often clumsy targets.

  When officers realized that it was considerably more comfortable to go off to war with a horse, rather than marching with the foot soldiers, they helped change the way battles were conducted. The plumes, gold trappings, and other adornments guaranteed that enemy soldiers would recognize the value of directing a javelin or spear into the flanks of a horse carrying an important figure. An Egyptian pharaoh was impossible to mistake for a regular soldier, thanks largely to the decorations carried by his horse. Later, Roman officers made sure everyone was aware of their rank by their use of horse ornamentation, giving opponents big and tempting targets.

  Mobility became the primary concern as the world moved into the Christian era. Tribes using their horses in a new way hurried along the disintegration of the Roman Empire. The Huns, from the western steppes of Russia, swept into Europe in the fifth century CE, destroying towns and exacting tribute from the surviving citizens. Under their famous chief Attila, the Huns traveled with herds of as many as sixty thousand horses. The spectacle of so many men moving so rapidly on horseback tended to demoralize the opposition even before the first spear was flung or the first arrow was released.

  For the next several centuries, massed archers on fast-moving horses dictated the terms of combat. This method of warfare reached its peak in the thirteenth century with the rise of the Mongols, notably under their first great leader Genghis Khan. The Mongols, from a desolate country northeast of China, raised tough and fast horses, less than fourteen hands tall, that could live on poor feed and little water. These sturdy little horses were necessary for the Mongol nomadic lifestyle and proved ideal for war. The Mongol army was big and the horse herd was even bigger. More than two hundred thousand head traveled with the soldiers, first to China and Russia, then as far west as the eastern part of Europe.

  The Mongols also used their warhorses in a new way. Mounted scouts preceded, paralleled, and followed the vast army to check terrain and look for enemy soldiers. Skilled riders on the very best horses acted as couriers to pass messages between sections of the huge army and back to Mongolia. The horse-based Mongol army was extraordinarily effective and would probably have devastated the rest of Europe as well if problems at home hadn’t stopped the momentum. The Mongols returned to Mongolia, but Europe had learned a great deal from the invaders about horses and war.

  Mobility and speed were hard on horses. Genghis Khan once moved his army one hundred thirty miles in two days, and he and other generals often demanded fifty miles a day from their mounted soldiers. This required a lot of grazing and water for the horses, resources often unavailable along the route. The Mongols lost many thousands of horses to hunger and thirst during a major campaign.

  Mobility and speed also came mostly with small horses that were unarmored or lightly armored, a fact that ensured the deaths of thousands of animals in battle. After the Mongols left, European military leaders thoroughly understood the utility of light horses, but they also grew to understand that bigger horses would be required with new and heavier weapons and the trappings of war.

  The number of equine fatalities in war went down briefly as horses and humans grew in height and weight. But as the horse grew stronger, so did the weaponry, making armor or other protection more important. Horse armor reached its apex during the Middle Ages, usually in the form of padding and hardened leather. But even when metal was added, armor provided limited protection against the increasingly deadly weapons of war.

  The crossbow, known since ancient times, evolved into a portable all-metal device that launched an iron bolt capable of penetrating armor. It had a remarkable range of as much as three hundred fifty yards. This was followed by an even more deadly weapon. The longbow, with similar range but also the capability of launching a dozen projectiles a minute, became a more important weapon than the crossbow late in the fourteenth century. Both could kill an armored horse.

  The gunpowder-based firearms that began arriving in Europe in the mid-fifteenth century would eventually supplant both. In each case, the soldiers who used the weapons soon discovered that it was easier to aim at the larger target that a horse provided. They also found that it was almost as effective to incapacitate a horse as it was to eliminate his rider. Later, when horses were hitched to artillery pieces, killing a h
orse became even more useful.

  The long history of horses at war also proved that injury or death in battle was often the least of the hazards. In the nearly six thousand years that people had taken their horses off to war, they had found that the fundamental nature of horses often made it difficult to use them in military campaigns, as valuable as they might be.

