Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel Read online

  Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel

  An Unlikely Hero of the Civil War

  Sharon B. Smith

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2016 by Sharon B. Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  Names: Smith, Sharon B., author.

  Title: Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel : an unlikely hero of the Civil War / Sharon B. Smith.

  Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016024509 (print) | LCCN 2016025121 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493019243 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781493028467 (Electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: Little Sorrel (Horse), –1886. | Jackson, Stonewall, 1824–1863—Friends and associates. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. | War horses—United States—Biography.

  Classification: LCC E467.1.J15 S7525 2016 (print) | LCC E467.1.J15 (ebook) | DDC 636.10092/9 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024509.

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Contents

  Contents

  Foreword

  Author’s Note

  Laid to Rest at Last

  Chapter 1: Warriors under Saddle

  Chapter 2: Horseman

  Chapter 3: Mystery Horse

  Chapter 4: Little Sorrel Goes to War

  Chapter 5: War in Winter

  Chapter 6: Into the Valley

  Chapter 7: River of Death

  Chapter 8: Risk and Redemption

  Chapter 9: Invasion

  Chapter 10: Defending the Rappahannock

  Chapter 11: Triumph and Tragedy

  Chapter 12: Afterward

  Chapter 13: The Legend

  Endnotes

  Bibliography

  Foreword

  “Is this the place with the horse?” is a frequent question asked by visitors entering the Virginia Military Institute Museum for the first time. “Yes!,” has been the proud reply since 1948, the year Little Sorrel arrived from the Confederate Soldiers’ Home in Richmond, Virginia.

  I have always thought it appropriate that the war horse of Stonewall Jackson spent his last days being cared for by veterans, many of whom had been with him in their youth. Little Sorrel earned the honor of “veteran” status, carrying his master over some of the most famous battlefields of the Civil War. The physically unimpressive horse was a witness—a participant— throughout the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He carried Jackson into the chaotic barrage of Confederate musket fire on the dark evening of May 2, 1863, which resulted in the mortal wounding of the General.

  Fredrick Weber, the leading American taxidermist, arrived at the Confederate Soldiers’ Home in March 1886 prepared to start the mounting process as soon as the end came for the thirty-six-year-old Little Sorrel. Taking measurements from life, Weber prepared a steel armature which was then wrapped in sisal and plaster. The last step was to place the hide over the form. Webster’s work was so well done that there has only been a need for conservation twice in the intervening 130 years.

  Little Sorrel is among a very select list of historically significant horses mounted and exhibited in museums worldwide. Napoleon’s Le Vizir can be seen at the Musee d’Armee de l’Hotel des Invalides in Paris. Phar Lap, the great Australian race horse, is in the Museum Victoria in Melbourne. Comanche, the lone survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn resides at the University of Kansas. Cowboy actor Roy Roger’s Trigger was mounted at the time of his death in 1965.

  During the Civil War more than 3,000,000 horses and mules were pressed into service. One-half of that number perished during the four years of struggle. Only two survivors—one Union, one Confederate—still stand in silent tribute to the tremendous sacrifice of equines in the Civil War. The first to be mounted was Union General Philip Sheridan’s Renzi, who died in 1878. Today Renzi, renamed Winchester after the general’s famous 1864 ride to that town, is exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum in Washington DC. The other mount, representing the South, is Little Sorrel.

  Little Sorrel was frequently the subject of comment by war-time observers. Like his famous rider, the reddish-brown horse was “deceptively plain.” He was not anyone’s ideal of the war charger so often depicted by artists; yet he possessed stamina and character that amazed and amused admirers. He could live on “a ton of hay or live on cobs,” recalled Henry Kyd Douglas of Jackson’s staff.

  Sharon Smith’s work sheds light on why Little Sorrel was a good fit for Jackson. She offers a convincing argument suggesting that the general might have been a better horseman possessing a better understanding of the requirements of a good officer’s mount than previously thought. In a broader way, Smith helps readers appreciate the role of the horse in mid-century America.

  It was the courageous image of a commander on horseback that compelled soldiers into battle or rallied a faltering line. Rider and mount became an inseparable image: Lee on Traveller; Sheridan astride Rienzi; Mead’s Old Baldy; Grant’s beautiful chestnut Cincinnati. Necessity dictated that officers had more than one mount. Frequently the officer’s horse was a casualty. (Little Sorrel was wounded at least twice.) Confederate cavalry commander Nathan B. Forrest had the most mounts shot from under him: thirty-nine. The flamboyant George Custer is reported to have had eleven horses killed in battle.

  George W. Grayson, a leader of the Creek Nation and Captain of the 2nd Creek Mounted Volunteers, CSA, stated that “One becomes greatly attached to any horse that he has had the exclusive use of for any considerable time, but especially fond and friendly becomes this attachment when he feels that his horse has on occasion been the means of helping him through, probably saved his life in many thrilling junctures and hair raising escapades.”

