In 1938 the Virginia legislature appropriated $25,000 for the memorial and gave the Virginia Art Commission the responsibility for acquiring a suitable statue. The requirements were minimal: that Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and his horse “Little Sorrel” be portrayed in bronze and that the “nature, quality, and significance of Stonewall Jackson be expressed and considered in the design of the monument.”
The commission decided to conduct a contest to find a sculptor, and their choice among eighty entries was Italian-born New Yorker Joseph Pollia, whose previous work had included well-received Civil War statues. Both the model and the final sculpture drew an outpouring of complaints so loud and relentless that some people called the controversy the “Third Battle of Manassas.”
There were complaints that Jackson’s face looked too old. After all, he was less than forty when he died. There were complaints that the figure was dressed in a cape, a uniform item that he rarely, if ever, wore. Besides, the Manassas battles were in July and August, hardly cape season. There were further complaints that Pollia had given Jackson muscles that he didn’t possess in life.
But most of the criticism centered on the horse. The sculpted animal looked nothing at all like Little Sorrel, but the sculptor hadn’t even made him more handsome, which might have been forgivable. He was a big, clumsy-looking animal, much heavier in front than a riding horse should be. But he was a dramatic creature, as was the figure riding him.
Sculptor Joseph Pollia created a fantasy Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel in his statue on the Manassas battlefield.
Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
“Little Sorrel was a Thoroughbred and not a farm horse,” complained Mrs. G. T. Kern of the Richmond chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She was wrong about that, but she was right that Pollia’s horse was not an accurate representation of Jackson’s favorite mount.
A few people objected to the specific location of the statue, on the opposite side of Henry Hill from the spot where Stonewall received his name at the First Battle of Manassas. But apparently nobody objected to the fact that perhaps Little Sorrel shouldn’t have been memorialized on Henry Hill at all. Jackson wasn’t aboard him at the first battle. Little Sorrel was used at Second Manassas, but Henry Hill was James Longstreet’s sector, not Jackson’s.
The twenty-first century is unlikely to see any new military equestrian statues, particularly of Confederate generals, so the question of Little Sorrel’s accurate depiction in bronze or stone won’t likely come up again. But Civil War art is alive, well, and highly realistic. Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel are favorite subjects of modern painters. Portraits of Jackson alone appear, but scenes, often mounted, are more popular.
The scenes are usually of specific, identifiable events, sometimes battles, but often much simpler scenes. The best artists employ nearly photographic realism and almost all portray a convincing Jackson. They also show a believable horse, although the horse sometimes doesn’t look much like Little Sorrel.
One artist who has made a determined effort to portray an accurate Little Sorrel is Bradley Schmehl, who has included Jackson and Little Sorrel in seven of his Civil War works. Accuracy is vital in a genre that appeals to people used to the reality of photography, and one that knows what it’s looking for.
“Painting for an audience of historical enthusiasts, many of whom are quite knowledgeable, required me to do my due diligence,” Schmehl says. He chose a retired racing Arabian for Little Sorrel’s model, a horse that was small enough to be convincing as Stonewall Jackson’s undersized mount. The horse did require that his white blaze be painted out before he posed for the paintings.
Artist John Paul Strain finds accuracy so important that he gave Jackson the correct blue uniform in his “Jackson Meets Little Sorrel.” The painting represents the first contact between a man and a horse destined to be famous. On May 10, 1861, Jackson hadn’t yet traded his blue Virginia Military Institute uniform for Confederate gray.
Strain also wanted to capture the feelings of both in what became one of his most best-known paintings. “My depiction shows the immediate connection that Jackson had with him at Harpers Ferry,” Strain says.
