Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel

by Sharon B. Smith

  Little Sorrel’s reputed appearance was further solidified in people’s imaginations when Stonewall Jackson became a cornerstone of the Lost Cause concept that began within weeks of the war’s end. The Lost Cause got its name from a book published in 1866 by Southern historian Edward A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates.

  The Pollard theme was that the Confederacy, although composed of fine soldiers, citizens of high moral and social standing, and a righteous cause, was doomed to defeat by the overwhelming size and technological superiority of the North. So it was not the fault of the Confederate army that it was defeated. The Lost Cause idea was first voiced, at least in part, by none other than Robert E. Lee, who in April 1865 tried to soothe the pain of the loss after the surrender at Appomattox. “[T]he Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources,” Lee wrote in his farewell to the army. Over the next few months, Lee quietly compiled figures of comparative strength of manpower and weaponry between his own army and that of Ulysses S. Grant during the time Grant commanded the Army of the Potomac.

  The Lost Cause movement soon developed another basic concept, one that had less of a basis in reality. The war, according to Lost Cause historians, was not about slavery but about states’ rights. Besides, they argued, slavery wasn’t so bad anyway and enslaved people were mostly happy about it. Modern historians from any region never make the argument that slavery was a good thing, and few pretend that threats to slavery and its expansion weren’t the most immediate cause of war, pointing out that even the Confederate constitution itself was careful to prevent member states from doing anything to limit slavery.

  But many people in the North and South do still believe in another keystone of the Lost Cause movement: that Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were essentially perfect examples of the kind of military figure that the prewar South could produce. They were, the argument went, tactically brilliant, brave beyond the normal, and morally upright leaders of men. An additional Lost Cause object of admiration was the ordinary Confederate foot soldier, a hungry, homespun-clad, dirty hero who carried on magnificently despite overwhelming odds. It suited the story that a noble figure—Stonewall Jackson—would be mounted on the equine version of the shabby Confederate foot soldier.

  The first two major biographers of Stonewall Jackson each played important but contradictory roles in the development of the Lost Cause model of Jackson and Little Sorrel. Robert Lewis Dabney, the Presbyterian minister who worked briefly and with limited success as chief of staff for Jackson, certainly knew the general’s horse. He fails to mention Little Sorrel by name in his authorized biography, first published in 1866, but he presents a fully realized heroic portrait of Jackson as an ideal Christian soldier.

  Dabney published an earlier contribution to the Lost Cause concept in his 1863 Defense of Virginia, which was primarily a pro-slavery manifesto. Dabney didn’t pretend that Jackson was in the field for any reason other than the desire to defend the institution “in the name of God and the Right.” Dabney’s Jackson was the ultimate Christian soldier and a martyr to his beliefs. His book, written at least partially from personal experience, became the definitive biography for generations. But no Little Sorrel was to be found, perhaps because he didn’t suit Dabney’s image of Jackson.

  That omission was corrected by the second of the early biographers. John Esten Cooke was a successful poet and novelist when he joined J. E. B. Stuart’s staff early in the war. Cooke, more on the lookout for a good story than Dabney was, presented a heroic but eccentric Jackson in a quickly written biography published in 1863 and expanded in 1866. Cooke’s Stonewall went to battle sucking lemons and raising his hand to heaven. Cooke had some personal experience of Jackson, and he realized that Jackson’s odd little horse was part of a colorful—and saleable—story. His description has lasted for 150 years. “His horse was not a fiery steed but an old raw-boned sorrel,” Cooke wrote, “gaunt and grim but a horse of astonishing equanimity.” Cooke must have formed his impression of Little Sorrel during winter or early spring, because the horse was neither raw-boned nor gaunt the rest of the time.

  In her own biography of her husband, Anna Jackson takes pains to point out that Little Sorrel was plump and round by nature, and she spent many more years with the horse than anyone else, including her husband.

  As the years went by, biographers drew from Dabney, Cooke, and Anna Jackson. As staff members and others who saw Jackson and Little Sorrel in person added their own memories to the historical record, a generally accepted portrait emerged of a brilliant and pious Christian soldier with peculiarities and a strange-looking little horse. Modern biographers tend to downplay Jackson’s peculiarities and pay more attention to the incidents of less-than-perfect leadership in battle. But most continue the story of a poor rider riding an even worse horse.

  Fortunately for his reputation, artistic depictions of Little Sorrel didn’t always parallel the written version as the decades passed. The traditions of equestrian art required a noble horse as well as a noble rider, and Little Sorrel was the victim or beneficiary, depending on your point of view. With only a few exceptions, the sculpted and painted Little Sorrel was a much more magnificent animal, in appearance at least, than the living one.

  During the war and for several years after it ended, most graphic art was produced in the North. Even before the war came, the Confederate states had limited facilities for printing art and those that existed were seriously compromised by the war. But the Northern printmakers were willing to fill the gap and produce items intended to be sold in the former Confederate states. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee were also favorite subjects in the North, and many prints and paintings of the two famous Confederates included horses. Both Traveller and Little Sorrel were known in the North, thanks to wartime newspaper reporting, and many of the artists made an effort to represent the horses they heard about with some degree of accuracy. In the case of Traveller, they succeeded. In the case of Little Sorrel, they mostly failed.

