VICKSBURG Chapter Ninety

 

The tall, thin, dark haired woman with the lantern jaw raised a flat hand to shade her eyes from the setting sun. She watched the creaking sad wagon pulled slowly on wobbly wheels by the long shadow of a weary mare. Like so many beasts this summer, the filly's ribs showed through her dust covered hide.

Mary's heart rose and then fell when she recognized the familiar hulk of Father John O'Bannon (above)  holding the reins. Her husband had to be in the wagon.  The priest had brought John to her. In the back of an ambulance.

A commission of officers from both armies (above)  had drawn up and supervised the signing of paroles for every rebel soldier in Vicksburg. With that slip of paper soldiers could justify their absence from the battlefield, back home or in transient to home.  

Such a valued prize (above)  brought out the 31,000 who surrendered over the 18 to 20,000 'effectives' Pemberton had mustered to defend the city. That 'missing third' of Pemberton's army were the flotsam that collects around any army, particularly a losing one, particularly a badly run one, trapped in an urban area.

The 400 structures of Vicksburg (above) offered deserters and malingers 400 places to hide. It was relatively easy for men seeking to escape the constant shelling and sniping to find a quiet place to sleep, or even a meal away from the trenches. Considering the quality of the official rations, there was little advantage to staying with their units. Most did, but at least a third chose to fend for themselves. Once surrendered, the starving Army of Mississippi was kept alive by the Yankees, but as soon as they marched unarmed out of Vicksburg, they were consuming their own food again. And Grant's goal was to reclaim his supply lines for his own men only,  as quickly as possible.

Finally, at nine on the morning of Saturday, 11 July, 1863, 7 days after the surrender, the garrison of Vicksburg, “...waved a parting adieu to the scene of that terrible and bloody drama...”, or so remembered 21 year old private Epram McDowell Anderson.  There was the humiliation of spot searches as they left the city, to be certain they took no weapons with them. But after that brief reminder of their helplessness, the Army of Mississippi was sent on their way,  Private's Anderson's 1^st Missouri infantry were the lead regiment on the march, and he wrote, “Never was an army more grateful than ours on leaving Vicksburg. It was like a prisoner who has been unshackled in his cell and turned lose to breath again the pure air....rejoicing in a sense of freedom....” 

General Grant had offered rebel General John Stevens Bowen (above)  the option of staying in the city until he had fully recovered, but the southern gentleman insisted on accompanying his regiment in withdrawal, at least in part because, as private Anderson pointed out, “The first day's march brought us to Edwards.”

That winter Mary Lucrecia Preston Kennerly Bowen (above) was 28 years old and about to deliver her third child. With an infant mortality rate of 20% under favorable conditions, she had chosen to hole up on the plantation of “friends” 17 miles to the east of Vicksburg, outside of Edward's Depot, with the wives of 2 of John's subordinates – Colonel Pembroke S. Senteny and Major Eugene Erwin of the 2^nd Missouri regiment - as her midwives.

A native of St. Louis, Mary was an army brat and a fierce daughter of the south - her three brothers were fighting for the Confederacy. In the spring of 1862 Mary had left her children in her mother's care and rushed to Tennessee to nurse John after the general had been wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. John's recovery was confirmed when the couple conceived their 3^rd child. Mary then followed John to his new posting at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. She stayed there until March of 1863, when her “time came”. But on that July evening, Mary already knew that both of her midwives were now widows. And when reunited with her husband that Sunday evening, she came face to face with the  war so many of her generation had sought.

In Vicksburg, John Bowen (above) had consumed contaminated water or food touched by the contaminated hands of another. This had infected him with an alien bacteria, which had then killed most of the native bacteria which digested his food. After that, nothing he consumed reached his cells, but dehydration would kill him long before he starved to death. 

John's eyes were sunken. His mouth was dry, his lips cracked. He had a fever so high he kept passing in and out of conciseness. His belly was bloated. Most of the food and water he forced down was quickly vomited back up. He had little energy to even sit up. His gut kept cramping and he was plagued by the constant urge to defecate. When he did his stools were watery with blood and mucus. It was called the flux, or the bloody flux. In modern vernacular it was diarrhea, and it killed far more soldiers than did guns.