More than one hundred fifty years after the end of the Civil War Stonewall Jackson remains an icon, second only to Robert E. Lee as a mythic symbol of the war. The appetite for Jackson biographies and images may be greater in the South than the North, but not by much. The myth everywhere usually imagines Stonewall Jackson on horseback, and he’s on an animal known alternately as Fancy, Old Sorrel, and today, Little Sorrel. The horse still appears in books and art, but not always as he really looked. But no matter how he’s portrayed and what name is used, the little Yankee horse is an important part of the image and an even greater part of the legend.
Endnotes
Introduction: Laid to Rest at Last
The decision to inter the bones of Little Sorrel and the subsequent ceremony were well covered by newspapers, particularly in Virginia, during the spring and summer of 1997. Most of the coverage was straightforward, but a few writers couldn’t resist a little mockery. Examples of the first kind are in the bibliography, as is Tony Horwitz’s “Stonewall’s Steed Was Ugly, But His Hide Was Tough,” from the Wall Street Journal. Horwitz quotes a local newspaper editor as saying, “You turn a corner in the VMI museum and come face to face with the mighty Stonewall’s mighty war-horse—and it looks like it couldn’t pull Donald Duck in a wagon.”
The events surrounding the original taxidermy work, the separation of the hide and the bones, and the travels of each part of Little Sorrel were also well covered in newspapers of their respective times and there are examples of each in the bibliography. For an examination of Frederic Webster’s technique, see Oliver Davie, Methods in the Art of Taxidermy.
Chapter 1: Warriors under Saddle
An overview of the conflicting attitudes of Virginians as war approached can be found in James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, the best single-volume history of the Civil War. Jackson’s own prewar ambivalence is well described in S. C. Gwynne’s Rebel Yell.
The story of how Jackson came to own Little Sorrel has been repeated by almost everyone who has written extensively about Jackson, although not by the two men most closely involved. Jackson had no opportunity to write his memoirs and John A. Harman, his quartermaster, never did. There are contemporary newspaper accounts of the train seizure and the capture of horses, but none mention Jackson or any specific horse. An example that includes a report that the consignor of the confiscated horses was paid is in the Staunton Spectator, May 21, 1861.
The most detailed account of Jackson at Harpers Ferry in 1861 is John Imboden’s. The eventual cavalry brigadier general wrote his memories of Jackson in Century Illustrated Magazine in 1885, later reprinted in the voluminous Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Imboden fails to mention Little Sorrel’s acquisition, but Jackson aide Henry Kyd Douglas, whose I Rode with Stonewall is the greatest single source of information about the horse, does. Douglas completed his memoirs in the 1890s, but they weren’t published until 1940. Jackson’s widow, Mary Anna, also writing in the 1890s, tells much the same story of the seizure that Douglas does.
Other details of the early days at Harpers Ferry are in Stonewall Jackson’s Way: A Sketch of the Life and Services of Major John A. Harman by Alexander Garber, a relative of Harman’s, and Legends of Loudon by Harrison Williams, who details the split loyalties of the region where Jackson and Harman went hunting for horses.
One especially good source of information on the domestication of the horse appears in The Horse: The Epic History of our Noble Companion by Wendy Williams, but you’ll find others in the bibliography. Williams thinks the Botai of Kazakhstan may not have been the first to domesticate the horse.
Louis DiMarco’s War Horse: A History
of the Military Horse and Rider is a good overview of the history of horses at war. For a disturbing look at the equine catastrophes of the Crimean War and, particularly the Charge of the Light Brigade, see Terry Brighton’s Hell Riders: The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Chapter 2: Horseman
The best source for family background of Stonewall Jackson is Roy Bird Cook’s The Family and Early Life of Stonewall Jackson, originally published in the 1920s. Stephen Wayne Brown’s Voice of the New West: John G. Jackson, His Life and Times has details of Jackson’s father, Jonathan, and his gambling problems. More recent discoveries in the area of family and early history, as with almost every other topic related to Stonewall Jackson, are in James Robertson’s Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend. The bibliography includes several other books with more in-depth information on the Scots-Irish immigration and convict transportation to America. The story of David Ross, the convict merchant, is in James Johnston’s From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family.