  One of the popular scenes to show a mounted Jackson represented the last meeting of Jackson and Lee. The most famous was an oil painting by E. B. D. Julio, The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson. Completed in 1869, the painting was soon engraved and reproduced by the thousands. Julio apparently realized that Jackson’s horse was a sorrel, but he gave him a wide white blaze instead of an unmarked face. The various engravers and lithographers who repeated the scene showed a similar horse, a sorrel with a blaze.

  The famous and widely distributed Currier and Ives lithograph The Death of Stonewall Jackson showed a believable Little Sorrel, a small alert horse being held by an aide outside the tent where Jackson lay dying of his wounds at Chancellorsville. Other than the horse’s appearance, mostly everything else about the scene was fantasy. Jackson died in a building, not a tent, at Guiney’s Station, not Chancellorsville, and Little Sorrel was miles away at the time of his death. Most of his staff, probably even Jackson himself, believed that Little Sorrel had disappeared during the chaos of the shooting incident. But it was touching to think that Jackson’s favorite horse, who had been with him through so much danger, was still with him as he lay on his deathbed, and the printmakers were determined to include the horse.

  Artist and printmaker David Bendann, who had been a photographer in prewar Richmond, made an effort to create a realistic Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel. Bendann’s equestrian oil of Jackson, done in Baltimore late in the nineteenth century possibly with the help of a hired artist, was widely reproduced in the early twentieth century. Although it shows a more elegant horse, the color and relative size were correct. The Bendann portrait remains one of the most important works issued under the Bendann name and is certainly one of the best-known images of Jackson and Little Sorrel.

  David Bendann produced a painting and a successful print edition of a handsome Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel
.

  David Bendann, c. 1913

  Other engravings and lithographs, sold in both the North and the South, made more egregious mistakes about the horse. Some lost the blaze but changed Little Sorrel to bay. Some added white ankles or legs. But most did have one thing in common. The artists converted the small, round horse into a specimen of equine perfection. They also gave Jackson what they considered to be a better and more graceful seat in the saddle.

  In 1911 the celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth produced an oil painting of Stonewall Jackson on foot overlooking the Shenandoah Valley and holding an unusually small horse. Wyeth created it as the frontispiece for The Long Roll, a novel by Mary Johnston. The horse appears to be bay rather than sorrel or chestnut and Wyeth may have been producing a generic horse rather than Little Sorrel, in spite of the animal’s size. The portrait of the horse is good, but that of Jackson was somewhat abstract and highly controversial. It was “more the likeness of some brutal prizefighter of physical figure and countenance,” complained Anna Jackson, the general’s widow, who was still alive in 1910. Wyeth was taken aback by the vigor of her complaints and eventually gave the original canvas to Mary Johnston rather than exhibiting or selling it.

  This N.C. Wyeth painting of Jackson and Little Sorrel in the Shenandoah Valley was controversial.

  Johnston, The Long Roll, c. 1911

  An early twentieth-century painting shows the most accurate Little Sorrel among any done while there were people still living who had seen the horse in life. This one was in an entirely different medium, a large mural on the wall of a wing of what is now the Virginia Historical Society. It was the work of French artist Charles Hoffbauer, a lover of American scenes, historical events, heroic scale, and generous commissions.

  The Confederate Memorial Association chose Hoffbauer to create four large wall panels for its headquarters showing the progression of the war from the point of view of the Confederate army. Stonewall Jackson was to be the centerpiece of one of the panels. The grouping was eventually named The Four Seasons of the Confederacy and the Jackson panel represented spring, more specifically the spring of 1862, and the still-famous Shenandoah Valley campaign.

  Accuracy was important to Hoffbauer. He amassed a collection of thousands of Civil War photographs, built clay models, and hired dozens of people to pose for the unknown figures in the murals. Perhaps most important to the accuracy of the mounted portrait of Jackson and Little Sorrel, he visited the Confederate Soldiers’ Home next door, where Little Sorrel had spent his last year. The mount was still there when Hoffbauer created his murals.

  Hoffbauer was able to look at something very close to the real thing as he sketched the horse. The artist spoke to residents of the home, some of whom had actually seen horse and rider in life. The result was an equestrian portrait that was as accurate as possible for a scene that was never photographed and was reimagined from a distance of more than fifty years. Little Sorrel is small and attractive, not an inspiring war charger, but precisely suited to his rider. Hoffbauer realized that the Little Sorrel of his painting should be a twelve-year-old in the spring rather than a thirty-six-year-old with a winter coat. He’s standing still, so there is no way to know if Hoffbauer was aware that Little Sorrel was a pacing horse.

  There was no sculptor equivalent of Charles Hoffbauer. The most important equestrian statues of Stonewall Jackson were erected during a period of just over twenty years, between 1919 and 1940. The dedication ceremony of the earliest monument included a number of Confederate veterans, several of whom had seen Jackson and Little Sorrel in life. The next, two years later, included fewer survivors, but there were still a few who had firsthand knowledge. By 1940, when the last of the three major individual statues was unveiled, there was only one veteran still alive who claimed to have seen Jackson and Little Sorrel in person, and he wasn’t at the ceremony. But the fact that observers had no knowledge of what the real thing looked like didn’t keep them from criticizing the statues. In each case, most of the complaints centered on the depiction of the horse rather than the interpretation of Stonewall Jackson.