  Horses evolved to graze, eating a large volume of food over most of the day. Left to his own choice, a horse will graze sixteen or more hours a day, taking in at least a pound and a half of feed for every hundred pounds of his own weight. By that standard, a nine-hundred-pound light cavalry horse would need more than thirteen pounds of hay or other feed per day, while an eleven-hundred-pound artillery horse would require closer to seventeen. Multiply those figures by the size of the horse herd maintained by an army, and you have a staggering amount of feed to provide day after day.

  Caretakers of warhorses also knew well that the phrase “strong as a horse” bore little relationship to reality. Horses were equally subject to contagious disease as human soldiers, with the additional problem of being unable to lie down for more than short periods without contracting pneumonia or colic, both often fatal. Serious wounds to the limbs were usually fatal to horses since amputation was not an option. Soldiers with amputations might have a modest chance of survival.

  When, three weeks into the Civil War, Thomas Jackson took possession of his two new sorrel horses, the most likely predictor of their chances for survival was a war that took place five thousand miles away. The Crimean War had ended in 1856, and by 1861 it was already recognized as something new and terrible in the history of warfare. It was a good thing that the sorrels had not known what happened to the equine participants in that war.

  The war, which featured Britain and France on one side and Russia on the other, resulted from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the resulting conflict over who would control their client states in western Asia. It took place primarily on the Crimean Peninsula, an unwelcoming fragment of land that jutted from Ukraine into the Black Sea. The Crimea was sweltering in summer, deadly cold in winter, and covered by mountains that offered little grazing for horses.

  The Crimean War was mostly a conflict of infantry and powerful new artillery, but enough cavalry was involved to raise the equine death toll to levels never seen before, particularly in terms of percentages. One British military historian figures 80 percent of the horses involved in the two-year conflict were killed or died of disease.

  Here’s an example. The Inniskilling Dragoons, part of a heavy cavalry brigade, fought well in the Crimea but brought none of its horses back with them. A fire aboard their transport ship Europa just a couple of days out of England in May 1854 killed all fifty-seven of their horses. After acquiring more in Turkey, the regiment performed admirably during the battle of Balaclava the same day in 1854 that the more famous Light Brigade made its doomed charge. Unlike the Light Brigade, the Heavy Brigade succeeded. But the result wasn’t much better for the horses. Of the approximately four hundred heavy dragoon horses who took the field that day, nearly two hundred died in the charge, and many more were mortally wounded or lost.

  Those figures pale in comparison to the losses of the supposedly more agile Light Brigade, which sent six hundred sixty riders into an ill-advised charge against entrenched Russian artillery. One hundred soldiers were killed, while more than four hundred horses died or were grievously wounded. Most of the rest suffered lesser wounds.

  Nearly five hundred horses were lost in 1854’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

  Paul and Dominic Colnaghi, Library of Congress

  That terrible day was followed by a yearlong siege of the Russian stronghold at Sebastopol, a year that included nearly five months of a savage winter. Hundreds of the remaining horses died of starvation, and many that survived were then killed for meat anyway. All this happened just a few years before the outbreak of the American Civil War.

  All things considered, the survival prospects of a horse pressed into military service in May 1861 were poor. Thomas Jackson’s big sorrel, destined to be an infantry officer’s mount, presumably had a somewhat better chance of seeing the end of the war than did the artillery horses rounded up by John Harman, but those chances were still not good. The little sorrel, intended to be a lady’s mount, might have had an even better chance of surviving had he been sent to Anna Jackson. But as things turned out, he did survive quite well indeed.

  Chapter 2

  Horseman

  Thomas Jackson was a man who loved horses. Throughout his life he would buy himself good ones as soon as he could afford to and then make sure that he and his good horses were noticed. It was not so much that his appearance mattered to Jackson—it certainly did not. Rather, it was recognition of his accomplishments that did.

  He was an ambitious and complex man. Money was important to him, as was respect, but he often behaved as if neither was of any consequence. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Jackson barely held on to a teaching job at a small state military college, but he still managed to invest his way into a level of prosperity that brought him land, slaves, and bank accounts.

  He dressed poorly and socialized with some reluctance but still admired good-looking and educated women. He was able to marry one with high social standing and, after her death in childbirth, won the hand of a second attractive young woman from a prominent family.

