Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel

by Sharon B. Smith

  It was a brilliant victory for the Confederate cause, but not the decisive one that both sides had assumed the first major battle would be. The Union army escaped mostly intact because the Confederates felt too damaged themselves to pursue. Both sides now suspected they were in for a long and brutal war. Nearly five thousand casualties forecast a costly and painful conflict. The cost in the lives of horses was also going to be great. A young recruit in the Confederate army was stunned by what he saw. “Somehow I was especially moved by the sight of the battery horses on the Henry Hill, so frightfully torn by shot and shell,” wrote Randolph McKim. “The sufferings of the poor brutes, not in their own battle or by their own fault, but for man’s sake, appealed to me in a peculiar way.”

  For soldier and horse, there was a welcome respite over the next few weeks. Stonewall Jackson returned his borrowed horse and soon was aboard Little Sorrel almost every day. As had already become his custom, Jackson was busy and active while others rested and waited. He drilled his soldiers, reported daily to army headquarters, and welcomed visitors. Soldiers and officers got their first glimpse of the newly celebrated brigadier general from western Virginia during this time of waiting, and the almost universal reaction was that he was poorly dressed and badly mounted. But Jackson was in no hurry to change either his worn blue jacket or his plain little horse.

  Even a promotion to major general in early October didn’t prompt a change to a more eye-catching mount. Jackson was then ordered west to take over the Department of the Shenandoah, a unit that came to be known as the Valley Army. He was to go without his Stonewall Brigade, to make use instead of the limited manpower he found in the Shenandoah Valley, taking with him only his staff and his horses.

  If the thought dismayed him, he said nothing. He was aboard Little Sorrel on November 4 when he made a dramatic goodbye to his brigade. It was long remembered as a rousing speech of praise and tribute, one in which Stonewall Jackson showed unprecedented emotion and unusual trust in his horse. As he reached the climax of his oratory he dropped his reins and raised his hands toward heaven.

  “You are the First Brigade in the Army of the Potomac,” he told his troops, adding, “By your future deeds and bearing you will be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in our second War of Independence.”

  With that exhortation he gathered up Little Sorrel’s reins and galloped away to the cheers of the men. Jackson and a handful of staff rode directly to the station at Manassas Junction, where they dismounted and climbed aboard a train to the Shenandoah Valley. Little Sorrel was left behind.

  The separation didn’t last long. The day after Jackson’s departure his Stonewall Brigade, consisting of five regiments of infantry and an artillery company, were ordered west to join him. It’s not known whether Little Sorrel arrived earlier or traveled with the brigade, which arrived in at its new base of operations in Winchester on November 10. Jackson already had about sixteen hundred militia and a few hundred poorly controlled but effective cavalry under the flamboyant Turner Ashby. The Valley Army had formed its nucleus.

  Shortly after his arrival in Winchester, Little Sorrel met the man who would become the second most important person during his career as a warhorse. If asked to pick a favorite, Jim Lewis may actually have been at the top of the little horse’s list. Lewis was a black man, a resident of Lexington, a good cook, and an affectionate caretaker of horses. That’s all that is known for sure about him.

  Lewis is variously described as a slave, a hired slave, or a free black man. According to the best evidence available, Jim Lewis was indeed a slave, but he didn’t belong to Jackson. Stonewall Jackson rented Lewis from his owner for $150 a year to fill a job variously known as body servant or camp servant.

  Jim Lewis is shown on the left in 1866’s “Prayer in Stonewall Jackson’s Camp.”

  J. C. Buttre, Library of Congress

  By November 1861, that job had become well defined. Body servants were black men, mostly slave but some hired, whose basic duties were to clean, forage for food, cook, maintain the equipment and clothing of, and care for the horses of their white masters in the Confederate army. During the first year of the Confederacy, many officers and some wealthy enlisted men brought body servants to war. But food later became so scarce that most enlisted men sent their slaves home, leaving the use of black body servants to their officers.

  Jackson did employ a servant, probably a black man, earlier in the war to perform at least some of the duties of a body servant. He reported to his wife after First Manassas that his coat was damaged during the battle, “but my servant, who is very handy, has so far repaired it that it doesn’t show very much.” It’s not known if that servant did other duties, including horse care, or what became of him. Jackson also employed a black cook named George, probably not the man who repaired the jacket, but nothing is known of what became of him either.

  High-ranking officers could also utilize soldier orderlies to perform some personal service, particularly horse care, but many Confederate officers came from a society where men were more comfortable with close personal service given by blacks than whites. Even Jackson, who grew up in the isolated mountains of western Virginia, had been around slaves most of his life and was a slave owner himself. He owned at least half a dozen during his lifetime, and he sold and hired out some of the men and women he owned. His will left four slaves to his wife Anna, who promptly freed them.

  But Jackson also believed that slaves, like everybody else, should learn to read. He and his wife taught their slaves to read, in violation of Virginia law and Southern custom. Jackson also ran a Sunday school for blacks, free and enslaved, for several years, resolutely keeping it open in spite of pressure from friends and neighbors to close it. Jackson was a man of contradictions in many things, no more so than in his association with human slavery.