  The first of the three statues was the most conservative and the least criticized, although the veterans and others who had known Little Sorrel were disappointed to see that, while the rider looked like Stonewall Jackson, the horse looked nothing like his favorite mount. It was no mistake, claimed the sculptor. The horse was Superior, not Little Sorrel at all, even though Jackson probably never rode Superior in battle. This was the mounted Stonewall Jackson on Monument Avenue in Richmond.

  F. William Sievers, the sculptor commissioned to create the seventeen-foot bronze statue, was an Indiana-born resident of Richmond. Sievers was classically trained and preferred to mount Jackson on the Thoroughbred-like Superior rather than the chunky Little Sorrel. His sense of proportion and balance also made him give Jackson a more acceptable seat. In the Monument Avenue statue, Stonewall Jackson sits back in the saddle with stirrups only a tiny bit shorter than normal.

  Shortly after the Richmond statue was unveiled, another Stonewall Jackson equestrian statue was on its way. This one was intended to show Jackson specifically aboard Little Sorrel and an effort was made to do it accurately. It has one major mistake, but many people believe it to be among the best equestrian statues ever sculpted in America, inaccurate or not.

  Early in 1919, eight months before the Monument Avenue statue of Jackson and Superior was dedicated, a Charlottesville financier and philanthropist gave the city a parcel in the center of town in order to develop a park around a statue of Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel. The donor, Paul Goodloe McIntire, was a lover of horses and history and had dreamed for years of such a statue. He commissioned prominent sculptor Charles Keck of New York City to create the monument.

  Like Sievers in Richmond, Keck was classically trained, but he was more of a modernist in his style. So the bronze he created for Charlottesville, although very realistic, was a highly unusual equestrian statue in which movement predominates. Jackson’s familiar cap is gone, lost in the wind. The general rides with his shorter-than-normal stirrups, leaning far forward, as he did in real life. Little Sorrel’s mane and tail are blown back as he races to the front.

  An accurate depiction of the horse was important to Keck and his sponsor. The sculptor traveled to central Virginia to study local horses and horsemanship and used McIntyre’s own favorite riding horse among other live models for Little Sorrel. Some observers complained that the horse was too small for the tall Jackson, but they were quickly quieted with the explanation that the real Little Sorrel did indeed look too small for his rider. But Charlottesville-area horsemen had other complaints. They wanted Little Sorrel to look like “the best kind of Virginia horse,” which of course he never was.

  “The rump is weak and should be filled out a little,” one horse expert said after seeing the model for the proposed bronze. “The rump is fallen,” noted another. “Looks like a damn skabe,” stated a third. Of course, the real Little Sorrel had a low-set tail, a sloping croup, and hindquarters smaller than his shoulders. He was a pacer and that’s exactly how he should have looked. Keck possibly didn’t know about his gait, but he probably had seen photographs of Little Sorrel and accurately depicted the horse’s obvious pacing conformation.

  Keck took his work on the horse as seriously as he did his sculpting of Stonewall Jackson himself. The result was a remarkable depiction of a horse—one so real that he appeared to be trotting briskly across Jackson Park in the center of Charlottesville, and that is precisely the problem with the sculpture.

  “Little Sorrel is shown proceeding at an animated trot with his proper left front leg and proper right hind leg elevated,” reads the description in Charlottesville’s application for the statue to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The relative height is correct, the conformation is correct, the attitude is correct, but the gait is not. The pacer Little Sorrel trots in
the best statue that was ever sculpted of him.

  The quality of the Charlottesville sculpture was recognized as soon as it was unveiled on October 19, 1921, as part of a Confederate veterans’ reunion. Five thousand people, including school children arrayed to represent the Confederate flag, marched to Jackson Park to get the first look at the statue.

  A copy of the Keck statue stands on Courthouse Square in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Jackson’s birthplace. The site is appropriate for both Jackson and his horse since it was in what is now West Virginia that the future Stonewall Jackson first laid eyes on the future Little Sorrel when John Harman chose him from a load of Yankee horses to show his commander as a potential warhorse.

  The best sculpted likeness of Little Sorrel is that of the Charles Keck statues in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Clarksburg, West Virginia, even though he trots rather than paces.

  West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

  A less appropriate location is the site of the final and most familiar of the three individual equestrian statues, the massive sculpture at the Manassas National Battlefield Park. This statue shows a huge, heavily muscled, arch-necked horse that has nothing in common with Little Sorrel except his species.

  Plans for the Manassas statue got under way in the late 1930s when the government announced the establishment of the national park at the site of two important Civil War battles, the First and Second Battles of Manassas. The Sons of Confederate Veterans agreed to donate land they owned on Henry Hill, the place where Jackson received the name “Stonewall,” provided a statue of Jackson was commissioned and erected there.