Union troops crossing Antietam Creek. Hauser’s Ridge is directly ahead.
Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 1
“The enemy, it seems, are getting our range,” Jackson said, according to McLaws’s aide, who wrote about the scene later. Much to the relief of the aide and McLaws, Jackson turned Little Sorrel’s head and moved out of range.
Jackson’s soldiers managed to push back a final Federal charge, and by nine o’clock in the morning the sides were where they had been when the first cannon opened fire. It was an expensive return to the status quo. About five thousand soldiers of both sides lay dead or wounded, a casualty rate of more than 30 percent. Jackson’s wing alone suffered nearly 40 percent casualties. Nobody counted the horses, but many died that morning.
One of the most evocative images of the Battle of Antietam was the Alexander Gardner photograph taken a few days later of a dead but unburied white horse, the mount of a Confederate colonel also killed in the battle. The horse looks peaceful, as if he were quietly napping. He probably lay down in pain and died of his wounds, untended because there were so many soldiers in need of help that terrible day.
The Gardner photograph of a dead Confederate horse became famous throughout the North.
Alexander Gardner Photograph, Library of Congress
The battle moved south and Jackson saw no more significant action that day. But Little Sorrel got no rest. Jackson immediately began to search for a way to attack the Union left as the battle exploded at the center. Lee wanted the attack from the left wing to lessen the pressure on the center. Jackson wanted it because attack was what he always wanted to do.
The assault never happened. The Union artillery remained strong on the left and Jackson’s losses had been too heavy to launch an effective attack on artillery. He spent the remainder of the twelve-hour battle riding Little Sorrel up and down his line, searching for openings and looking for ways to attend to his wounded.
As evening approached, the battle had shifted far south of Sharpsburg itself, with the Union troops steadily gaining the upper hand. The very late arrival of the division commanded by A. P. Hill, finally finished with dealing with the captured Federal troops at Harpers Ferry, saved the Army of Northern Virginia from destruction at Antietam.
More than twenty-three thousand soldiers were killed or wounded during the battle, making it the single bloodiest day in American history. The Union side lost two thousand more men than the Confederates, but Lee’s army was less than half the size of McClellan’s and had lost a much greater percentage of its total force. Even so, Lee chose not to withdraw overnight. He was prepared to defend against a Union advance if necessary, and he spent the next day supervising aid to the wounded and removal of the dead from the field.
But Jackson remained eager to attack, at least until he realized that the horrific losses suffered by the Union army hadn’t prompted McClellan to withdraw. General John Bell Hood, whose division had played a key role in stopping a particularly robust Union attack, described meeting Jackson and Little Sorrel the morning of September 18.
“That morning I arose before dawn and rode to the front, where, just before dawn, General Jackson came pacing up on his horse,” Hood wrote in his memoirs. Jackson asked him if McClellan’s troops had pulled out overnight. When told they hadn’t, Jackson told Hood, “I hoped they had,” and paced away on Little Sorrel.
That night, under cover of darkness, Lee withdrew his troops from Sharpsburg and headed back across the Potomac River to Virginia. The withdrawal made the Union army the technical victor, although the battle had resulted in nothing more than a return to the status quo. But the overall effect of the Battle of Antietam was momentous. Jackson and Lee had both been eager to invade the North and that invasion was over for now. In Washington, Abraham Lincoln had been eager to make a move to emancipate the slaves in the rebellious states, and that process had now begun. Within weeks, Lincoln issued a tentative Emancipation Proclamation, and shortly after that the British government rejected a long-standing Confederate hope that Britain would help end the war in the South’s favor.
Jackson’s troops provided the rear guard for Lee’s retreating army. He expected McClellan to follow and thought an attack likely. To Lincoln’s great disappointment, McClellan, possessed of the delusion that Lee was retreating with a hundred thousand troops, failed to pursue. In reality, Lee had fewer than thirty thousand men fit to fight, while McClellan could have overwhelmed them with his sixty-five thousand.
