A good horse, he wrote his sister Laura, was important to him because “if an officer wishes to appear best he should appear well in everything.” Everything would presumably extend to the length of his stirrups.
After the occupation of Mexico City ended in 1848, Jackson was transferred to Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor. He gave up the good Mexican horse but purchased another one in New York. This horse was named Fancy, presumably because of the animal’s quality and good looks, and Jackson rode him daily, even though travel by horseback was rarely among his duties at the garrison. There are no descriptions of Jackson’s riding from this time, but his style most likely included the forward lean from his racing years and the short stirrups from Mexico.
Jackson was proud and fond of Fancy. He was so upset by Fancy’s brush with death at a stable fire at Fort Hamilton in March 1850 that he felt unable to visit his sister in Virginia that spring. A few months later he was forced to sell the handsome Fancy and travel to the wilds of Florida to search for Indians and help build Fort Meade.
Although he rode out from the fort in a fruitless search for Indians, he never wrote of acquiring another horse for himself in Florida. Either he borrowed one or the horse he did purchase proved unworthy of mention. In 1851, Thomas Jackson accepted a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. He left the regular army but retained his love for good horses.
He left no record of specific horses he owned during his early years at the institute. After his second marriage, he decided it was time to own another impressive horse and acquired a bay carriage horse that he creatively named Bay. Anna Jackson remembered Bay as a particularly good-looking animal.
“His judgment of horses was excellent and it was very rare that he was not well-mounted,” Mrs. Jackson said later. Bay was primarily a driving horse but could also be ridden. What became of Bay is unknown. Jackson rode out of Lexington on a horse on April 21 1861, leading a troop of volunteers off to Richmond to join the Confederate cause. But that horse, whether or not it was Bay, was returned to Lexington and Jackson continued his journey by train. After a few days in Richmond he was sent on to Harpers Ferry, again by train, where he began his war service and his march to fame. He also found the horse that would become famous along with him.
Chapter 3
Mystery Horse
The best evidence of the quality of the little horse is the fact that he was picked out of a load of livestock by two men who knew that while the undersized sorrel looked different from the mental picture that most Virginians had of the ideal warhorse, “different” and “bad” weren’t the same thing at all.
Many of the individual characteristics of the horse eventually known as Little Sorrel weren’t, at first glance at least, what a Confederate officer might pick if he could design his own mount. But much of what appeared to be negative proved invaluable for Thomas Jackson as well as for the horse, which first succeeded and then survived beyond all expectations.
The first thing that people noticed was this horse’s coat color. In most equine activities, color is the least significant characteristic of a good horse. One of the oldest equine adages is this: there is no good horse in a bad color. But in warfare, color actually mattered. The rule of mounted warfare was that an officer should never pick a light-colored horse that will make him stand out, turning himself and his horse into a sizeable target. Although sensible, it was an often-violated rule, one regularly ignored at the very top.
George Washington himself owned a light gray warhorse known as Blueskin, but he preferred the more modestly colored chestnut Nelson as a battle mount. Artists have preferred Blueskin, though, and most equestrian portraits of Washington place him astride a light gray or white horse. But both Washington and Blueskin survived the Revolutionary War anyway.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s white charger Marengo was celebrated during his lifetime and has remained famous ever since. Napoleon liked to be seen, admired, and feared. The prospect of making himself a target because of the color of his horse didn’t worry Napoleon, and that attitude worked out well enough for him. He died in his bed in 1821 at age fifty-one from stomach cancer or poison, depending on whether you subscribe to conspiracy theories.
In one sense it worked out well for Marengo, too. The horse was captured at the Battle of Waterloo and taken to England, where he died at the remarkably advanced age of thirty-eight. His skeleton can still be admired today at the National Army Museum in London. On the other hand, Marengo probably considered himself a sizeable target, although in the end a lucky one, having been wounded eight times in battle.
Jackson’s first cavalry chief, Turner Ashby, loved handsome and extravagantly colored horses, including the magnificent white stallion called Tom Telegraph. Ashby was fortunate to survive the death of the pure white horse in May 1862, when Tom Telegraph was targeted and shot to death. Ashby’s luck didn’t last. He borrowed a horse a few weeks later and was killed moments after the borrowed mount died of gunshot wounds.
Robert E. Lee’s favorite and best-known warhorse was the gray Traveller, who turned much lighter later in life as all grays do. The most familiar photograph of Traveller was taken postwar and does show a tempting target of a horse. But during most of the Civil War, Traveller was iron gray and would have blended in well with the smoke of battle.
When John Harman and Thomas Jackson saw the new horse at Harpers Ferry, they observed an animal of an entirely acceptable color for an officer’s mount, a horse that sported one of the most common equine colors. What they saw was a solid red horse with no white markings and with a mane and tail of a similar shade. Jackson and most likely Harman used the word sorrel to identify the color, but over the next few years, the horse would also be described as chestnut, dun, and claybank. Horse color was in the eye of the beholder in 1861. It still is, even though we now know about the genetic reasons for the hue of a horse’s coat. What word you use to describe a solid red horse depends on the breed of the horse, where you happen to come from, and your own opinion of what you’re looking at.