Sunday morning the Confederate army resumed their march, forced south to avoid fouling Sherman's supply lines as he advanced again on Jackson.  After 2 miles the road dropped off the high ground and forked, with the right passage leading another 14 miles to Raymond. But Father O'Bannon realized his patient could go no further. He sought assistance at the Morrison plantation along the Raymond Road, but was informed by the overseer that all the slaves had been marched off to Alabama, leaving no one to help the General. The man suggested they should take the south fork, down the Mount Moriah Road, another 2 miles to home of John Walton.

The single story house was called Valley Farm (above), and had been occupied by John Walton Jr. and his wife Margaret since at least 1850. After they carried the general into the house, Father O'Bannon wrote in his notebook, “July 12, General Bowen was too sick to move any further.” It would be an ugly night. Every hour John became weaker.

By midday on Monday, 13 July, 1863, Major General John Stevens Bowen was dead. Neighbor Robert Dickson supplied a coffin of rough wood. And one of the best hopes the Confederacy had for a second generation of military leaders was buried in Mr. Walton's garden, while Mary sobbed quietly at the graveside.

Monday morning, 13 July, the rebel army continued their march east, fading away a little bit more with every man who, hearing the gun fire from Jackson, and clutching his parole (above),  fell out of the line and started for home. Many would return when they were exchanged for captured Yankees. But many would not. On Wednesday, 16 July, the Army of Mississippi reached the Pearl River 10 miles below Jackson, and crossed into Alabama, back into Confederate held territory.

Mary Kennerly Bowen stayed on in Raymond, to remain close to John. Come the cooler months, she saw that John's body was moved to consecrated ground in the nearby Bethesda Presbyterian Church Cemetery (above).  Then, Mary followed the rebel army, this time to Atlanta. She served as a nurse during that campaign, and was even wounded in the Battle of Altoona. 

In September of 1864, when Atlanta was captured by General Sherman, the red headed Yankee offered an escort to see Mrs. Bowen back to her children in St. Louis. But the unrequited rebel proudly refused.  And so her children remained partners in her war.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Three

 

The bulk of 43 year old General William Tecumseh Sherman's XVth. Corps began its march from Milliken's Bend, above Vicksburg, down the narrow twisting cordoryed road to Hard Times Landing,  on Saturday, 2 May, 1863 – the day after the battle of Port Gibson. The cork was out of the bottle and Grant now had room for  an additional 15,000 men on the Mississippi side of the river, and he wanted them with him as soon as possible.  Neither Sherman's staff officers nor the soldiers they commanded were green troops anymore. They had learned how to organize and execute a march.

One hundred and seventeen years after the American Civil War , then 58 year old Louisiana native and Commandant of the United States Marine Corps,  General Robert Hilliard Barrow,  would say, “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." The 70 mile long road to Hard Times now carried not only the 15,000 men and supplies of the XVth Corps, but also the ammunition and supplies for the rest of the Army of Tennessee – some 45,000 troops in all. With so much traffic, many  bizarre accidents and stupid mistakes were inevitable. But Sherman's staff officers kept the entire jumble moving more or less smoothly. It was a triumph of logistical planning and execution. 

General Sherman will later calculate that each Union soldier in the field required three pounds of food stuffs each day, in addition to the 13 pounds of “re-supply” required to keep him “effective” - with a working rifle, ammunition and powder, boots, uniform, blanket, tent and medicine. Other than the clothes on his back, this all had to be carried in horse or mule drawn wagons. In their wagons each regiment was also expected to carry 25% additional supplies for their teamsters and horses. Even though the Civil War has been labeled “the first railroad war”, its armies were always carried on the backs of horses and mules.

To support each 1,000 men in the field required 40 – 50 wagons (drawn by about 300 mules), to carry foodstuffs (for the humans and animals), tents, blankets, cooking gear, ammunition, tack, horse and human shoes, and one or two ambulances. Each of the horses required 26 pounds of fodder per day and each mule required 24 pounds, half of which the army was required to carry and half of which the animals were expected to find for themselves. 

When Grant proposed “living of the land” after leaving Port Gibson it was a literal proposal for the animals which reduced the number of wagons the army required. Each 2-3,000 pound wagon load of supplies could cover about 20 miles in an eight hour day of marching. As the army marched the supplies would be used up, which would lighten the load a little, but the humans and the animals still had to eat.