Although the book concentrates on Quarter Horses, Alexander Mackay-Smith’s The Colonial Quarter Race Horse offers a thorough look at all horse racing in Virginia and Maryland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The story of the Reverend Hindman’s racing career is in Charles Kemper’s “The Settlement of the Valley,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, published by the Virginia Historical Society in 1922.
Information about the Spanish riding style Jackson would have used in Mexico City appears in Kathleen Sands’s Charrería Mexicana: An Equestrian Folk Tradition, although Sands focuses on changes to that style that occurred in Mexican ranching. Deb Bennett, in her Conquerors: The Roots of New World Horsemanship, also describes Spanish and Mexican equitation.
Jackson described his Mexican horse purchase in a letter to his sister Laura reprinted in Early Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, compiled by his nephew Thomas Jackson Arnold. Information about the first Fancy, the horse Jackson owned at Fort Hamilton, appears in Anna Jackson’s Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson).
Chapter 3: Mystery Horse
A modern biography of George Washington, Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow gives, like almost all full biographies of Washington, details about the general’s choice of warhorses. Napoleon’s white horse has merited a biography of his own, Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon’s Horse by Jill Hamilton.
Detailed (but understandable) information about the genetics of coat color—gray, dun, and chestnut—can be found in Horse Genetics by Ernest Bailey and Samantha A. Brooks. A much earlier discussion of color genetics and the names in common use a century ago is found in Walter Anderson’s The Inheritance of Coat Colors in Horses, published in 1914.
Almost every veterinary textbook of the nineteenth century contains information on the why and how of equine castration. Dr. Leonard Conkey’s 1890 text Veterinary Medicine, Animal Castration, Surgery and Obstetrics Simplified summarizes most of what was known in the nineteenth century. Gene Armistead’s Horses and Mules in the Civil War is a good source for the sex as well as color, fate, and other details of animals known by name who participated in the conflict.
What was known about dental aging of horses in the mid- to late nineteenth century is included in Soundness and Age of Horses: A Veterinary and Legal Guide to the Examination of Horses for Soundness by Matthew Horace Hays. In this 1887 book, Hayes claims that age can be determined with considerable accuracy using teeth.
Go the Distance: The Complete Resource for Endurance Horses by Nancy Loving has good information on the value of small horses as well as conformation characteristics that are needed in a heavily used riding horse, most of which apply to Little Sorrel. Information about the pacing gait is found in most books about the gaited breeds; several are listed in the bibliography. The American Trotter by John Hervey is a classic. In spite of the title, the pacing horse, including the Narragansett Pacer, is part of the discussion. Edward Channing’s The Narragansett Planters: A Study of Causes describes the circumstances in Rhode Island that created and destroyed the breed. The accounts of the last few Narragansett Pacers in Connecticut appear in the American Stallion Register by Joseph Battell from 1911.
The story that makes Little Sorrel a native of Somers, Connecticut, is contained in an undated typescript, apparently written by Erwin Avery sometime before 1920, in the archives of the Congregational Church of Somers. A copy is in the Somers Public Library. Details of the relationship of Fuller to Noah Collins, supposed breeder of Little Sorrel, can be found in Genealogy of Some Descendants of Edward Fuller of the Mayflower by William H. Fuller. William Montague’s Biographical Record of the Alumni of Amherst College contains a good biography of William O. Collins. A biography of William H. Trimble appears in Paul Teetor’s A Matter of Hours: Treason at Harper’s Ferry, while information about the relationship of Trimble and Collins appears in publications of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Hillsboro, Ohio, as well as articles about the Highland County Fair throughout the 1850s.
The only report of Little Sorrel’s capture in Stoneman’s Raid comes from Anna Jackson’s nephew Paul Barringer, who was just seven years old at the time. Barringer’s memoir, The Natural Bent, wasn’t published until 1949, but it appears from the context that it was written in the late 1880s, while his aunt was still living. While he may have confused details, it’s likely that the story itself was true. Accounts of the raid, including Chris Hartley’s recent Stoneman’s Raid, 1865, coincide with Barringer’s memoirs in terms of dates and events.
