Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel
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Chapter 7: River of Death
The Seven Days have merited almost as many studies as the Shenandoah Valley campaign, but in this case the interest has been more in mistakes made than in goals accomplished. Stonewall Jackson’s performance has been widely criticized and closely analyzed, with little agreement on why the hero of the valley should function so poorly so soon after his greatest achievement.
Douglas Southall Freeman devotes a chapter to the mystery in his classic work Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, Vol. 1—Manassas to Malvern Hill. For a book that follows Jackson’s movement during the battles around Richmond, see Brian K. Burton’s The Peninsula and Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide. Details about Little Sorrel’s activities are more often found in the memoirs and narratives of participants such as John William Jones, John Hinsdale, William Blackford, and others noted in the bibliography.
A nearly contemporary description of Chickahominy Fever is found in William Aitken’s medical text The Science and Practice of Medicine, Volume 1, on page 495. Much information on that and other illnesses and the other physical miseries of the Seven Days is in Ted Tunnell’s Edge of the Sword: The Ordeal of Carpetbagger Marshall H. Twitchell in the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Chapter 8: Risk and Redemption
Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee both regarded the Battle of Cedar Mountain as a significant victory, but others were less certain. Robert K. Krick in Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain offers a complete review from a primarily Confederate perspective. As to what Little Sorrel went through that day, the memoirists are again the most useful.
In addition to Henry Kyd Douglas and Jedediah Hotchkiss, two new men, both recently assigned to Jackson, provide invaluable references to Little Sorrel during this battle. Letters and comments of Charles M. Blackford and his wife, Susan, were first published in a small edition for family and friends in 1894 but republished as Letters from Lee’s Army in 1947. As Blackford did, cavalry captain John Blue published his stories in the 1890s—in Blue’s case, in the Hampshire Review of Romney, West Virginia. These accounts have been republished as Hanging Rock Rebel: Lieutenant John Blue’s War in West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Both Blackford and Blue, probably because they were cavalrymen, paid special attention to Jackson’s horse.
They and other observers also noted the considerable risk Jackson took with himself and his horse. He had been doing this for months, at least since the second battle of the Shenandoah Valley campaign, but as Blue in particular noted, the risk-taking approached a new high at Cedar Mountain.
Jackson continued his risk-taking at the Second Battle of Manassas. John Hennessy’s Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas provides the overview. Again, memoirists and letter-writers were most likely to pay attention to a horse and again provided much of what we know about Little Sorrel during the last weeks of August 1862.
Dueling memoirs are especially important in terms of the biggest mystery of Little Sorrel during the Civil War—what happened to him between the final day of Second Manassas and a few days into the invasion of Maryland. Full references can be found in the bibliography. Two unpublished works offer some insight into the use of Little Sorrel and the possible reason for his being sent to the rear. They are John Hennessy’s “Historical Report on the Troop Movements for the Second Battle of Manassas, August 28 through August 30, 1862,” a work done for the National Park Service that describes Union general Abner Doubleday’s sight of Jackson on Little Sorrel within small arms range at the Battle of Groveton. The June 2015 newsletter of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans contains an extensive article on the Black Horse Cavalry by Andrew Harris that tells the story of the Black Horse cavalryman who suffered a fatal injury while holding Jackson’s horse.
Chapter 9: Invasion
The story of the Harwoods and Three Springs Farm comes from the History of Frederick County, Maryland by Thomas J. C. Williams, first published in 1910. The Black Horse Cavalry version of the events in Boonsboro comes from “Black Horse Troop” in the Southern Historical Society Papers of 1902, pages 142–46.
The Battle of Antietam, known as America’s bloodiest day, is second only to Gettysburg in the volume of books and articles devoted to it. There is a selection in the bibliography. Ethan S. Rafuse’s Antietam, South Mountain, and Harpers Ferry: A Battlefield Guide makes it easy to follow Jackson’s movements.
The near miss for Jackson and Lafayette McLaws was reported by Henry Lord Page King, aide-de-camp of McLaws and repeated by Dennis Frye in Antietam Revealed.
Chapter 10: Defending the Rappahannock
The best source for the trip to Fredericksburg, the days surrounding the battle of Fredericksburg, and winter quarters is James Power Smith, who was Jackson’s aide-de-camp and favored courier during the time. Smith never produced a complete memoir, but he was an assiduous writer on his career with Jackson. His “With Stonewall Jackson in the Army of Northern Virginia” was published in the Southern Historical Society Papers in 1920. More information about Thomas Chandler’s Fairfield Plantation is found in Marshall Wingfield’s A History of Caroline County, Virginia: From Its Formation in 1727 to 1924.
Most overviews of Fredericksburg focus on the Union side, since their disaster was so great. But The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock edited by Gary Gallagher includes both sides.
The Civil War journals of Jedediah Hotchkiss (Make Me a Map of the Valley is the easiest reprint to follow) have considerable detail about the day-to-day events of the time frame. Anna Jackson repeats the story of William Page Carter, the artilleryman who claimed to see Jackson riding a “superb bay horse” in her Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson). For details of the incident between Jackson and Jim Lewis over the use of Little Sorrel, see “Night with Jackson: Reminiscences of the Confederate Leader after the Bloody Battle of Fredericksburg” by Alexander Boteler in the Philadelphia Times, July 31, 1881. The story of the gift horse from Staunton is in the Staunton Spectator, January 6, 1863.