On average a Civil War army required one horse for every three men - 6 horses to pull each 2,500 pound artillery piece, and 6 mules to pull each wagon. And that was in addition to the mounts for cavalry and officers – which meant that Grant’s army of 45,000 men required 14,000 horses and mules. 

The vast majority of animals in a Civil War army lived a short, brutal life, most no more than a few months long. But the war could not have been fought without them.

On the march to Hard Times Landing, when a wagon or gun carriage broke down the teamsters dragged it clear of the traffic lanes with minimal delay.  Pauses in the march were scheduled to allow reverse traffic. And commissary detachments bound for the Army of the Tennessee depot in Grand Gulf were allocated space within the column. The 70 mile march took 3 days – 23 miles a day. The troops arrived at Hard Times Landing fresh and ready for battle. It was the kind of complicated mass movement which the army could not have made even a year earlier.  And it added to the soldiers growing confidence in their officers and themselves.

Sherman (above) did not share that confidence. A week earlier, back on Sunday, 26 April, 1863,  he   had written about the approaching march to his brother John Penland,  “I feel in its success less confidence than in any similar undertaking of the war, but it is my duty to co-operate with zeal… Sixty thousand men (including teamsters) will thus be on a single road, narrow, crooked, and liable to become a quagmire on the occurrence of a single rain. We carry ten days ration with us…Now, if we can sustain the army it may do, but I know the materials or food, forage or ammunition cannot be conveyed on that single precarious road.”  He also admitted to his wife. concern about the "narrow difficult road, liable by a shower to become a quagmire"  adding, “I look upon the whole thing as one of the most hazardous and desperate moves of this or any war.” 

Sherman’s road to Vicksburg really began ten years earlier when he floated into San Francisco Bay (above) on the overturned hulk of a sinking lumber schooner. It was the beginning of a decade of failure. 

Sherman’s father had died when he was nine, and the boy known as Tecumseh had been adopted by Thomas Ewing, a powerful Whig senator from Ohio, who secured the boy an appointment at West Point. Sherman had graduated from “The Point” in 1840 and attained the rank of Captain (above). But he resigned from the army in 1853 when he was offered the presidency of a San Francisco bank. 

On his way around South America, Sherman was shipwrecked twice, the last time just outside of the Golden Gate (above) . What followed were four relative good years. Then, in the panic of 1857, Sherman’s bank failed, leaving him broke and far from home. He struggled back to “the states”, eventually landing in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he failed as a lawyer.

And then, in 1859, he secured an appointment as Superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy. Just a year later, as secession broke out, Sherman famously wrote a Southern friend, “You are rushing to war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on earth...You are bound to fail.”  He had little respect for black Americans, and certainly did not support a war to free them, but he told the Louisiana Governor when he resigned, “On no account will I do any act or think any thought hostile…to the…United States.”

The coming of war seemed to offer Sherman opportunities. But at first they only led to more failure. He served as a colonel at First Battle of Bull Run (above), where he was wounded in the knee and shoulder trying to stem the panic.  As he recovered, he was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers and placed in command of the Department of the Cumberland, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.    But all he could see from his new post were shadows and threats.  In the fall of 1861 Sherman was relieved of duty, suffering a nervous collapse.  At his home in Ohio he contemplated suicide. He was saved when General Halleck offered Sherman the command of the Army of the Tennessee, Instead Sherman offered to serve as a division commander under Grant.

When they met, they liked each other immediately.  At Shiloh, on 6 April, 1862, a now overconfident Sherman saw his unprepared division overrun by Confederate troops. Sherman barely managed to prevent his men from being driven into the Tennessee River. It seemed yet another confirmation of his failure. But that night, when he reported to Grant’s command post, half expecting to be relieved, and confessed “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we”, Grant calmly replied, “Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.” And with that stoic exchange Sherman’s luck changed. From that night forward, he might disagree with Grant, but he would always “...co-operate with zeal”.

But after being separated from his friend for several days, at such a crucial moment in the campaign, 
"Cump's " imagination was feeding deep doubts about Grant,  which he shared with the commander of his second division, 42 year old Kentucky political General, Francis Preston Blair Jr. (above).  Sherman wrote to Blair that, “...some other way must be found to feed this army."  He later told his 39 year old 3^rd Division commander, Brigadier General James Madison Tuttle, “I apprehend great difficulty in the matter of food." 