The army took hours to cross the Potomac in the dark, with Jackson’s wing last to leave Maryland. According to his early biographer Robert Dabney, Jackson watched every man cross. “For hours, he was seen seated upon his horse in the middle of the river, as motionless as a statue, watching the passage of his faithful men,” Dabney wrote shortly after the war. “Nor did he leave this station until the last man and the last carriage had touched the southern shore.” The final man crossed at 10:00 AM on September 19.
That night McClellan did try to pursue, crossing the Potomac near Shepherdstown, now in West Virginia but then still Virginia. A brief violent clash resulted, and McClellan decided that the pursuit would be too dangerous. Simultaneously, Lee decided that his Maryland adventure was truly over, giving up any immediate hope of returning to Maryland. Jackson and Lee had dreamed of a success that would force the Union to the bargaining table, and that dream was lost.
The brightest spot of the Maryland campaign had been Jackson’s capture of Harpers Ferry and twelve thousand five hundred Union troops. But the success had been fleeting. The Union soldiers had now been paroled, and Harpers Ferry was soon back in Union hands. The Maryland invasion, while not a total failure, was near to it.
The return to Virginia brought two months of reorganization and rest. In October, Stonewall Jackson was promoted to lieutenant general and in November his wing became known as the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. The army, devastated by its losses in Maryland, began to grow again. Stragglers who had failed to cross the Potomac to fight in the North began drifting back, and recruiting picked up in the wake of the fears produced by Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.
For Little Sorrel, October and November were comfortable months. He was used, but not excessively, and there was a reasonable supply of feed for the horses of the army. The invasion may have failed in one respect, but it did take pressure off farmers in the Shenandoah Valley and elsewhere. Hay came in, grain was harvested, and Little Sorrel ate well.
Jackson moved headquarters several times in the autumn of 1862, including a stay at Bunker Hill, a tiny community in Berkeley County near the battlefield at Falling Waters where he had first seen action fifteen months earlier. Jackson established his headquarters at Edgewood, the home of John Boyd. Early biographer John Esten Cooke said Jackson and Little Sorrel were especially busy during the Bunker Hill stay. Jackson “was often seen moving to and fro among his troops on his old sorrel horse with the old uniform,” Cooke wrote just after the war. “He was always greeted with cheers by his men.”
During the stay in the Bunker Hill camp, J. E. B. Stuart sent his Prussian aide Heros von Borcke with a gift uniform coat he had ordered for Jackson from his Richmond tailor. Stuart’s gift was a magnificent creation of gray wool, gilt buttons, and gold lace.
“I was heartily amused at the modest confusion with which the hero of many battles regarded the fine uniform from many points of view, scarcely daring to touch it,” von Borcke wrote in his memoirs. Jackson at first said he would keep the coat as a memento but eventually agreed to try it on. “Having donned the garment,” von Borcke remembered, “he escorted me outside the tent to the table where dinner had been served in the open air. The whole of the staff were in a perfect ecstasy at their chief’s brilliant appearance.”
He later put the coat away, refusing to wear it for several months.
Stuart was one of many Jackson friends and admirers who thought he also deserved a better-looking horse, but Stuart knew better than to suggest that Jackson replace Little Sorrel. Jackson did accept a fine new bridle and martingale from an admirer in Winchester. Little Sorrel, with a natural balanced head carriage and the outstanding balance of his gait and breed, may have been an unlikely candidate for a martingale, a strap designed to prevent a horse from throwing his head around. One photograph taken later in his life shows an uncomfortable Little Sorrel with a far-too-short martingale.
In late November, Robert E. Lee noticed Federal activity on the northern side of the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg. He sent a message to Jackson, asking him to prepare his corps to move east. A few days later, Jackson decided to hurry ahead of his corps and, along with Little Sorrel and a small staff, headed toward Lee to learn about the next chapter of their war.