  Such a relationship no doubt existed between Stonewall and Little Sorrel. If there had not been a Civil War, Thomas Jackson would have continued his quiet life as a college professor at VMI. Little Sorrel most likely would have had an equally uneventful existence on a farm somewhere in Ohio. Fate created a relationship between the unlikely general and the unlikely war horse.

  This is the story of that relationship.

  Author’s Note

  Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s favorite and best warhorse was an animal of many names, and sometimes no name at all. When Jackson acquired the horse, on May 10, 1861, the little gelding came without a name attached. There is some faint evidence that his original name was American Traveler, but that is unproven, perhaps improvable, and probably untrue.

  Jackson’s widow and staff members said after the war that the general called his horse Fancy, although they gave different reasons for that choice of name. Mary Anna Jackson, known as Anna, said that her husband intended the little horse for her and that the name was suitable for a lady’s mount. Others claimed that the name was a joke since the horse was anything but fancy. There are problem
s with both explanations.

  Jackson kept the horse, even though he had ample opportunity to turn him over to Anna, especially during the first year of the war. As for the other possibility, Stonewall Jackson was not inclined to joke and the concept of irony was a mystery to him. The most likely explanation is that Jackson had previously owned a horse named Fancy, one that in all probability came with the name. So he kept it and repeated it with his new horse.

  Civil War–era writers didn’t call the horse by name. Newspaper reporters, letter writers, and memoirists who didn’t revise their work later referred to him as Jackson’s little sorrel, or Jackson’s old sorrel, or just Jackson’s sorrel. After the war, the “old” became the most common adjective. At war’s end, he was fifteen and that was approaching old age for a horse in an era when equine life expectancy was no more than twenty.

  The description became the name. At the time of his death in 1886, most newspapers reported the passing of Stonewall Jackson’s warhorse Old Sorrel. Some noted that the general called the horse Fancy, and most remarked on his small size. As the great flood of Confederate memoirs arrived during the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century, the name “Little Sorrel,” already used occasionally, became the name of choice for veterans who actually remembered him.

  The variety of names has led to confusion. Some writers have referred to Stonewall’s two favorite horses, Fancy and Little Sorrel. They were the same horse. Jackson did own a second sorrel horse, one who also had a variety of descriptive names: Big Sorrel, Gaunt Sorrel, Young Sorrel, and perhaps others. This horse was not a favorite, usually lent out and finally given away to an aide.

  There is no evidence that Stonewall Jackson himself called his favorite horse Little Sorrel, although he may have used the phrase “the little sorrel” to differentiate him from the other sorrel horse he owned. But the name Little Sorrel has conquered all others, and that’s the name modern historians, writers, and artists use. It’s the name used here.

  Introduction

  Laid to Rest at Last

  Juanita Allen, president of the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was a woman on a mission during the winter of 1996–1997. She had a Confederate hero to honor, although some of her friends questioned the method she chose to bestow the tribute, if not its recipient.

  “Southerners are a very devoted people and we believe in honoring heroes of all types,” she explained to the Washington Times, responding to critics. To be fair, very few of those critics came from the South, and those who did weren’t especially critical. Mrs. Allen, looking around for projects for her organization, had already settled upon a few related to Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, second only to Robert E. Lee in the esteem of Virginians to whom the Civil War was still important. There were plans under way to erect a new marker near the spot where Jackson was shot down by friendly fire at Chancellorsville.

  Also in Mrs. Allen’s sights was a new grave marker for Jackson’s widow, Anna, the first president of a United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter. A visit to the museum at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia, where Jackson was a professor when war came, produced a plan to restore the general’s first uniform, which had become a little threadbare over the past century. But the visit produced something else as well.

  In a place of honor in the military museum, next to the bullet-torn raincoat Stonewall Jackson wore at the time of his mortal wounding in 1863, not far from the famous shiny helmet of World War II hero General George S. Patton, near a massive exhibit of nineteenth-century firearms, stood the mount of a small red horse. The horse was as famous as he was unimpressive.

  It was Little Sorrel, Stonewall Jackson’s favorite—although unlikely—warhorse. He was renowned throughout the South during the war and had become even more famous, North and South, during the long years of his retirement. At first, his fame was as a reflection of his legendary master, an eccentric and implausible military genius. Eventually the horse’s very survival became legendary too.

  When Little Sorrel died in 1886, at the improbably advanced age of thirty-six, he was mounted by one of the world’s foremost taxidermists. Frederic S. Webster maintained an elaborate studio on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and was known as an artist among mere technicians, a taxidermist who made his subjects compelling and real. He specialized in manipulating them into lifelike positions, often placing them in dioramas using the increasingly sophisticated art of photography.

  Celebrated taxidermist Frederic Webster.