Despite these misgivings Sherman judged the march itself a success. He would write later, “Our route lay by Richmond (Louisiana)...and Roundabout Bayou, then following Bayou Vidal, we struck the Mississippi River at Perkins Plantation...Thence the route followed Lake St. Joseph to a plantation called "Hard Times"...about five miles above Grand Gulf.” And like any tourist, Sherman noted the celebrities he brushed against, such as the fantastic Franklin Plantation mansion of Doctor Allen T. Bowie, whom Cump noted was said to be “...a relative of Jim Bowie” of the Alamo fame.

Meanwhile, across the river, McClernand's and McPherson's Corps of Grant's army were resting on the east bank of the Big Black River, roughly between Willow Springs  and Rocky Springs.  An officer noted they had been “Bivouacked near Hankinson's Ferry three days, giving the men ample time to rest and clean themselves....” The regimental history of the 48^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry recorded they put the time to good use. “Orders were therefore issued to subsist on the products of the country...and from that time...foraging parties, or perhaps better known as "bummers," were sent out...”

“They were a jolly, mischievous set....They slaughtered the pigs in the pens; the cattle and horses were driven from the fields; smokehouses and cellars were ransacked for flour, meal and bacon; the chickens and turkeys were captured in the yard; the mules were hitched to the family carriage, and the provisions stowed away in it,...Toward evening the foragers returned to camp, driving the cattle before them, followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, loaded with all kinds of provisions, which was equally distributed among the different regiments.” Of course, not all regiments were as inventive as the 48^th Ohio.  A worried lieutenant in another regiment in McClernand's corps wrote to his wife on Tuesday, 5 May, that the ten day's rations had about run out. “I have got one cracker left and some meat ..." he complained.

On Wednesday, 6 May, 1863 Sherman's XVth Corps started crossing the river. As each unit came ashore at Grand Gulf, they were immediately pushed up the road toward Willow and Rocky Springs. It would take a few days, but soon all 45,000 men of the Army of the Tennessee would be just south of the Big Black River.  Vicksburg would be just 30 miles away. So near and so tempting. What would be Grant's next move?  And what would Pemberton do to stop him?

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VICKSBURG Chapter Twenty - Nine

The dawn of Saturday, 2 May, 1863, illuminated the golden haired "frat boy" of the Army of the Potomac, 49 year old Major General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker (above), standing atop the pinnacle of success.  He looked the part - handsome, athletic and audacious, a candle burning brilliantly at both ends. His diligent attention to the welfare of his soldiers had rebuilt the army after the twin disasters at Fredricksburg and the Mud March. 

At the same time his alcohol soaked headquarters became so infamous for its female contingent that forever after prostitutes bore his name. But in the previous 24 hours, "the inevitable" Major General Hooker had achieved what every other Federal general had failed to. He had stolen a march on Robert E. Lee.

The man who had boasted, "May God have mercy on General Lee, for I will have none" had planted 70,000 men and 108 cannon facing south and east at Chancellorsville clearing, 11 miles in the rear of the 50,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia. His enemy was now trapped between his great host and the 40,000 Yankees of the VI Corps facing west on the Rappahannock River. One simple command, and the massive vice would snap shut, crushing the rebellion. And yet, for hour after hour that Saturday, the anxious Federal soldiers heard only silence from their Caesar. 

And the astounding rumor began to trickle through the ranks that their boastful, vain and beautiful Napoleon was cowering in Mister Chanellor's brick mansion "...in a crumpled trance, helpless, lethargic, entirely demoralized." His senior corps commander, 41 year old Major General Darious Nash Couch said later, "I retired from his presence with the belief that my commanding general was a whipped man.” This before a shot had been fired. This, with victory staring him in the face.

General Robert Edward Lee (above) was not going to wait for Hooker to recover his arrogance. First the Virginia aristocrat left 10,000 men to watch Major General John Sedwick's VI corps, and marched west to meet Hooker with the remaining 40,000. Forty thousand men against 70,000 -  it was a direct violation of Napoleonic generalship - never divide an inferior force in the face of a superior enemy. But having done it once, Lee now did it again. 