  In Jim Lewis he chose a man who gave him steadfast service and who, in exchange, received trust and even respect. More important to Little Sorrel, Jackson hired a man who loved and protected his horses, even going so far as to occasionally challenge Jackson’s orders regarding his horses. Jackson was known to be a strict slave owner, requiring absolute obedience, but he was so generous with Lewis that members of his staff sometimes complained about the servant’s special and better treatment.

  Census evidence suggests that Jim Lewis was a man in his early fifties when he arrived in Winchester, although some memoir writers described him as younger. Henry Kyd Douglas called him “a handsome mulatto in the prime of his life.” The one illustration believed to show Jim Lewis does depict a man much younger than fifty.

  Baltimore-based artist Adalbert Volck, a devoted supporter of the Confederate cause, drew “Prayer in Stonewall Jackson’s Camp” after meeting the general and his staff in 1962. The scene is imaginary, but it does show a young black man close behind Jackson as he prays at a camp service. Volck either never met Jim Lewis or assumed he was much younger than he really was. J. C. Buttre, who changed some of the figures but left Lewis as a very young man, engraved a better-known version of this scene in 1866.

  Jackson probably knew Lewis before calling him to Winchester. He wasn’t likely to have taken on someone for such close and personal service sight unseen. Lewis may have been a student at Jackson’s Sunday school, but no written evidence of that exists.

  Lewis was a good rider, and that may have contributed to Jackson’s choice since horse care was such an important part of the job. Later in the war Jackson allowed Lewis to ride his other horses, even his more valuable, better-looking ones, while he remained on Little Sorrel himself.

  Lewis remained with Jackson until the general’s death in 1863 and then continued in service with Jackson’s chief of staff, Alexander Pendleton. The death of Pendleton late in the war was a second blow to Lewis, who returned home to Lexington. He died there shortly after the war ended.

  In addition to reacquiring the Stonewall Brigade an
d his favorite horse, Jackson began eyeing other Confederate forces to the west. He asked for and received control of several thousand additional men assigned to other generals west of the Shenandoah Valley. Among them was Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee Infantry. The twenty-two-year-old Watkins was a close observer and colorful writer, and he was never more colorful than in his description of what he saw the day he arrived in Winchester. “This is the first sight we had of Stonewall Jackson,” Watkins said, “riding upon his old sorrel horse, his feet drawn up as if his stirrups were much too short for him, and his old dingy military cap hanging well forward over his head, and his nose erected in the air, his old rusty saber rattling by his side.”

  Watkins didn’t know it, but Jackson had already begun planning a hazardous winter campaign to drive all Union forces out of western Virginia. Sam Watkins was going to need every bit of his colorful language to describe what was about to happen.

  Chapter 5

  War in Winter

  Some of the officers and men of the Valley Army suspected that Stonewall Jackson might be planning a dreaded winter campaign since he was unusually active riding among the brigades and studying the condition of men and animals. He wasn’t telling anybody in Winchester anything, but he was negotiating privately with officials in Richmond. The men who would have to make the march weren’t particularly concerned since the weather had been unusually warm that fall and early winter. On December 19 Charles Blackford of the Second Virginia Cavalry wrote to his wife, “The weather is the most remarkable I have ever known. It has been perfectly clear for a month and no colder than the average September.”

  The welcome warmth continued through most of December. An ice storm on December 21 should have been taken as a warning that winter wouldn’t hold off forever, but when the troops were told to prepare for a march on New Year’s Day, warm weather had returned. The day was beautiful, and many of the soldiers left their overcoats and blankets to be carried by trailing wagons. Most horses still wore smooth iron shoes. There had been so little snow and ice during the season so far that the footing was fine.

  The leading units of Jackson’s army got under way just after 9:00 AM on January 1, 1862. Some officers were convinced that their goal was the Federal garrison at Romney, a small but strategic mountain town forty-two miles west of Winchester. They were surprised when they were directed north by staff members of the notoriously closed-mouthed Jackson, but the day was so pleasant and the troops so well rested that nobody questioned the order.

  Jackson himself was late joining his column. He spent a few hours making arrangements for lodging for his wife Anna, who had traveled north to join her husband during the weeks of late autumn. A few hours later, personal business taken care of, he hopped aboard Little Sorrel and the pair paced quickly along the column, reaching the lead before nightfall.

  Something else arrived along with the commanding general. A cold northern wind was already blowing hard as the troops stopped for the night, less than ten miles from where they started. They found the supply wagons badly strung out and most of the soldiers were unable to reach either their blankets or their dinner. Hunger as well as frigid rain and snow made sleep nearly impossible.

  Once snow had covered the ground there was also very little for horses to eat, except for the limited supplies of grain their riders or drivers had the foresight to carry. The cold and snow bothered the horses less than it did their humans, but their hunger was just as real.

  The next day officers and some of the soldiers realized they were headed to a second Federal garrison at the resort town of Bath, north of Winchester. The occupying force there was small and the town was less strategically important than Romney, but Jackson believed it had to be subdued to protect his column from an attack from the flank as it approached the more desirable Romney, farther to the south and west.