Chapter 4: Little Sorrel Goes to War
The best—or at least the most colorful—stories of the first few months of Stonewall Jackson’s Civil War history were written by John Newton Lyle, who completed a manuscript of his war memoirs in 1903. This document, entitled “Sketches Found in a Confederate Veteran’s Desk,” was given to Washington and Lee University upon his death. The accessible version is A Reminiscence of Lieutenant John Newton Lyle of the Liberty Hall Volunteers, edited by Charles Turner and published in 1986. Other information on the early months comes from the work of Susan Pendleton Lee, daughter of artillerist William Pendleton. Her Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton reprints letters between her parents that touch on this period.
James Thomson’s loan of a horse to Jackson for the First Battle of Bull Run is found in John Esten Cooke’s second biography of Jackson, Stonewall Jackson: A Military Biography. Cooke’s first attempt, The Life of Stonewall Jackson, published in 1863, doesn’t mention it. But other sources describe Jackson aboard a horse that obviously wasn’t Little Sorrel that day.
Richard Williams’s Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man’s Friend has what’s known of Jim Lewis and Stonewall Jackson’s other slave property and makes the argument that, on balance, Jackson was a reluctant and benevolent slave owner. Battle-fields of the South: From Bull Run to Fredericksburgh, written by Thomas Caffey under the pseudonym An English Combatant, has contemporary descriptions of black camp servants and their duties. Historian and teacher Kevin Levin (whose website is www.cwmemory.com) writes frequently on camp and body servants during the Civil War.
Chapter 5: War in Winter
The Romney expedition is covered by all Jackson biographers. Because of the misery involved, memoirists and letter writers also wrote extensively about it. William Pogue and Henry Kyd Douglas, whose later descriptions of Little Sorrel became so important, first took notice of the unusual little horse during the campaign.
One full-length work on the campaign is Stonewall Jackson’s Romney Campaign, January 1–February 20, 1862, by Thomas Rankin, which follows Jackson’s—and by association, Little Sorrel’s—daily activities. Anna Jackson’s Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson) includes relatively little about Romney, even though she was present in Winchester before and after the campaign. But her husband told her enough about the expe
dition for her to realize that it was during these weeks that he became inseparable from Little Sorrel.
Susan McBane’s The Horse in Winter: How to Care for Your Horse during the Most Challenging Season of the Year describes some of the difficulties that even modern, well-stabled horses face in winter. The renowned horseman Oscar Gleason, whose 1892 Gleason’s Horse Book was a bible to veterinarians and horse owners, offers information on the challenges of winter conditions during the nineteenth century.
Chapter 6: Into the Valley
As befits one of the most famous military campaigns in world history, Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaign is the subject of dozens of books, both of the campaign as a whole and of specific battles. Peter Cozzens’s Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign is a good overview. References to Little Sorrel abound in soldiers’ memoirs, several of which are mentioned in the text.
Jedediah Hotchkiss came into Stonewall Jackson’s life during the Shenandoah Valley campaign and his papers are a vital source for the everyday activities of man and horse during this period. The papers, including his diaries, are at the Library of Congress, but Hatchkiss and Archie McDonald’s well-edited Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer is a more accessible substitute. Robert K. Krick’s Conquering the Valley: Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic is especially useful on the story of Jackson and Little Sorrel’s near miss at Port Republic.
Richard Ewell’s description of Jackson as “crazy as a March hare” and “an enthusiastic fanatic” can be found in almost every biography of Ewell, but a good interpretation of the opinion is in Wallace Hettle’s Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory. Ewell’s subordinate Richard Taylor’s Destruction and Reconstruction features vivid accounts of the valley campaign and a colorful description of Little Sorrel during this period.
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