He fixated Hooker by dangling 13,000 men to his west, while sending 23,000 on a 12 mile, 10 hour eastward flanking march under the puritanical, lemon sucking 39 year old Major General Thomas Johnathan "Stonewall" Jackson. Lee's only hope for success was if Hooker stayed right where he was, with that handsome chin of his, daring the entire universe to strike it.

A thousand miles to the west, as eastern Louisiana turned to face that same morning, the sun revealed some 950 federal troopers of the 6th and 7th Illinois volunteer cavalry, swimming their mounts across a the rain swollen Comite River. Rising from the warm waters, their commander, 36 year old Colonel Benjiman Harrison Grierson (above), drove his men on another two hours southwestward before he allowed his weary troopers to dismount and collapse in sleep. However the one time civilian music teacher felt the need himself to stay awake and watch over his men. He discovered a piano in a nearby house, and startled his unwilling hosts by playing on it for some time. About noon a sentry alerted him to approaching cavalry. And for the first time in 16 days, he was not worried.

That same Saturday morning, Major General John McClernand's troops edged up the Rodney Road and about 9:00am marched into the "Pretty little village" of Port Gibson (above). They found it filled with rebel wounded from Friday's battle. There was some gunfire from rebel pickets across the South Fork of Bayou Pierre, but a few cannon rounds drove them back out of range. The men then stacked their muskets on the sidewalk and under "fine weather" started dismantling buildings to construct a pontoon bridge across the river. 

Two divisions from General McPherson's corps also came up the road to filter through the town and move to a river ford east of Port Gibson. It was Grant's intent to give Loring's men no chance to recover from their exertions of Friday. 

 As soon as it was dark he would push both corps across the river, to advance the 8 miles to Grindstone Ford over the North Fork of Bayou Pierre toward the Big Black River. Only then would he allow his men to rest.

In Virginia, shortly after noon, scouts of the 25th Ohio regiment of the 2nd Brigade, First Division of the XI corps, stationed on the far right flank of the Army of the Potomac, spotted rebel infantry and artillery moving toward their front. 

They dutifully reported this to their commander, 38 year old Colonel William Pitt Richardson (above). That officer went to look at the situation himself, and raced back to deliver the alarming information to his division commander, 43 year old Worcester, Massachusetts lawyer and now Brigadier General Charles Devins Jr., 

Devins (above), who had little respect for his mostly German Catholic immigrant soldiers, dismissed the information. He bluntly told Richardson, "I know that Robert E. Lee is retreating." He then turned to his aides and announced, "I guess Colonel Richardson is somewhat scared. You had better order him to (return to) his regiment."

High above the Mississippi River at Grand Gulf, General Bowen (above) returned to the gunners who were still denying Federal transports access to Bayou Pierre. He added the weight of his star to the commandeering of horses and wagons from the merchants of the town and surrounding plantations. The river road ran from these bluffs 30 miles north to lower bluffs at Warrenton. Bowen knew the minute Grant crossed the North Fork of Bayou Pierre, this fortress which had defied the Yankees 48 hours earlier, must fall to an attack from the rear. So he also supervised preparations to destroy the heavy guns and the magazines filled with powder and shells, to prevent them falling into the hands of Admiral Porter's Yankee sailors.

Colonel Benjiman Grierson rode just a half mile south of his sleeping men before meeting dust covered riders coming up the road from Baton Rouge. Grierson greeted them by waving a mud spattered white handkerchief. The approaching horsemen were 2 companies of the First Louisiana Cavalry - Federal. The single most important cavalry raid of the American Civil war was over. During a 600 mile ride through Confederate territory, Grierson's raiders had destroyed or damaged 60 miles of unreplaceable railroad tracks and telegraph lines, destroyed or damaged 3 steam locomotives and burned a dozen boxcars and their contents.

Back in Virginia, and almost three hours later, Major Owen Rice of the 153rd Pennsylvania regiment sent an even more alarming message back from his picket line on the Orange Turnpike to the commander of the 1st Brigade of the First Division, Colonel Leopold Von Gilsa. It read, "A large body of the enemy is massing in my front. For God’s sake, make dispositions to receive him!" 

Colonel von Gilsa personally delivered this message to General Devens (above). He again dismissed the information as merely more proof the rebels were retreating.  But von Gilsa persisted. 

He now delivered the warning to the commander of the XI Corps, 34 year old one armed Major General Oliver Otis Howard (above). This pious Protestant "Christian General" held his Germanic Catholic soldiers in no less contempt than Devens, and he dismissed von Gilsa with an insult.