Chapter 10
Defending the Rappahannock
Stonewall Jackson liked very little about what he knew of Lee’s plans to defend against the coming Federal offensive. The weather was terrible on November 29, with relentless snow and sleet, reminding Jackson, his aide James Power Smith, and four couriers that they were facing another winter campaign. But winter fighting hadn’t much bothered Jackson twelve months earlier and it was unlikely to trouble him now.
Nor did the prospect of another battle against the massive Army of the Potomac. Jackson came alive under fire. The hotter the fighting, the more his unique skills came to the fore. Jackson’s problem was the location Lee had chosen to make his stand against the Federal army and its new commander Ambrose Burnside.
Jackson preferred to make a stand farther south on the banks of the North Anna River, but Lee thought the Rappahannock River town of Fredericksburg, with hills providing ideal siting for artillery and opportunities to hide infantry, was a better choice. Jackson also knew that the Confederate position in Fredericksburg would be utterly defensive, and Jackson was always a soldier who preferred offense to defense.
Little Sorrel had been the natural choice to make a long, fast ride to get to Lee. He was quick and comfortable and did what every good horse does. He tried his best to respond precisely to what his human partner wanted. The five other horses struggled to keep up with Jackson’s fast-pacing mount. With his secure pacing gait he fared better than the trotting horses of the staff on the dirt-chinked wood of the Orange Plank Road.
As for the prospect of battle, the horse might well have assumed battle would be just ahead. Nineteen months into his war, Little Sorrel had participated in nearly a dozen marches that resulted in battle. Like his rider, he may have been eager to get started. Years later, he was known for his excitement at the sound of martial music and artillery salutes. At any rate, it was clear that he would never shy from battle, so he paced willingly toward Fredericksburg.
At noontime the group was about halfway to Fredericksburg and took a break at one of the few houses in the tangled second- and third-growth woodland known locally as the Wilderness. It was a former tavern, now the home of clergyman Melzi Chancellor. Jackson and the others were given lunch and the horses were fed before they continued the long day’s ride.
As the group drew closer to the city in the late afternoon, snow began falling heavily. They began to appreciate just how close battle might be.
“One of the most dismal sights of war was presented to us,” said James Power Smith, writing half a century later. “The road was quite filled with wagons and carts and people on foot, unhappy refugees from Fredericksburg.”
The goal of Jackson’s party was not Fredericksburg but Lee’s headquarters, five miles south of the city on Mine Road. After a warm welcome by Lee, the group found lodging for the night at a nearby estate. At first they were refused, but Smith told the owner that it was Stonewall Jackson himself asking and the group received a warm welcome. Smith, who remembers that his own dinner was very good, fails to record whether Little Sorrel and the horses were stabled or tied outside. They were, presumably, fed and watered after their trip of nearly forty miles.
The next morning, Sunday, November 30, Jackson and Smith rode north into Fredericksburg, where they were surprised and saddened to realize that they could hear no church bells. After sitting on their horses for a few minutes in the center of town, they moved down to the river. A small brigade of Mississippi infantry formed a thin picket line along the west bank, knowing that as many as a hundred thousand Union solders waited to cross the river. Little Sorrel and the other horses drank from the Rappahannock before turning back south toward Lee’s headquarters.
Jackson established his own headquarters on the grounds of Fairfield, Thomas Coleman Chandler’s plantation. Fairfield had once consisted of twenty-five hundred acres of rich farmland surrounding an impressive brick house as well as dozens of outbuildings, all maintained by an army of slaves. But Fairfield had lost dozens of slaves during the early years of the war, thanks to nearby Federal occupation, and the plantation was no longer particularly prosperous. Still, Fairfield was big enough for Jackson’s corps when it arrived, in addition to being close to Lee’s headquarters. Jackson chose to remain in a tent with his staff rather than taking up the Chandlers’ offer of a room in the main house.