James Power Smith and Jedediah Hotchkiss each write extensively of winter quarters at Moss Neck. Roberta Cary Corbin in “Stonewall Jackson in Winter Quarters” in Confederate Veteran, January 1912, offers more detail.
Jackson’s second residence of winter quarters is described in “Belvoir: The Thomas Yerby Place, Spotsylvania County” by John Hennessy. Anna Jackson, who writes in Life and Letters of Jackson’s acquisition of Superior, also describes her visit to Belvoir in April and her husband’s pride in owning the handsome horse. The difficulties faced by the Army of Northern Virginia and its horses during this time is explained by Charles W. Ramsdell in “General Robert E. Lee’s Horse Supply, 1862–1865” in American Historical Review, July 1, 1930.
Chapter 11: Triumph and Tragedy
The best-known modern overview is Stephen Sears’s Chancellorsville, but that book focuses on Joseph Hooker and his Union army. For a focus on the Confederate side, see Douglas Southall Freeman’s Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, Vol. 2—Cedar Mountain to Chancellorsville.
William J. Seymour’s description of Stonewall Jackson on April 29 is in The Civil War Memoirs of Captain William J. Seymour: Reminiscences of a Louisiana Tiger. Lucy Long appears in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, compiled after the war by Robert E. Lee Jr.
Three outstanding works on the final days of Stonewall Jackson’s military life are Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White’s The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson, Robert K. Krick’s The Mortal Wounding of Stonewall Jackson, and Mathew Lively’s Calamity at Chancellorsville: The Wounding and Death of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Lively, almost alone among modern writers on Chancellorsville, correctly has Little Sorrel remaining in the hands of the Confederates after Jackson’s wounding.
Chapter 12: Afterward
The two narratives that relate to Little Sorrel in the m
inutes following the wounding are William F. Randolph’s “Chancellorsville: The Flank Movement That Routed the Yankees,” in Southern Historical Society Papers, 1901. Randolph is the man who reported seeing a bloody wound on Little Sorrel’s neck. Marcellus Moorman’s “Narrative of Events and Observations Connected with the Wounding of General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson” in the Southern Historical Society Papers, 1902, describes what he did with Little Sorrel after Jackson’s injury.
The postshooting story that has Little Sorrel finding his own way back to J. E. B. Stuart’s camp some days later comes from The Land We Love magazine, May to October 1866. Among the newspaper reports of Charles Lewis’s story was one in the Amsterdam (NY) Daily Democrat and Recorder, on January 23, 1928. The Virginia Historical Society owns the letter sent on May 10 by Marcellus Moorman to Jackson.
The valuation of Jackson’s estate appears in Roy Bird Cook’s The Family and Early Life of Stonewall Jackson. Details of the later lives of Jackson’s other horses can be found in Louise Dooley’s “A Warhorse for Stonewall” in Army magazine on April 1, 1975.
Much of the information on Cottage Home and the Morrison family comes from Sarah Marie Eye’s unpublished master’s thesis from Virginia Tech, “Religion, Slavery and Secession: Reflections on the Life and Letters of Robert Hall Morrison.” The sources for George Stoneman’s raid at Cottage Home and Little Sorrel’s capture by Union cavalrymen appear in the notes for chapter 4 above.
Superior’s sale to Macon, Georgia, is in the Anderson (SC) Intelligencer, July 24, 1867. The story of the servant punishing Little Sorrel comes from the Landmark newspaper of Statesville, North Carolina, August 19, 1886.
The transfer of Little Sorrel to the Virginia Military Institute was widely covered in newspapers around the country in the summer of 1883. “Something about Stonewall Jackson’s Old War Horse” from the Charlotte Observer, August 22, 1883, is an example. The horse’s life at VMI is discussed by R. B. James in “Last Days of Famous Old Horses,” Confederate Veteran, 1930.
Trips to the Hagerstown Fair and the New Orleans exposition were also widely reported in newspapers. Examples are in the bibliography. Also of interest is the Practical Common Sense Guidebook through the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition at New Orleans, published in 1885.
February through April 1886 saw hundreds of newspaper stories published about the decline and death of Little Sorrel. A moving example is in the Western Sentinel of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on March 26, 1886. The hair acquired by Fitzhugh Lee a few days before the horse’s death is now at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas.
Chapter 13: The Legend
Two excellent books cover the growing and changing legend of Stonewall Jackson. His horse figures in both. The first is Wallace Hettle’s Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory, a book that follows and comments on the postwar development of the legend. Mark Neely and Harold Holzer’s The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause covers the lithographs, engravings, and—to a lesser extent—the paintings that depict Jackson and Little Sorrel. The Virginia Historical Society website at www.vahistorical.org is the best source for information on the Hoffbauer mural.
The Sievers statue in Richmond is discussed in “The South’s Tribute to Stonewall Jackson” in Confederate Veteran, 1920. The best description of the Charles Keck statue in Charlottesville is in the application papers for its place on the National Register of Historic Places. The controversy surrounding the Manassas statue is covered in Joan Zenzen’s Battling for Manassas: The Fifty-Year Preservation Struggle at Manassas National Battlefield Park and in Shae Adams’s “Cultural Distortion: The Dedication of the Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Monument at Manassas National Battlefield Park” in the Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era, Spring 2011.
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