The same was true in 1861, except perhaps for breed. Horses then were identified mostly by type or use. A horse was either a saddle horse, a driving horse, a riding cob, or a racehorse. Although descendants of a particular stallion might be described as a member of his “breed,” there were no strict requirements of ancestry and no color guidelines to qualify for membership in a breed registry for racing or for any other activity. Today, the choice of word for Little Sorrel’s color is a function of breed and opinion. In 1861, it was strictly a matter of choice.
Today a solid red horse would be called chestnut if it’s a Thoroughbred, Morgan, Standardbred, Saddlebred, or a member of most other breeds, especially those used in English-style riding activities. Some people might use the word “sorrel” for a particularly bright red horse, reserving chestnut for darker shades, but the registration papers will say chestnut.
If the horse is a Quarter Horse or a horse used in Western riding or sports, the same animal is also likely to be called sorrel, although the breed standard recognizes additional names for the red color, including chestnut. The registration papers will report the color, selected by the owner, as the closest to the breed association’s recognized colors.
In 1861, in the absence of registration papers and breed requirements, the choice belonged entirely to the owner. With plenty of exceptions to be found, red horses in the northern states were chestnut and those used in the south and west were sorrel. The majority of memoirs and letters by people who saw him agreed with Jackson that Little Sorrel was indeed sorrel. But some persisted in calling him chestnut.
An even smaller number used the words “dun” and “claybank,” highly subjective terms in the nineteenth century. A dun is a horse whose color, thanks to a gene variation, appears slightly faded, although the mane and tail are usually the primary color. A claybank was essentially the same as a red dun. Some horsemen
reserved this name for a particularly faded-looking red horse, while others used it interchangeably with dun.
Today, a horseman can precisely identify the color of a horse through genetic testing. Chestnut and sorrel are genetically identical, each requiring two copies of a recessive gene for red. So what exactly was Little Sorrel? If the mount on display at the Virginia Military Institute is used as a guideline, he was a light but unfaded chestnut or sorrel, even though some people who saw him in life persisted in calling him dun. Little Sorrel’s original taxidermist, Frederic Webster, as well as technicians who refurbished the mount over the decades, may have added coloring to brighten the coat color so he may really have been dun. Short of genetic analysis with any material that remains, we’ll never know for sure.
Another characteristic of Little Sorrel may or may not have been important to Jackson, but it probably contributed to John Harman’s selection. The little red horse was a gelding, having been castrated as a younger horse. Gelding a horse is an ancient practice, one that was somewhat less common before the twentieth century in the absence of equine anesthesia and antibiotics. But it was widely practiced in horses intended for nonsporting use. Stallions can be difficult to keep. They are often aggressive with other horses, easily distracted by a mare or something they think is a mare, and sometimes hard for a rider to handle. They will be gelded if the owner believes the horse will concentrate better and show less aggression or if he expects little demand for offspring. Little Sorrel was so good natured later in life that it’s unlikely he was gelded for behavior reasons. The operation was probably done because of his size. Then, as now, there was much less demand for small stallions than larger ones.
Little Sorrel was hardly the only prominent gelding among the famous warhorses of the Civil War. According to most records, Robert E. Lee’s Traveller was a gelding, even though a few people remain convinced that his offspring exist. Traveller was well bred and well conformed, so he may have been gelded for behavior. Even as a gelding he was a horse who was known to kick and bite. The only one of cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest’s most prominent horses to survive the war was the gray gelding King Philip, who was reputed to be quiet and good natured except in the presence of blue uniforms. Even gelding didn’t limit King Philip’s aggression toward the enemy.
Some officers didn’t much like geldings, believing them to be too docile for war service. Jackson’s first cavalry commander, the dashing Turner Ashby, preferred stallions, losing two magnificent ones, including the unfortunate white Tom Telegraph, to enemy bullets during the first year of the war. J. E. B. Stuart liked both stallions and mares, particularly mares. Stuart went through a lot of horses during the war and whether or not any were geldings has escaped the record.
John Harman certainly would have preferred geldings for heavy use in the family stagecoach business as well as for war. Little Sorrel’s sex would have been a plus as Harman chose a horse for his commander.
But the horse’s height might have made him think twice. Little Sorrel was most likely about fourteen hands, perhaps an inch or so taller, since his diminutive size was noted by almost everybody who wrote about him. In the mid-nineteenth century, a horse of sixteen hands would be described as tall and a horse of fifteen hands would have been average. The mount at VMI is on a plaster frame rather than the original skeleton. A measurement might not be entirely accurate, so most of our evidence comes from memoirs and journals.
The hand, a unit of measurement for horses and other livestock, is still in use today, centuries after it was standardized. A hand equals four inches, the presumed width of a human hand. Horse heights are expressed in decimal form, even though the measurement isn’t actually decimal. If Little Sorrel were identified as being fourteen hands and two inches, his height would be noted as 14.2.