Little Sorrel was probably not stabled, but he must have appreciated another important attribute of Fairfield. It was less than half a mile from Guiney Station, a stop on the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad, the primary supply depot for the Army of Northern Virginia. By December 1, there was almost no grazing available for any horse, not even for the mount of a corps commander. All hay and grain had to be shipped in, and proximity to the depot gave Little Sorrel an advantage. As a small, hardy horse of about eight hundred fifty pounds, his requirements were less than those of larger, more impressive animals, but he was known for his good appetite and as usual appreciated his regular meals.
The four divisions of the Second Corps began arriving on December 1. Jim Lewis and the rest of Jackson’s staff were among the first to show up, providing Jackson with at least one more mount. Although Little Sorrel is the only horse mentioned during the days leading up to the battle in Fredericksburg, Jackson still owned Big Sorrel and may have owned or could have borrowed others. His next best-known horse—the handsome bay stallion named Superior—didn’t arrive until the following February.
Jackson was presented with still another good-looking bay a month after his arrival in Fredericksburg. But all evidence suggests that he had two horses to choose from during these important days of preparation for battle and the horse he usually chose was Little Sorrel.
Work for a corps commander’s horse during the first ten days of December consisted mostly of brief trips. The four divisions of Jackson’s Second Corps had been assigned to form the right wing of the Army of Northern Virginia during the coming battle. The front was only two miles long, so Little Sorrel traveled mostly short distances as Jackson arranged his divisions and checked in on their commanders.
The left wing, under First Corps commander James Longstreet, defended the river crossing from a strong position on heights directly to the west of Fredericksburg. Because of the excellence of the position, Longstreet’s corps stretched out over five miles north to south. Jackson’s corps waited in a more exposed position and he was forced to concentrate two of its divisions into a much shorter two-mile front, easier on a horse during preparations but making it more likely that the Union attack would focus on them.
During the first week in December, Jackson, Little Sorrel, and some members of the staff took a longer twenty-mile trip southeast, paralleling the Rappahannock as it headed toward its mouth. Their destination was Port Royal, where one of the Second Corps divisions was still stationed, protecting the strategically located town and, more important, the river. The possibility existed that Burnside might order a crossing there rather than Fredericksburg. The Port Royal troops were also to protect against a
ny Federal gunboats that might try to sneak up the river toward Fredericksburg.
“The river with its southern hills made a strong line of defense,” James Power Smith observed in his memoirs. He also noted that the Port Royal area “afforded no facility for an aggressive movement.” Jackson decided that while Port Royal still needed to be defended, it was an unlikely spot for the main Federal thrust. But he did assess how long it would take his Port Royal division to reach Fredericksburg.
Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss, charged with drawing a map of Caroline County, made the same trip to Port Royal and noticed how the horses of that division suffered badly from “greasy heel,” sometimes called mud rash or mud fever. The disease was less debilitating than some equine illnesses common during war, but it was uncomfortable for the horses. The bacterial skin condition was hard to treat during the pre-antibiotic era, and it was equally difficult to prevent in the circumstances faced by Civil War armies. The solution would have been to stable the horses in dry conditions, an impossibility for the artillery and staff horses that were suffering near Port Royal. Little Sorrel, receiving the close attention of the affectionate Jim Lewis, had his feet dried and groomed daily, even if he didn’t enjoy the protection of a stable.
On December 11 the waiting ended. In the early hours of the morning, the Mississippi pickets on the west side of the river heard the unmistakable sounds of Federal efforts to lay bridges on portable pontoons, signaling that Union soldiers were about to cross the river. Couriers hurried with the information to Lee and both corps commanders.
Mississippi sharpshooters made sure that the Union engineers would not have an easy time building their bridge. After a few hours of back-and-forth sniper fire and the shelling of Fredericksburg, Union troops completed their first bridge and began moving slowly across the Rappahannock. The crossing continued through the day and over night.
Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel Page 16