In Louisiana, Colonel Grierson's raiders were allowed to parade through Baton Rouge. (above) The cost of the 16 day raid was 3 men killed, 7 wounded, 9 missing and 5 men left behind because of illness. The profit for the Illinois troopers was 100 rebel soldiers and militiamen killed or wounded and 500 captured and paroled as prisoners. When Grierson's raiders rode into Baton Rouge they were still leading 100 POW's. During their 16 day 600 mile ride the Yankees also destroyed 3,000 muskets, pistols and cannon, and had stolen 1,000 fresh horses and mules. The troopers also led into the Federal lines 500 self-emancipated slaves armed with shotguns and hunting rifles, all on horseback and each leading 2 or 3 more horses. By the end of the year, most of these "contrabands" would be wearing Union Blue and fighting for their own freedom in Mister Lincoln's armies.

In Virginia, Colonel William Richardson had grown so certain that he and the 2nd Brigade were about to be outflanked, that he and his officers rode over to consult with von Gilsa and the staff of the 1st Brigade. When they realized Devens arrogance would permit no adjustments in their south facing lines, they returned to their regiments. 

One of them, Colonel Robert Reily (above) of the 75th Ohio regiment, 2nd Brigade, gathered his men together and delivered an amazing speech. He told his men, "Some of us will not see another sun rise. If there is a man in the ranks who is not ready to die for his country, let him come to me and I will give him a pass to the rear, for I want no half-hearted, unwilling soldiers or cowards in the ranks tonight. We need every man to fight the enemy." Reily then told his men to lie down but to keep their guns close by.  Many of the other regiments began to prepare a last meal.

The most important act committed by the Grierson raiders in Mississippi was their approach to Union Church. Confederate Lieutenant General John Pemberton became so frantic to stop the Yankees he ordered the cavalry out of Grand Gulf to catch him. Grierson had preferred to avoid the fight and turned south, but the rebel troopers went galloping after his raiders across southern Mississippi, just at the moment Grant's men were crossing the river and attacking Port Gibson and Grand Gulf. It had all worked so smoothly it might have been an intricate plan. But the truth was that after 2 years of warfare the Yankee professionals were at least as good as their Confederate enemies. Maybe better. And it was that quality of the Yankee soldier which helped make Grant a better general.

But the greatest prize Colonel Grierson brought out of central and southern Mississippi was a lesson which he shared with an admiring Yankee chaplin. He told the man, "The Confederacy is a hollow shell." In modern military vernacular, the South was over mobilized. Every available man had been swept forward to meet the invading Federal armies. But that left too few troops in the rear to maintain the supply line of food, ammunition and new recruits. And once the outer shell had been punctured, as Grierson had done, and as Grant was doing now, the South had little left to defend itself.

Just before 5:30pm that Saturday evening, 2 May, 1863 the woods west of Chancellorsville, Virginia, spewed forth 28,000 rebels of the II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, 4 divisions under Lieutenant General "Stonewall" Jackson. "‘Like a crash of thunder from the clear sky", they slammed into the 153rd Pennsylvania. The Lehigh Valley Germans fired off a single volley before the rebels washed over both their flanks. To their east, Colonel Reily just had time to order the 75th Ohio to deploy in line and charge into the attack. They managed to stem the Confederate tidal wave for a moment, but it cost them 150 causalities, including Colonel Reily, shot in the leg and left behind to die.  Every regiment in Deven's ill-prepared division collapsed and retreated. The shock and confusion spread until Howard's entire XI Corps was being driven back to Chancellors mansion.

Jackson's sledgehammer captured 4,000 prisoners and dove the Union troops back two miles before darkness finally brought the fight to a close. It was an overwhelming Confederate victory, confirmed even to the confused General Hooker after two more days of indecisive fighting. But the triumph was marred by Confederate tragedy. As the 18th North Carolina regiment reformed to continue the advance they spotted what might have been Federal Cavalry to their front and challenge them. The reply was unclear and the regiment fired a volley.  But it is not Union cavalry to their front but General Jackson and his staff. Many of the officers are killed, and Jackson was wounded three times. He was carried from the field on a stretcher. Still, once again, Lee had pulled unbelievable victory from certain defeat.

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