The measurement is taken on horses at the high point of the withers where the shoulder blades come together. Some other species are measured at the high point of the hip, a system that would have recorded Little Sorrel as even smaller than he was, since his withers were noticeably higher than his hips. Regardless of how he was measured, Little Sorrel was small for his rider. Stonewall Jackson was above average in height for a man of his time, a little over five feet eleven inches, and many observers noted that he looked far too tall for his horse.
Because of the height disparity it’s probably true that Jackson intended Little Sorrel for his wife, who was much shorter at just over five feet. A taller horse would have been too big for her to mount and possibly too difficult to stay aboard. But Jackson soon discovered that height and the ability to carry weight were two different things.
A sturdy horse like Little Sorrel could have been expected to carry 20 percent of his own body weight, perhaps more with the conformation and gait characteristics that he possessed. Jackson was thin, weighing no more than 160 pounds during the war. Little Sorrel probably weighed about 850 to 875 pounds, making him fully capable of carrying the weight of Jackson, his saddle, and other equipment.
There was debate in the nineteenth century and plenty of discussion today about the soundness and health of small horses compared to larger ones. In reality, the lower body weight of a smaller horse means that there’s less stress on bones and joints, and small horses often stay sound longer as a result. Small horses excel as endurance competitors. Arabian horses of no more than 15.2 hands dominate the lineups of one-hundred-mile endurance horse races. Other breeds are also used in endurance competition, but the horses tend to be smaller ones as well, including Appaloosas and Quarter Horses of less than sixteen hands.
More important in determining the potential soundness of a small horse is the circumference of the cannon bone in relation to his body weight. The cannon is the large bone that runs from knee to fetlock (the joint that looks like an ankle). If it’s substantial in spite of the small body size, the horse is likely to be able to withstand a lot of work and enjoy both endurance and weight-carrying ability. The photographs of Little Sorrel show a horse with outstanding bone in the lower leg.
Jackson and Harman estimated the horse they picked to be eleven years old. That’s older than ideal for an animal intended for heavy use, but far from elderly. The age does support the argument that Jackson always intended Little Sorrel for his wife since most horses mellow with age and become easier to ride.
At first glance eleven seems to be an odd estimate of a horse’s age. A more likely choice would be “about ten” or “over ten.” But horsemen of the mid-nineteenth century, in the absence of registration papers, were very good at equine age estimates. Eleven is in fact a key age in dental development. A mouth examination of Little Sorrel would have given a reasonably accurate calculation of his actual age.
At about eleven the shape of the lower incisors begins to change from oval or rounded to more triangular. Also at about age eleven, the corner incisors start to develop a subtle hook in the back, similar to one that appears and disappears several years earlier. The eleven-year-old hook remains in the mouth for a few years, until about age fifteen.
The surface of the teeth changes between ten and eleven years as well. At ten, back teeth still have remnants of cuplike indentations in the center of the teeth. By eleven, the cups are usually gone.
Finally comes Galvayne’s Groove, a controversial method of equine dental aging in which the age of eleven is also key. The method was championed by Dr. Sydney Galvayne, who claimed to be an Australian veterinarian. His 1885 book on dental aging of horses declared that a trace of a narrow dark groove appears at the gum line in the upper third incisor just after the age of ten, becoming a noticeable groove at eleven, and eventually traveling down the entire tooth. Galvayne gave his name to the method well after Little Sorrel’s age had been estimated, but good horsemen already knew about the groove. Some experts today dispute the accuracy of Galvayne’s Groove, but they acknowledge that the groove exists, appearing after about age ten. They argue that the development rate
varies among individual horses.
Horse aging by teeth isn’t an exact science, but the age of eleven happens to be a milestone in several of the methods. All in all, the estimate that Little Sorrel was eleven years old at the time he was acquired by Jackson was probably accurate within a year on either side.
His conformation presented pros and cons to a man looking for a horse to ride to battle. There’s only one photograph of Little Sorrel taken during the war, in May 1863, two years after Jackson acquired him. It shows a horse of an unfamiliar shape, at least to a Virginia horseman. A positive attribute was his short to medium-length back. This characteristic may not create an elegant appearance, but a horse with a shorter back can carry more weight with less discomfort and fewer injuries than one with a longer back.
The only wartime photograph of Little Sorrel, taken in May 1863.
Rodenbough, Photographic History of the Civil War, The Cavalry (Volume 4), 1911.
The little red horse’s large head might not have been visually appealing either, but an experienced horseman wouldn’t have been unduly concerned. However, many would have objected to the steep, sloping croup—the area between the top of the hip and the root of the tail. As a result of the slope, the horse looked like he might be weak in the hindquarters. Little Sorrel did carry his tail fairly high, however, and that would have been a plus.
The pasterns—the section of leg between the fetlock and the hoof—were short and rather upright, considered a conformation flaw by many horsemen, but a horse with such pasterns is less likely to suffer ligament and tendon injuries. His hoofs were reasonably large for his size, although they look to have been trimmed a little too short before the 1863 photograph was taken. They appear to be big enough to stay sound, a vital characteristic in a horse destined for hard and steady work.
Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel Page 5