  Ruthven Deane Collection, Library of Congress

  Webster had recently left Ward’s Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York, making himself available for private commissions. He had learned his trade at Ward’s, best known in the taxidermy world as the place that P. T. Barnum had sent his famous Jumbo to be mounted after the elephant’s untimely death. Although Webster didn’t work on Jumbo, he had recently become known worldwide for a taxidermy grouping that he called “The Flamingo at Home.” Webster’s flamingoes were the talk of the scientific world since the display so accurately showed a group of birds in a typical habitat, a rare technique in Victorian taxidermy.

  Webster was a brilliant—and expensive—choice to mount the beloved Little Sorrel. Unlike most other taxidermists of the era, Webster disdained wire frames with sawdust filling. He first created a plaster-of-Paris sculpture in an appropriate head-up position as if the little horse had just heard the sound of bugles and cannon. He then artistically stretched the red hide over the statue. The horse’s skeleton wasn’t needed, so Webster took it as partial payment for his work.

  Frederic Webster carried Little Sorrel’s skeleton along with him ten years later when he took a job as curator and chief taxidermist of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and articulated it into a lifelike position, tensed and ready to charge. Little Sorrel’s skeleton was then placed on display. There it stood for fifty years, gathering dust and losing the occasional tooth and section of bone.

  In the 1930s, several Southern museums began inquiring about the skeleton. Little Sorrel might have been an object of mild curiosity in Pittsburgh, but he remained a hero south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Webster, as much a survivor as the little red horse, expressed no serious opposition to its repatriation, although he grumbled a little at the idea that it might be done without formal consultation with him.

  Meanwhile, Webster’s mount of Little Sorrel had remained in Virginia, first at the Lee Camp of the Confederate Veterans Home in Richmond, a residence for elderly Confederate soldiers. By the late 1940s, when the last veteran was gone and the need for the residence had passed, Little Sorrel’s mount was moved to the VMI Museum. By then, Webster himself was gone, although just barely, having died in 1945 at the age of ninety-five. VMI was a suitable destination for the bones as well, so the skeleton was taken apart and shipped to Lexington, where it remained in storage for nearly half a century.

  Mount of Little Sorrel at the VMI Museum in Lexington, Virginia.

  Keith Gibson, VMI Museum, Lexington, VA

  Then Juanita Allen showed up, looking for a project for the Daughters of the Confederacy. It was well over a century since the horse’s demise and more than one hundred thirty years since the death of his master, but both horse and general were important enough to rouse the patriotism of a Confederate Daughter. When she learned that only part of Stonewall Jackson’s horse was on display and that the bones lay nearly forgotten, Mrs. Allen knew she had her project.

  “We petted his nose and told him he was going to be laid to rest,” said Mrs. Allen to the Roanoke Times. The mount itself was going nowhere. It remains the museum’s most popular exhibit. Mrs. Allen was referring to the skeleton.

  “I felt so sorry for him that he’d never been laid to rest,” she told the reporter. “Everything should be buried. It’s just the Christian thing to do
.”

  Webster would have approved. He had, he said, begun work on Little Sorrel just after Stonewall’s horse “went over the green fields of some animal heaven to rest in peace and honor.”

  Little Sorrel’s master might have been a little more troubled by anything resembling a funeral for a horse, even his loyal Little Sorrel. Jackson was a famously religious man, a Presbyterian, and a great believer in the Bible. He would have known well and believed thoroughly the words of Genesis that give to man supremacy over livestock. Jackson’s denomination, as most others did and still do, taught that animals do not possess immortal souls and certainly don’t require a religious service to see them off to heaven, even one made up of green fields.

  But some believe as cowboy philosopher Will Rogers did. “If there are no dogs in heaven,” Rogers often said, “then when I die I want to go where they went.”

  The Daughters and the VMI Museum staff were careful not to describe the event they planned as a funeral, but it certainly looked to be one to the nearly four hundred people who showed up on a hot and sunny day in July 1997. The attendance came as a surprise. The event was to honor a horse, after all, and one who had died 111 years earlier. But it was not just any horse. He was Stonewall Jackson’s favorite, to be sure. But the honoree was famous in his own right.

  Little Sorrel was a survivor. He had carried Jackson in all but one of the great general’s battles and apparently suffered only one minor injury. He had then lived on longer than almost any other horse who had participated in the Civil War, longer even than thousands of human veterans. People wanted to see him buried, just as people had poured into Lexington to see his master buried a couple of miles away 134 years earlier.

  At 3:00 PM on July 20, 1997, a procession of dignitaries emerged from the Jackson Memorial Hall on the VMI campus, the building that houses the museum where Little Sorrel’s mount remains the most popular exhibit. At the head of the procession was a young cadet carrying a specially made eighteen-inch-high walnut box into which the cremated skeletal remains of Little Sorrel had been placed. Accompanying them were a fife and drum corps, a cavalry unit that included a dozen horses, VMI officials, a bagpiper, costumed reenactors, descendants of Confederate veterans, and, although it was not a funeral, a Presbyterian minister.