  All in all, Thomas Jackson had a good opinion of himself. In May 1861 he may have predicted that he would come out of the war with a reputation as a singular warrior. He would have been astonished to know that he would also have a reputation as a bad horseman and that the fine little sorrel he took off the Baltimore and Ohio livestock car would be known as a poor horse.

  Neither was true, no matter how many people talked and wrote about it during and after the war. The little sorrel was a good-quality horse and Thomas Jackson, the new major of Virginia troops, was a good enough horseman to know it.

  It was true that the horse was different, not what an officer and a gentleman might be expected to ride, but that was no problem for Jackson. His own riding style was hardly that of an officer and a gentleman. Jackson came to war with a lifetime of familiarity with horses and from a family with generations of close contact with good ones. But his extensive experience with horses contributed to the reputation he was about to earn as an inferior rider.

  Variations on the word “ungraceful” were used most frequently to describe Jackson’s form on horseback. “He was an ungraceful horseman,” wrote General Richard Taylor, who admired him otherwise. As a rider, “he was not a very graceful one,” noted John George Gittings, Confederate soldier and distant relative of Jackson. The observation was voiced by almost everyone who saw him ride and others who based their opinions on hearsay.

  Next came the nearly universal opinion that he rode with his stirrups far too short. Staff officer Henry Kyd Douglas described exchanging horses with Jackson during the Second Battle of Manassas and finding the stirrup leathers too short by a third of their length. The stirrups, Douglas noted, were “of no use to me.” He claimed that he would have been better off riding bareback as he dashed away to deliver a message. Jackson, meanwhile, hiked up the leathers on the new horse by the same third.

  Georgia volunteer W. H. Andrews hazarded a guess as to precisely how short Jackson’s stirrups were. “Six inches too short,” Andrews wrote, “putting his knees nearly level with his horse’s back.”

  Many observers also noted that Jackson leaned too far forward in the saddle. John Esten Cooke, a Virginia poet and volunteer soldier, wrote the first full biography of Jackson shortly after the general’s death in 1863. “The general rode in a peculiar fashion,” Cooke wrote, “leaning forward somewhat.”

  A few commented on the position of his toes in the stirrups. Oddly, some suggested that his toes pointed too far out, while others remarked t
hat the wayward toes pointed in. General Taylor was in the “toes turning out” camp, describing Jackson with “huge feet with outturned toes thrust into his stirrups.” Indiana poet and artist Peter Fishe Reed, who cobbled together northern newspaper articles into one of the earliest books to mention Jackson, believed the opposite of Jackson’s feet. Reed wrote in 1862 in his Incidents of the War; or, the Romance and Realities of Soldier Life that Jackson rode with “short stirrups, knees cramped up, heels stuck out behind.”

  To be fair, Reed almost certainly never laid eyes on Jackson, mounted or otherwise, but he said he was quoting a lady who had known the general well. That lady, according to Reed, claimed “that she has never seen him on horseback without laughing.” Reed doesn’t name the lady, nor does he explain the circumstances in which she laughed at Jackson.

  These descriptions, probably somewhat accurate, manage to transform themselves into the widely held belief that Thomas Jackson was a dreadful rider, which was not accurate. Some of the early writers did recognize the difference between appearance and skill. John Gittings acknowledged that Jackson was a good rider, even if he was graceless. Edward Alfriend, a Virginia infantry officer, noted that Jackson’s riding skills appeared to change under fire. “In battle he sat perfectly erect and seemed to grow taller,” Alfriend wrote.

  A man of Thomas Jackson’s family background and personal history should have been a skilled rider. The first Jackson ancestor to arrive in North America was the future Confederate general’s great-grandfather, a member of a famously horse-loving immigrant group known variously as Scotch-Irish, Scots-Irish, or Ulster Scot. That man was John Jackson, born in Northern Ireland in the early eighteenth century.

  John Jackson would probably have called himself Irish without specifying further. He, like most Irish immigrants who came to America before the nineteenth century, was from the northern part of the island but rarely differentiated between the two sections.