  Alternating layers of mud, ice, and snow covered the road by morning and travel became excruciatingly slow. Private Marcus Toney of Tennessee was one of the late additions to Jackson’s army. He described in his memoirs the road conditions on the second day of the march. “After a few companies had passed over the snow became as slick as ice,” Toney wrote. “Skating would have been good if a fellow had had skates.” Toney was speaking of soldiers rather than horses, but the animals had equal difficulty keeping their balance. Those pulling wagons and artillery pieces had the additional problem of mud so deep that the road was nearly impassible in places, further delaying the food for soldiers and feed for horses.

  John Lyle’s company had been ordered to remain at the rear with the headquarters wagons to guard Jackson’s archives of orders, reports, and other papers. He got a close-up view of what was going on. “The grade was not only steep but was cut into holes, axle-deep,” Lyle wrote later. He was amazed by the variety and volume of the oaths from the frustrated teamsters who struggled to extricate the wagons. “But the mules and horses hitched to the wagons were hardened to it and their sensibilities were untouched,” he added.

  On January 3, as the column continued to inch its way to Bath, heavier snow began falling, adding to the misery of man and horse. That night, snow covered the sleeping soldiers, leaving behind “white mounds in the shape of graves” on the morning of January 4, according to John Lyle. One by one, the mounds burst open and “live men popped out of them.”

  On January 4, the fourth miserable day of marching, the leading elements of the column had reached Bath. As they set up in a line for possible attack, Marcus Toney got his first glimpse of his commanding general. It was the best thing he had experienced on the march, and Jackson’s little horse was part of it.

  “General Stonewall Jackson rode up on Old Sorrel,” Toney wrote in his memoirs. “The General wore a skull cap, a blouse, gray jacket, and the reins hung loosely on Old Sorrel’s neck. He looked more like a plow horse than a warrior.”

  The Federal forces withdrew across the Potomac River to Hancock, Maryland, leaving Bath to the Confederates. Jackson ordered a bombardment of Hancock, demanding the Union surrender. The Federal commander refused and, after a couple of days of cold, snowy siege, Jackson gave up and continued on to his original goal of Romney. His troops did manage to destroy railroad and telegraph equipment and acquire some greatly needed supplies before their departure.

  The weather didn’t improve as they headed southwest. A massive snowstorm struck the mountains just after the column moved out of Bath, piling snow on top of ice. Soldiers and horses slipped and fell, several suffering fractures. A leg or arm fracture was occasionally fatal to a soldier, if it was severe enough and infection set in. A limb fracture was always fatal to a horse.

  Stonewall Jackson and his horse remained unscathed. Little Sorrel might have been shod with cleats, but the army’s farriers may not have bothered because of the warm weather in early winter. His pacing gait was the primary source of his secure footing, but his short-bodied conformation helped as well. He probably suffered far less from the slippery conditions than other horses on the march.

  His comfort may have been greater as well. Little Sorrel’s ancestors, both immediate and distant, were from the north and he inherited a predisposition to grow a thick winter coat that would have been well grown by the first week in January. Photographs in later life show Little Sorrel with a remarkably furry coat, no matter what time of year the picture was taken. Elderly horses often have long coats that shed slowly, so the photographs may be somewhat misleading. But he certainly had the genes for an ample hair coat in January 1862.

  He would have had little shelter during the nightly bivouacs, but some horses, given a choice, will remain outside twenty-four hours a day, year-round. Even those who seek shelter are often satisfied with a canopy of trees, something they found in good supply during the Romney expedition. A horse with a thick hair coat can tolerate temperatures well below freezing, even with limited shelter.

  Exposure to cold and snow might not have been mu
ch of a problem to Little Sorrel and any other horse lucky enough to have lived in the north, but all horses would have suffered from a continued shortage of feed and water. Heavy snow cover made grazing impossible, and all their feed had to be supplied by wagon. As the expedition wore on and road conditions worsened, food for soldiers and feed for horses became increasingly scarce.

  Water was also a problem for the horses in the column. In normal weather with grazing available, a horse of Little Sorrel’s size would require about eight gallons of water a day. That figure increases in winter, with no moisture absorbed from grass. A horse experienced in winter living might get some of his water needs from eating snow, but most domesticated horses can’t do that effectively. Ponds and streams had frozen over by the second week of the expedition to Romney and some of the horses in the column began to show the illnesses typical of water shortages. The tough Little Sorrel remained healthy.

  Jim Lewis traveled with the wagon trains and was available for horse care when the column stopped at night. He would have done only minimal grooming, but nightly hoof care would have been vital. In snowy weather, shod horses are vulnerable to the formation of hard little snowballs in the concave underside of their hoofs. These packed balls can extend beyond the rim of the hoof and may cause slips and falls as well as an irregular gait that can lead to lameness. Hoofs must be cleaned of ice nightly, and Stonewall Jackson, a horseman from the mountains, would have known it. Little Sorrel carried Jackson throughout the entire Romney campaign and remained sound.